🤎 📚 Good Luck and Bad Luck - Part 2

The story begins here

The moment Bad Luck hopped in, the man slammed the lid shut, locked it with three heavy locks, and buried the chest deep in the ground.

"Rot there,you curse!" he said. "I'm done with you for good!"

They moved to the city,rented a small house, and the man started to trade. He sold his wife's old dress for a ruble. He bought a new one and sold it for two. Everything he touched turned to gold. His Good Luck was true to its word. He became rich, bought a fine house, and lived in comfort.

When the younger brother heard of this, he came to visit, his eyes wide with envy.

"Brother,"he asked, "how did you do it? How did you go from a beggar to a rich man?"

"It was simple,"the older brother said. "I found my Good Luck, and I locked my Bad Luck in a chest and buried it in the old yard."

A burning envy took hold of the younger brother.He had always prided himself on being the smart, successful one. Now he felt cheated. He rushed back to the old village, dug up the chest, and broke the locks.

"Go!"he commanded the moment Bad Luck crawled out. "Go to my brother! He's the one who escaped you!"

"Oh no,my dear," Bad Luck crooned with a nasty smile. "He locked me away in the dark earth. But you... you set me free. I think I'll stay with you."

And it did.Bad Luck clung to the younger brother like a shadow. His own Good Luck vanished. His wealth disappeared, and he was ruined completely.

In the end, he was so poor that his older brother had to pay for his funeral—a final, bitter twist for the man who thought he had it all figured out.

📕 #fairytaleRussia@TCofRus

❄️ The gingerbread workshop at Nikolsky-Solbinsky Monastery is always buzzing with activity. Come Christmastime, things really heat up—in every sense of the word. The oven never cools down, the food printer hums away nonstop, and the artists' hands are constantly at work, adding those cozy little touches to every piece.

❄️ Colorful lanterns light up the sweet Christmas tree, sparkling sugar snow dusts everything in sight, and intricate patterns bloom across the gingerbread stars, as if traced from frosty winter windows.

❄️ Here, Christmas comes alive—you can touch it, taste it, and savor its aroma. Ginger and cinnamon, fresh-baked warmth—the scent of Mom's hands. The smell of childhood.

#RussianCulture@TCofRus

February 23, 1992. UnifiedTeam — Canada — 3:1
Olympic Games. Final. Albertville, France🏒

At the 1992 Olympic Games, the Unified Team, led by Viktor Tikhonov, represented the former Soviet hockey nation, and no one expected a victory from them. The country's best players had begun leaving en masse for the NHL, forcing Tikhonov to assemble a young team for the tournament in Albertville, where many players were just over 20 years old.

Despite this, they managed to win the gold medal, largely thanks to veterans Vyacheslav Bykov and Andrei Khomutov, as well as the Spartak forward line of Nikolai Borshchevsky — Igor Boldin — Vitaly Prokhorov. It was Boldin who scored the championship-winning goal in the final. The Albertville Olympics marked a new era for the nation's hockey. Although Tikhonov had already been unable to count on all his top players for several World Championships, this problem became especially acute during the Olympics, which were held in the middle of the NHL season. Nevertheless, thanks to a new wave of talent, Tikhonov managed to overcome it.

#RussianSport@TCofRus

🍺 Once upon a time in the village of Gavrilov in the Yaroslavl province, there lived merchants named Krasnobryukhov. Life was good for them—if only it weren’t for their unfortunate surname (which literally means "red belly").

Merchant Pyotr Krasnobryukhov petitioned Emperor Paul I to change their family name. The Emperor sympathized with the merchant’s plight but didn’t fully grasp it. He wrote a resolution: "Change the color, but keep the belly."
And so they became the Sinebryukhovs (blue belly).

In 1817, the Sinebryukhov family settled in Helsinki (at that time, Finland was part of the Russian Empire) and began supplying foodstuffs to the Russian army. However, being Russian by origin and now in Finland, they soon shifted their focus to alcohol production. Anyone who knows even a little about Finns would understand why.

Since vodka without beer is like money down the drain, merchant Sinebryukhov built the first brewery in Finland. Its opening day, October 13, has since been celebrated by Finns as Finnish Beer Day. Those who have enjoyed a drink with Finns know it’s practically a national holiday.🍷

And given that pronouncing “Sinebryukhov” is as difficult for a Finn as saying the name of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull is for a Russian, the beer’s name was shortened to “Koff.”🍺

#RussianHumor@TCofRus