Russia in Color

Russia is often wrongly stereotyped as a depressing land devoid of color and life. Although the Russian winter is  long and there are definitely periods where the dominant colors are white, brown, and grey, I have found Russia to possess an understated beauty that continues to stun me when I least expect it. I’ve selected fourteen of my favorite photos I have taken since I arrived in September, and if you have never been to Russia, I hope that they will give you a broader picture of the beauty and character this country has to offer! Note: many of these photos have been filtered, i.e. Instagram, but I really haven’t altered them that significantly.

1. Moscow night, September 2013. 

I took this photo from the corner of Red Square to capture the contrast of the jewel-toned sky and church. The building to the far left with the red star on top is the Kremlin.

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2. Feeding swans in Gorkiy Park, Moscow. September 2013.

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3. View from my dormitory porch, Elabuga. October 2013.

4. Wisdom from a Student, Elabuga. October 2013.

I asked my students to write an essay about the differences between higher education in the United States and in Russia. After praising the United States’ use of syllabuses (which my students had never heard of), she contrasted it to the Russian system with the following statement that sums up my 10 year history with this place:

5. Elabuga Institute, Fall 2013.

Built in 1903 complete with a nifty onion dome, this building is arguably one of the coolest looking places to work on earth.

6. Sunset on Kazanskaya Street, Elabuga. Fall 2013.

7. Children playing by the Marina Tsvetaeva monument, Elabuga. Winter 2013.

I took this picture on the morning after one of the first snows, and I loved the excitement and energy that these children exuded.

8. Jumbo snowman outside my dorm, Elabuga. Winter 2013.

9. The Irony of Fate, Elabuga. Winter 2013.

The sign reads “The pharmacy is temporarily closed due to one of the employees being sick.”

10. Winter sunset, Elabuga, 2013.

11. Caviar and Tea, Naberezhniye Chelny. Winter 2014.

12. View from Pushkin Park, Vladimir. Winter 2014.

13. Shooting the breeze, Elabuga. February 2014.

14. “Nyet,” Naberezhniye Chelny. February 2014.

I saw a little boy scribble нет on the frosty window of the bus from Elabuga to Naberezhniye Chelny.

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No, You Can’t Kiss Me!

“Never talk with strangers.” Никогда не разговаривайте с неизвестными.* This simple advice would have saved me a lot of trouble if I had been conscious enough to heed it.

When I stepped on the train to visit my friends in Vladimir, I had no idea that I would soon be unwillingly locked in a Russian soldier’s embrace, his determined gaze meeting my horror-filled eyes as he got ready to plant an unwanted kiss on bewildered lips. Этого не может быть. Но это было. Here I was, stuck in an agonizingly long second, his homely face with pathetic brown eyes looking at me like I was a piece of grade A American beef…

THE STUPID GIRL WHO JUST WOKE UP

Now I won’t lie, the Russian platzkart has always exuded a bit of romance to me, the possibility for late night conversations with a handsome and charming traveler while speeding through the taiga has always seemed more epic than than a stale stroll on the beach. But just to get things straight, “Lieutenant B.”, as we’ll call him, was neither handsome nor charming. It all happened when I woke up on my platzkart bed to see a soldier in full uniform sitting on the bed across from me. He was homely and a bit stocky, with greasy brown hair and brown eyes. I must have looked startled at his presence, because he quickly said, “don’t worry, I’m just here to charge my phone, the only outlet is at the front of the train.”

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The layout of a Russian platzkart. Photo Credit: Glucke, Wikimedia Commons

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s fine,” I yawned, shooting him that reflexive, wide smile that my sleepiness had prevented me from censoring. That was my first mistake. In America, when a girl smiles, it’s polite. In Russia, when a girl smiles, it’s an invitation. Whether he heard my accent or not, I don’t know, but while my guard was still down, he asked me, “where are you from?”

Without thinking, I shot back “from America. I’m a teacher here.” Second mistake. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl. At the word “America,” something changed in this nonchalant Russian soldier, and before I knew it, he was sitting at the table across from me, ready to talk. Again, I stupidly took him at face value, thinking, “what’s the harm in some small talk? I only have an hour left on the train.” I asked him if he had a family, and his calculated response warned me of his real intentions.

