In 2010 I wandered around the globe. During that wandering I took my first trip into depths of Russia. Rode the rails of the trans siberian railway. From Novosibirsk with a month long stop over into Chelyabinsk and then back on the rails to Kiev, Ukraine. This is not about that time.
It’s about now. Here it is 2011 and I am again in Chelyabinsk. To the Russians I am an oddity and a marvel. I wear kilts, I speak Russian with a perfect accent, but a very limited vocabulary. So they often stare at me confused when I no longer understand what they are saying and I tell them such in Russian.
I adore these people and their strange ways. From the old babushkas selling flowers, fruits and milks on the road sides, to the young school girls with their balls of lace in their hair. There is a mixture of passion and childlike innocence here with an ever impending sense of hopelessness and surrender. Their poetry goes places where our poets never even imagined it was possible to go. They have billard advertisements for books and celebrate science.
Yet all around is decay and evidence of the faded elegance of the past. I currently live in an apartment whose entire building would have been condemned in U.S.A. Yet here, it is common place and even considered a good bargin.
Here it will be that I share the way I interact with this amazing society. How I love them, confuse them, laugh with them, baffle them, and all in all try to spread the wisdom of always taking the time to be polite and never letting the lack of language get in the way of sharing a smile.
Welcome to my adventures in this Russian life.