Message in a Bottle, Moscow Canal Blockage, and Mother of 22

In this week's Odder News,  a successful message in a bottle, the coolest cakes in the world, and 21 babies in a year and a half.

• A Novosibirsk woman makes the most transcendently beautiful cakes that we cannot imagine eating. She got started when her son was five years old and she ordered a cake for his birthday; she was horrified at its ugliness. Pictures of her cakes, here, include a watering can with flowers, a hamburger, a basket of KFC chicken, a skull, Simba, a handbag with a Russian zagran passport coming out of it, a fake bomb with chocolates and strawberries inside, a pot of borscht, a box of ramen noodles, and more. Her unbelievable cakes run about R4,000 ($56).
• A 24-year-old Russian woman and her older Turkish businessman husband want to have 100 children. And they are already almost one-fourth of the way there with 22 children. He asked her to marry him the same night they met on vacation in Georgia (the country). Since they want lots and lots of kids, all of their biological children were born with the help of a slew of surrogate mothers. In a year and half, the couple had 21 babies. The mother has only been pregnant once – with a daughter she had prior to meeting her husband. An army of nannies keeps diaries so that the parents can keep up on the family news. It's a shame they live in Georgia, where he manages a bunch of hotels, instead of Russia; in Russia, she would be the biggest mother-hero in the whole country.
• A Moscow riverboat had its own Suez Canal moment recently. The Konstantin was motoring to its winter parking place in the Moscow region when it got stuck and stopped up the canal. The ship, with 80 crew and no passengers, collided with the shore and ran aground. Equipment failure is being blamed, not human error. It is a big deal, but it is hardly Suez Canal big.
• Some sweet news: After five years, two young sisters from Samara, who sent out a message in a bottle, have connected with the discoverer of the message. Back in 2016, the girls occupied a summer day at the dacha writing a letter on hot pink paper with pictures on fluorescent blue paper. When it rolled up onshore, the paper was white. Thanks to social media, the Samara family that received the bottle was able to connect with the now-teenaged senders – one of whom shares a name, Karolina, with one of the recipients.