“No.” he said. “I wouldn’t have gotten acquainted with you if I were.” With eager, puppy dog eyes, he told me “you’re very beautiful. It’s me who’s the ugly one.” Although I tended to agree, in reflexive “politeness,” I said “nyet,” and smiled.

When he offered tea, my first reaction was to hesitate; after all, the age old trick is the drug in the drink, but he seemed to read my mind, and said “relax,” and showed me a sealed tea bag to prove that his intentions were less than criminal.  He excitedly got two mugs from the conductor and poured us tea. Not wanting to be rude (stupid, stupid, stupid girl!), I sipped the tea very, very slowly, convincing myself that if the drink was drugged, then I wouldn’t get enough of it in my system to do any damage.

I joke about my “stupidity,” but in reality, by the time he had brought the tea out, I had realized that letting my guard down in those first few moments of consciousness had invited me to play this game of cross-gender interaction by his rules, rules that were very different from American girl-guy flirtation. There is a much more pronounced power differential between the sexes in Russia, and it became clear that this soldier felt a certain power over me. At this point, I did not want to make him angry. I had no idea how reactive his temper was, nor did I think anyone on the train would help me if something did happen, so I resorted to trying to play his game as best as I could, hoping that I could bide my time with fawning pleasantries until I could escape into the fresh Vladimir air. As the conversation went on, my nervousness took center stage, and the very words I didn’t want to say kept coming out of my mouth. Long story short, he found out I was single, and then he really turned on what he thought was the charm that might get him a green card.

RUSSIAN PICK-UP LINES

I don’t remember the sequence of Lieutenant B.’s wooing session, but the cheesiness and systematicity of his whole routine was hard to forget. In less than twenty minutes, this Russian soldier played me terrible Russian pop music to set a romantic mood, then sang me his own song, after which he said confidently. “You love it when I surprise you, don’t you?” (Ты любишь, когда я тебя удивляю.) He showed me pictures of himself as a child, and he asked me if it was hard for me to be without a man in my life. He could be my boyfriend just for the train ride. He could come to America with me.  He even bluntly asked, “so, do you like me?” But it was his Martin Luther King Jr. style speech that made me want to flee the train more than ever.

“What are your dreams?”he asked. After I answered, he began.

“I had a dream, to buy a car. I bought a car. I had a dream, to become a soldier. And I have a dream,” he looked at me suggestively, “to kiss a foreign girl.”

Oh no he didn’t.

“My friend dated an American, and he says they are so much more interesting to go out with. He says they’re different. And Russian girls have no soul. If you have money, they’ll be by your side, but if you lose it, they’ll leave you without a second thought.”

EATING PIG FAT

Yes, it got even weirder.

“Have you ever tried sala?” he asked. Now sala is a Russian food I had done a good job at avoiding on previous trips, but I had actually put it on my Fulbright Bucket list as something I wanted to try. From what I had heard, sala was gelled meat fat that you put on bread. Apparently, also the food of love. Lieutenant B. ran to his seat and brought me back a slice of brown bread with two chunks of congealed fat. I took a bite into the chewy, bacony fat and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t make me throw up. “So, do you like it?” he said.

“It’s not bad,” I said honestly, at which he decided to gift me with an entire bag of cut up fat and brown bread!

PHOTOSESSION

About this time, his soldier friend appeared in my section of the train, and Lieutenant B. asked him to take a picture of us. He wrapped his arms around me hard while his friend snapped a picture, and then, this was that fatal moment when he looked at me as if he was about to go for that foreign-girl kiss.

“Nyet,” I said firmly.

“On the cheek?” I made a face, and before I knew it, his mouth was planted on my cheek while another picture was snapped. Oy. His friend left, then he came over to me, combing his hair, (which apparently was supposed to be attractive?) and asked me, “Can I please just kiss you before you get off the train? I just want to feel the difference.”

What!?

Well, he would feel a difference for sure if he actually dared, my lips were so chapped they were cracked, and***ahem***, never having kissed anyone before, he’d probably leave with the impression that American girls were the worst kissers on earth. But more importantly, never having kissed anyone before, there was no way that I was going to let my first kiss be with some random soldier who saw me as nothing more than a check off a bucket list.

