ARKHANGELSK, January 30. /TASS/. Culinary tourism, routes for travelers with disabilities, and routes across several districts will be key directions of the strategy to develop tourism in the Arkhangelsk Region in 2020, the region’s Deputy Minister of Culture, supervising tourism, Svetlana Zenovskaya told TASS.

"Our new projects refer to routes for travelers with disabilities - we shall invite them to see our region," she said. "The Arkhangelsk Region has launched new projects in culinary and social tourism; we also offer new ethnography routes. We shall focus on culinary routes and on packages to travel across several districts within the region."

In 2019, the region welcomed about 420,000 tourists (3% growth year-on-year). "Most visitors come from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Russia’s big cities, and foreigners come from Germany, Italy, other European countries and from the US," she added.

Accessible travel for the disabled

The region has been working on routes for travelers with disabilities. Typically, tourists have to cover long distances between towns in the region, thus for this specific direction the destinations would be Arkhangelsk and Kargopol. "People who cannot hear or see well, who have musculoskeletal disorders want to travel, and for them we must offer special conditions," the deputy minister said. "We shall offer a route, where travelers will have additional time to relax; they will be offered special equipment and guides."

"On our website we have a questionnaire to see what programs such guests would prefer in terms of comfortable duration and special arrangements," she said.

Food, tableware and history

In culinary tourism, the region highlights specific characters of different districts. "The problem is that our people quite often are unaware of products, which are made in their districts. In 2019, we asked local administrations to lists five products, which they consider typical for the district, so that we could present them further on to both domestic and foreign tourists," the official said.

During the Chef School project in Velsk, guests learned history of the old town of merchants by tasting dishes, cooked according to recipes of the 18-19 centuries. Back then, visitors used to order baked beets with salted trout and sour cream, or wanted to have milk jelly with forest berries and local honey.

Packaging and tableware also matter. Guest houses in the Pinezha district offer clay and wood dishes as well as the Soviet-style tableware of the 1960s. Tourists are invited to see a century old bakery with the wood stove, where cooks make not only bread, but tasty cakes.

Northern paintings

Another tourist attraction is the local painting, which decorates tableware and souvenirs. "Among the paintings in the Arkhangelsk Region, the most popular is the Mezen painting (typically an image of a horse, usually in red and white colors - TASS). We can see examples of it also in Moscow; and Russia’s modern designers use its elements in new collections," the deputy minister said.

In the Velsk district, tourists attend master classes in the Vazha painting. Its main element is three flowers. "Velsk has been changing its look," she continued. Tourists now use a bus, decorated in the style of the Vazha painting; the well-recognized images are on bus stops, pavilions, on plates of street names. For the Day of Tourism, the locals decorate parasols, and for the New Year - the kozulyas (richly decorated gingerbread with many herbs).

The Krasnoborsk district is known for three northern painting styles, each of them being very specific. The Permogora painting is a combination of herb ornaments and scenes of peasants’ lives, the Uftuga painting consists mostly of long branches with colored leaves and flowers resembling tulips and bellflowers and birds, which look like larks or blackbirds. The Rakula images also have birds, but those are mostly magpies and hens in a frame of leaves and geometry figures, and typical colors are golden-ochre and black.

Travelers to the Krasnoborsk district are invited to master classes, where they learn to make and decorate wooden toys for children, and where they can see a defile, demonstrating garments with the painting’s elements.

Fairytale characters

The region’s six districts develop a project, dubbed "Three Northern Rivers." "We develop actively routes for children," the deputy minister told TASS. "It is easier to offer for school students short-distance traveling programs. Short - in the local understanding of distances. We hope, more people would be coming to us, and meanwhile sightseeing organizers practice skills and get ready to welcome families, visiting our region."

These districts offer programs related to fairytale characters. The best known character is Mother Winter in the Lena district. "In December-January, all days to visit her residence are sold out. While only a few years ago, we registered several hundred visitors in winter, nowadays about 10,000 come to see her," she said. Visitors come mostly from the Komi Region. After seeing the residence, travelers usually go to Koryazhma to meet Grandfather Cedar. He is believed to protect the local cedar forest.

Krasnoborsk is known as the origin of Porcino Mushroom. In the Koshkino village (name originates from the word, meaning "cat"), travelers see the Cat’s House (as described in a popular Russian folk tale) and learn about cats and the local history. They also learn how to use matches and how to handle a stove (fire was among the fairy tale’s misfortunes).

The Three-Rivers’ route also offers a culinary trip, where on the Viled River tourists taste soup with grain, cooked in a traditional stove, and dishes of cottage cheese with sour cream. In Kotlass - porridge cooked in the stove and beverages with rose hips and cranberries, and in Krasoborsk - a dish of porcini. In Kotlass, guests go to a brewery to taste seven bears with starters of capercaillie and wild boar. In Koryazhma, menu is based on cedar nuts. The program offers mushroom hunting, master classes and sightseeing.

As recently the share of self-organized tourists has been growing, the regional tourism center offers a few new audio guides. For example, in Arkhangelsk, a visitor may use one to learn the history of the Ostrov Solombala, or to hear about the city attractions during a boat voyage along the Northern Dvina.

The audio guide is made to fit the time of a flight from Arkhangelsk to Moscow or St. Petersburg. Within one hour, a tourist may learn about Arkhangelsk, the White Sea, the Solovki Islands, the Kiy Island, the Small Korely museum of wooden architecture, about villages on the list of Russia’s most beautiful villages, about Kargopol and Solvychegordsk, about Kholmogory - Lomonosov’s birth place, which is also known for bone carving, about the Pinega caves, the White Nights and the Northern Lights.