International Twins Day is observed on the last Sunday of May. On May 30, the 1st Twins and Triplets Festival and Parade were held in Veliky Novgorod. 25 pairs of twins and 3 sets of triplets, as well as their parents, participated in the festival called Multiple Happiness. The private family Museum of Millstones was named “the highlight of the festival”.
“There are twins in the museum too”, shared the owner of the museum Elena Mikhailova, “Twin brother and sister, Naum and Olesya, have been working at the museum traveling stations for more than two years. Olesya introduces bread baking and spinning wheel to the guests, and Naum — mending boots and sharpening knives”.
“The millstones can be considered “twins” as well since they are a set of two stones”, the founder of the millstones collection Vladimir Lvovsky confirmed. “There are an upper and a lower stones, and the grain between them acts as a grinding rolling bearing. In nature, doubling means physics and power. When twins were taking turns grinding flour, it was a pleasure to see how they complement each other and work in shifts!”
The Museum of Millstones offered various fun activities to the guests of the Festival: grinding flour with millstones, grinding coffee beans with a 19th-century coffee grinder, fixing a boot heel plate, a photo flight on a Baby Yaga mortar, and carrying buckets on a carrying pole. A memorable episode occurred when a guest tried on a horse collar and laughed: “Are you telling me this is heavy? I’m a mother of triplets!”
The Museum of Millstones thanks the N.G.Vasilyev City Center of Culture and Leisure and personally Serafima Yatsenko for the excellent organization of the festival. It is worth mentioning that the event took place in the park of the road palace of Catherine the Great. Having children in the palace, twins or not, is indeed Multiple Happiness.