He was persistent though, and before I got off, he asked again, and in frustrated Russian, I said “I can’t!”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I don’t kiss people that I’ve just met,” I told him. He deflated, finally accepting my “no,” and I breathed a sigh of relief as I exited the train. But I walked along the platform to the train station, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see Lieutenant B behind me, shooting me a creepy grin. I quickened my pace, thankful that he didn’t decide to follow me. Soon, I was safe with my friends in Vladimir, memories of the soldier taking a more humorous than scary tone, but I will say that this experience opened my eyes to the need to be on my guard at all times while traveling alone, especially in a culture where what I consider to be simple politeness can be taken as an invitation to kiss me, then marry me and then finally, get that visa to America…

*The title of a chapter from one of my favorite pieces of Russian lit, The Master and Margarita. 

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My Almost Arranged Marriage (or the Irony of Fate)

“I am so happy to see you! I need to talk with you about a very important matter.” The elderly woman’s light blue eyes, circled in soft wrinkles, gleamed with urgency. I smiled and felt the characteristic excitement that comes with crossing the barrier of small talk to genuine conversation with a Russian, and I gleefully agreed.

I had met Tatiana in the hotel lobby a few days before; while she was checking into the hotel, she asked me to watch her bags. As soon as I opened my mouth, it became clear to her that I was not Russian. From there I found out that she spoke fluent French, had taught for quite a few years, and was staying for a few days in Moscow before going to visit her family in Israel. Tatiana struck me as eccentric from the beginning; she spoke to me with an intensity and openness that I have not typically experienced the first time I meet a Russian.

Before I reluctantly ended the conversation (two girls from my group were waiting for me), she looked me in the eye and said in a definitive tone, “Just don’t get married while you’re here. I know sexually there might be the attraction, but it is just not enough time to really know a person.”

“I completely agree,” I answered, pleased that she seemed to share my conviction that this year was not the one for romance, at least with a Russian.

“It was wonderful meeting you, and I wish you success.” She smiled at me as we parted.

But as fate would have it, this was not our last meeting…

Skip to two days later, when Tatiana bumps into me and exuberantly invites me to talk with her about a very important matter. My first inclination was to think she was simply lonely and wanted to have tea with a willing listener. Perhaps she would give me advice on teaching; after all, we seemed to have similar cross-cultural interests. Or maybe she was a Mormon who hoped to share her faith with me.

There was no way for me to know that the real reason she wanted to talk with me could be summed up in one word: судьба.

The English translation of the word судьба as “fate,” is a weak definition at best because of the stark contrasts in perception of the word in American and Russian culture. Whereas Americans have the culturally ingrained mindset that our futures can be molded by action and perseverance, the Russian culture emphasizes the role of fate in the paths that our lives take. So although we have the word in our lexicon, we do not attach the spiritual and emotional weight to it that Russians do.

Tatiana and I sat down in the hotel café, where I ordered a black tea and she offered me dark chocolates dusted in cocoa. For thirty minutes, she told me about her life traveling with her military husband, her work as a translator, how she adored France and French people, and how art and culture were integral parts of being an intelligent, educated person. I was entranced by her clear, slow speech, stories gleaming with details, and her love for learning. She even tried to teach me a few phrases in French. About thirty minutes into the conversation, she looked at me with a smile and said, “but you’re probably wondering why I asked you here.”

“Da,” I answered, a subconscious premonition hinting at where this might be going. She started to weave stories of her nephew into her narrative, “a talented artist who graduated with honors, a man who is humble and shy…would you like to see a picture of him?”

Biting my lip, I conceded. I was faced by a decidedly poor picture of an average looking man in his late twenties. He was standing beside a large painting, apparently talking about his work, his eyes turned away from the camera.

“Do you like?” she asked. The Russian way of asking if you like something doesn’t require an object, so it was ambiguous as to if she was asking about him or his painting. Not wanting to offend, I muttered a “da,” and grasped for a tactful way to exit the situation. As if hearing my thoughts, the plump, smiling waitress explained that we needed to leave since others needed to eat and we were only drinking tea.

Tatiana, however, had not made a full case for her nephew Ilya, and invited me to her hotel room. My fascination with the situation outweighed any qualms I had, so I agreed. After following her into her third floor room, Tatiana sat me down and said, “so, have you understood me?”

“Um…You would like me and your nephew to meet?”

“Yes, I knew you were an intelligent girl!”

“I don’t know…” I said weakly, my Russian skills fleeing as my nervousness spiked.

