July 18 is World Listening Day, and this is the right time to make your hearing a bit more sharper again.

Last year I went looking for the most quiet spots in Sergiyev Posad, with the recorder of course. Not much happened this year except for one thing as it occured to me that July 18 is the day of double celebration in Sergiyev Posad.

This is when the relics of St. Sergius were discovered. St. Sergius was the 14th century monk who has founded the Trinity Sergius monastery. The monastery surroundings grew fast turning into a town which is now known as Sergiyev Posad. On this day thousands of pilgrims make effort to visit the town, and when they are in the monastery they normally queue to pay a tribute to the relics resting in of the temples.

The waiting could be really long, it may take hours and hours before they enter for a brief moment of pray. This is a recording of a group of worshippers waiting for their turn in the long queue under the sun. One is reading, all five are singing, and then the chimes up there declare one more hour of waitng.


Then I came back. There’s a derelict shop in the Rabotchka area adjacent to the place where I work. It still sports a pale green outdoor sign which reads Fruits and Vegetables but its days are numbered. The large supermarket chain has laid its hand on it, so taking a photograph of this sign as well as the lozenge-shaped shop number plate seems to be a good idea. Someone (I don’t see who) is breaking the old glazing tile off the wall.

Finally, a football match. I’ve heard this drum for quite some time now, its sound is strong enough for travelling half a mile or even more. Here it is – the drum and the Sergiyev Posad’s Loutch football fans shouting out a sequence of chants supporting the team. The voice that suddenly emerges in your ear belongs to the team coach Vyacheslav Antonov. ‘School’, he says, ‘we need the football school to make it more organized’. This is what July 18 sounded like in Sergiyev Posad.

Recorded July 18th, 2011 (MS-TFB-2)
Published July 24st, 2011.

/ 24.07.2011

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