<\/p>\n
Or maybe I wouldn\u2019t call it a \u201cnote\u201d, since it is just a few tiny bits of conversations that I\u2019ve picked up from people around me. The longer I live in Russia, the more Russian people surprise me. I thought it would be the other way around. I thought that I would grow to understand Russia and Russians more and more the longer I lived here. That this country would seem comprehensible and sensible to me after a couple of years. But no. It is still surprising. And I was rather surprised when I arrived here. Not to say shocked. I was almost shocked, as a matter of fact, but I thought it would pass with time. I was wrong \u2013 the astonishment I feel toward this country and its people has continued and will, most likely, never come to an end.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was sitting in a little caf\u00e9 in the cellar of Ural State University\u2019s main building on Lenin Prospect in Yekaterinburg with a piece of cake and a hot glass of Nescafe black coffee without sugar in front of me. Next to me sat two young girls of hard to determine age, probably one or two years younger than me. They were both wearing the standard outfit for today\u2019s Russian female student studying at a prestigious institution of higher education \u2013 high heeled leather boots, short skirt, tight top, medium length fur light-colored coat with sparkling details and jewelry dangling from every possible body part. One girl says to the other: \u201cSo I found out that the car isn\u2019t really his, but belongs to his boss and that he is only the driver of it. Can you imagine? How could he do that to me?\u201d The other girl, obviously feeling for her friend, asks: \u201cWhat are you going to do now? Dump him?\u201d The first girl nods: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing else I can do.\u201d Her friend agrees and adds: \u201cBut make sure to ask for the number of the guy he works for. That car is nice, and who knows? His boss might be single\u2026\u201d I looked up from my coffee to stare at them. They didn\u2019t notice me but I didn\u2019t give up, I continued to look and listen, but was disappointed in the end. After this the conversation moved onto some new collection in some clothing store and they lost me.<\/p>\n
I was waiting for my friend Julia at the shopping center \u201cGreenwich\u201d, in downtown Yekaterinburg. It was one of those Saturday evenings when everybody seems not to be able to sit at home but has to go out. One of those evenings when nobody cares about what they\u2019re doing or who they\u2019re with as long as they\u2019re doing something with somebody. A young man was walking by me with his girlfriend. She was wearing a fake fur coat in a strange purple shade \u2013 these coats are growing ever more popular among the young \u2013 and he himself had on a leather jacket and rough leather boots. He asks her: \u201cWhat do you want for New Year\u2019s [Russians do not give presents on Christmas, but give them on the Soviet-made holiday of New Year]?\u201d She laughs, looking at him and batting her long mascara enhanced eyelashes: \u201cNothing really, just give me a big box of money and you\u2019ll have my love forever!\u201d What the young man answered his woman I didn\u2019t hear. They walked away from me and their words didn\u2019t reach me anymore. I stood there and wondered what ever happened to the country that tried to build communism.<\/p>\n
I often wonder what happened to the country that tried to build communism. Sometimes it seems to me like there\u2019s nothing left of that country, the \u201cold\u201d country, and I start to wonder if maybe it was all a dream, but at other times it seems like the Soviet Union never ended and that anytime now someone will come up to me and say that we\u2019re building a new world, we\u2019re creating a new people, and that the happy future is just around the corner.<\/p>\n
Russia is a big country, though. \u201cAround the corner\u201d could be around any corner. From Kaliningrad in the west to Vladivostok in the east \u2013 where do you begin?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or maybe I wouldn\u2019t call it a \u201cnote\u201d, since it is just a few tiny bits of conversations that I\u2019ve picked up from people around me. The longer I live in Russia, the more Russian people surprise me. I thought it would be the other way around. I thought that I would grow to…<\/p>\n