“I just want him to marry an intelligent, well-brought up girl, and I knew you were from the minute I saw you. You see, I just think it might be fate. Why else would I have met you in the hotel lobby that day, then bump into you two days later? It might be судьба.”

Or perhaps it’s because we’re in the same hotel building, I thought smugly, but managed to keep a straight face.

“But I don’t know him,” I said.

“But I know him! He has no problems.”

All this from the woman who had told me not to get married while I was in Russia because it was not enough time to really know someone. But as the Russian saying goes, you can’t outrun fate.

Still, I thought a little Russian bluntness might douse the fire of fate. I explained to her that I was a Christian and that it was very important for me to marry someone who shared my beliefs. This led into a very interesting exchange on religion and its place in the marriage relationship. I was able to explain to her the centrality of Christ in my life, which seemed to surprise her. “You won’t find youth like this in Russia,” she said.

Although she tried to convince me that cross-religious relationships would work (the dashing Ilya was Jewish), she slowly started to get the hint, and two hours after we sat down, we parted amicably. She gave me her number and encouraged me to call her, no doubt counting on fate to bring us together again.

I returned to my hotel room with a smile in my heart, energized by the reminder of why I am hopelessly in love with vast country and its mysterious, beautiful people who are not constrained by the prison of logic and practicality, but who allow room for belief in the unknown, the untouched, the unseen. I can already tell this is going to be a great year.

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Moscow Whirlwind

After over a year of hoping and months of planning, I AM FINALLY HERE.  I am still jet-lagged and a bit overwhelmed, but I AM HERE!  You will be pleased to know that this time the Frankfurt airport did not outsmart me; I actually did manage to get on the right plane and arrive successfully to the Moscow Domededovo Airport as planned. Although achy, groggy, and sweaty, it was nice to step out of the plane to hear the din of Russian all around me: the lady who told me I was going the wrong way, the teenage girls talking about school, and my favorite, the mom teasing her little daughter that she better not go under the bars because she would be crossing the border without a passport.

I even managed to make the passport control officer(a breed which is known to be stern and heartless) crack an ever-so-slight smile with my delayed response to his questions.I couldn’t think in English, much less Russian, so when he asked me, “Where are you coming from,” I stood there dumbfounded for five seconds, probably drooling, trying to figure out whether he meant the U.S.A. or where my last flight had come from. When I finally went with “Frankfurt,” followed by a quick, “but I’m from the U.S.A.,” his mouth turned subtly upwards as he told me, “yes, that’s what interests me, where your last plane came from.” Before I knew it, he had given me a Da Svidaniya (Goodbye) and I officially crossed the border.

I had been told that the Fulbright Office would provide transportation for us from the airport, but as I wheeled my heavy suitcases awkwardly out into the mass of leather jackets and intermittent whiffs of B.O., I saw no one holding the promised Fulbright sign. Unfortunately, gypsy cab drivers have an eagle eye for the befuddled stare of a foreigner, and before I could get my bearings, a man who resembled a tall and skinny George Clooney approached me, convinced by my confused look that I could easily be ripped off. For those of you who have never heard of a gypsy cab, it is basically an unmarked/unregistered taxi that, well, should really be a last resort for transport in Russia, especially if you are a woman travelling alone. Our conversation went like this:

“Miss, do you need a ride?”

“No, I have someone coming. I am waiting for them and I’m not sure where they are.”

“Oh, you can come with me.”

“No, I’m waiting for them and I think they might be outside.”

“You speak good Russian…where are you from, Britain?”

“No, the U.S. Thank you, but-“

“You go call your ride, and if they don’t come, I’ll be here.”

“It’s okay, I don’t need one. If I do, I’ll let you know.”

He then kept shooting not-so-subtle glances at me as I called the Fulbright Office and waited for my ride. Thankfully though, soon I found the driver, a short, unassuming and polite man, and spent the next hour and a half, nauseated, in the pinball machine that is Russian driving. In Russia, the rules of the road are like Captain Barbosa’s code on Pirates of the Caribbean: they are more like guidelines. As the driver swerved in and out of lanes with only inches of room while talking on his cell phone, I looked out the window with a strange respect for Russian drivers and a confidence that I would make it to the hotel in one piece. I could never drive in Russia, but these drivers, wow, they have skills…

After checking into the hotel, finding wi-fi to check in with my parents, and running to a produkti to buy cheese, bread and juice to snack on in the room, I got as good of a night’s sleep as could be expected for a jet-lagged traveler. The next morning, I was able to meet my host mom from Nizhniy Novgorod for lunch at MacDonalds. She works in Moscow during the week and goes home on weekends, so our meeting worked out perfectly. It was so wonderful to see her, a familiar face in the midst of increasing newness, and although our time was short, it was very special. After sharing pictures from the past year while drinking tea and eating tiramisu (yes, they have that at Russian MacDonalds!), I went back to the hotel, took a nap, then got ready to go out to dinner with Drew, one of the other Fulbrighters who had come in early.

It was a fiasco in and of itself just trying to meet each other; after agreeing to meet each other on the first floor of the hotel, we both sat there, and waited, and waited, until I remembered that the hotel had two buildings! To test my theory, I asked the receptionist where he was staying, and it turned out that, yes, we had been waiting for each other on different floors, and he had knocked on a different person’s room and called a different room number. Eventually though, we found each other and had a really fun night on the town.

For dinner, we went to Yolki-Palki, which is a chain restaurant that serves traditional Russian food. With a stomach still a little restless from the jetlag, I decided to play it safe and stick with blini s sousom klubnika, pancakes with strawberry sauce. After a nice dinner, we strolled around night time Moscow for a few hours in crisp, misty weather. Since Drew had studied in Moscow before, he knew the city pretty well and we managed to get to Red Square, a statue of Dostoevsky, the library named after Lenin, as well as some other random finds, one of which was a stone platform on Red Square where beheadings used to be performed.

We got back at about midnight, which was when I met my roommate, Rebecca, who had just flown in. She left a note on the door telling me she was here so I wouldn’t be startled to walk in an find someone there, and the Russians in the room beside us found it very funny; according to her she heard them through the wall making fun of  her for about five minutes. All I can say is that I am thankful for the note, otherwise I would have made a very bad first impression. I am a very jumpy person, and I can just picture myself letting out a blood-curdling scream…

Anyway, after another night of bad sleep, I got up this morning and was to spend the day with my friends Masha and Bethany from Vladimir. I met Bethany through her brother, one of my classmates at college, when he told me that she also had a love for Russia. When I found out that I was going to Vladimir for my language program last summer, I contacted her since that was where she had lived the year before. She connected me with a wonderful group of people in Vladimir, one of whom was Masha, and it was actually not until today that we spent a significant amount of time together. Although the day was rainy and cold, we had a great time enjoying one another’s company, and I can’t wait to be able to visit my friends in Vladimir!

Masha, Bethany and I

Masha and Bethany

Finally, after a day in the rain, I got back to the hotel and ate dinner with a bunch of the other Fulbrighters who had flown in. We begin job training tomorrow, which will last for five days, then we will part ways and go to our host institutions. Right now I am a bit overwhelmed, really tired, and still wishing I knew more details about what I’m going to be doing in Elabuga, but I also am confident that I am supposed to be here. Moscow has been a whirlwind so far, but with a little bit of sleep and a lot of prayer, I’ll be ready to face whatever comes my way tomorrow!

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A Drunken Perspective

A throwback to my time in Nizhniy Novgorod three years ago. It’s interesting to reflect on the perspectives I held then and how I have grown…

From the moment I first landed on Slavic soil, everything in Russia had seemed full of novelty. Washing clothes in my dorm’s scummy tub wasn’t gross; it was adventurous. Russian cigarette smoke didn’t make me cough; it spiced the air with culture. Even being forbidden to flush toilet paper was somehow exotic.

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View from the upper section of Nizhniy Novgorod

So when a drunken man stumbled into our sleeping car on the way to Moscow, I wasn’t surprised that I felt the same childlike excitement. The over-friendly man took a seat across from my friend Kelly and me and scooted close to my messily bearded friends Mitchel and Andrew (for some reason they had made a pact to spend the whole semester without the luxury of a razor.) Andrei, as he introduced himself, was thirtyish, with sandy blonde hair, nondescript eyes and foggy glasses. If this were Boston, I might have felt repulsion, pity, or even fear. But instead, I felt like a little girl at the zoo, sensing her skin prickle at a lion’s roar but knowing that the bars of a cage ensured her safety.  Somehow, I had persuaded myself that this was a different world, a Narnia, where nothing could actually go wrong. Well, at least I could get away with things that I couldn’t in America. I could go on sketchy amusement park rides without my father’s resistance. I could zoom around town in an overstuffed car without wearing a seatbelt. I could strip down without shame in a communal bath house. So I could certainly make friends with a drunken man on a train. I became very friendly.

Sadly though, my friends didn’t share my excitement. At Andrei’s sudden arrival, Mitchel’s blue eyes flashed with an overzealous annoyance. Andrew seemed amused, but only yawningly, perhaps enjoying Mitchel’s discomfort. They clearly didn’t understand that this wasn’t just a drunken man, this was a drunken Russian man! How could they not see that we were in for a treat? Mitchel’s eyes bugged out in frustration, Andrew leaned back in boredom, Kelly took the role of cautious observer, but I was on the edge of my seat. To my delight, after ten minutes of listening to Andrei’s jolly blabber, he was ready to tell us his life story.

“Do you know why I’m going to Moscow?” Andrei’s eyes glinted, confident that he was the charmingest Don Juan this side of Mt.Elbrus. “I’m going to meet my love!” He breathed ecstatically. I leaned in closer.

“Well, you see, I am married.” He paused. “But it doesn’t matter! It’s love!” My eyes went wide in surprise and delight. If I’d looked at my reflection in the dirty, Soviet-era window, I’m sure I would have seen a girl grinning like a child eating birthday cake, the joy in the sugary messiness of the night staining my face. This was not adultery; this was not real. This was just a story, and we were now extras in Andrei’s epic of a tryst. Wasn’t this why I had fallen in love with Russia? Every day was an adventure, filled with intriguing characters that gave me stories that could be told and retold when I was back in boring old America. Encouraged by our silence, Andrei then launched into a poetical diatribe on the meaning of love. I struggled to keep a straight face as I translated his words to my disgruntled friends. At this rate, this story was going to make my top five.

“Drink with me, my friends!” he cheered, clearly planning to take advantage of the train’s food service.

“No,” we declined, motioning refusal with our hands. I tried to explain our refusal, excited to see how well I could communicate in my third grade Russian.

“I usually don’t drink, so I don’t want to risk getting drunk right now.”

He leered at me knowingly. “You’re just afraid to fall in love with us.” I giggled. What he could have meant by his Gollum-like assertion was a mystery, but I gleefully etched it into my mind, adding it to the file that stored the antics of my favorite Russian characters.

“We have to get him out of here!” Mitchel growled.  No, please no! I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

“I’ll have three beers,” Andrei ordered the train attendant.

“Remember, we said we are not going to drink with you!” Mitchel retorted in his Tennessee twang.

“No,” he said, incredulous. “They are all for me!” Andrei explained. Mitchel rolled his eyes. I grinned, adding the quote to Andrei’s budding character résumé. Our enigmatic professor Harley, who had grown up Amish and lived as an expat in Bulgaria for a number of years, came upon our saloon scene. The seventy year old man with his ever-present black beret and love for cats was famous for his unpredictable constancy. It was his paradox of character that made him so intriguing; the more he talked about himself, the less we knew, and it always seemed he was slightly smirking at us with his mysterious old eyes. His reaction to our plight was signature Harley. Mitchel silently begged our professor for help with desperate eyes.  But with a conspiratorial smirk, he started to make conversation with our new friend. After a few minutes, with the mischievous gait of an adolescent boy, he kept on walking through the train, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

The rest of the night played out just as I had hoped, with Andrei resisting Mitchel’s pleas to leave and his tales continuing and the account getting juicier and juicier. Late that night, Andrei finally left our cabin, leaving three green beer bottles and a memory that I can now see was loudly caricatured by my craving for novelty. This character, this piece of entertainment, had bills to pay and work to do and a wife that he had hurt.

And in my ecstatic grabbing at a Russian adventure, I had simplified him into a cartoon character, colorful but flat.

I didn’t see him as a human, but as an extra in my own personal plotline.

I hadn’t thought about Andrei’s poor wife, married to a drunk who was running off with another woman.

And I certainly hadn’t thought that Andrei too, might be a hurting, lonely man.

I wonder what Andrei is doing right now. Maybe he’s sneaking off on another escapade with his secret lover. Maybe he’s late for work, nursing a hangover from too much vodka the night before. But maybe, just maybe, he’s at a bar, telling his friends the story of the stupid but amusing Americans he once met on a train to Moscow.

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