What I learned about Russia from Pavel and Manya — part 2
After fifteen years of Putin, an aspiring Russian man resigned into apathy and a trustful little girl became a young woman who trusted only animals, not humans.
Names and some details have been changed to preserve anonymity. All photos by the author unless otherwise specified.
Sometimes, life bites it’s own tail. So it felt, when I touched down on Novosibirsk Tolmachevo airport in 2016. But much had changed since my last visit in 2001.
First, it was a sunny summer morning, not a windswept, bleak winter dawn.
Second, the plane was an Aeroflot Airbus A321, not an old Tupolev from a regional airline.
Third, I was on a leisure trip, not an assignment for Norwegian radio.
Fourth, even so the visa process was much more bureaucratic. The instructions for visa application were so cryptic that I had resigned. I needed to rely on expensive assistance from a small firm in Norway.
It was run by Russians. Possibly colleagues of the people who processed the cryptic visa application.
But I also needed an invitation and a day to day itinerary from a Russian travel bureau. And I needed help from my old benefactor and interpreter — Pavel. He had to make telephone calls to his contacts, like he did when he arranged my interviews in 2001.
Suspicion was oozing from between the lines of the application forms. Who was this Norwegian? Did he really only want to visit an old Russian acquaintance for a holiday in the Altai mountains? Is it that simple?
It wasn’t that simple. Occam’s Razor apparently did not apply when Russian officials scrutinized my motifs. I wasn’t merely a tourist. I was a Western tourist.
In 2001, who cared? In 2016 however, I wore the invisible hat of mean Uncle Sam, the bully who ate small European countries for lunch and edged closer and closer to Russia. I might be up to anything.
But here I was, in the arrivals hall of Novosibirsk Tolmachevo airport, waiting for my suitcase at the baggage belt.
There it came. But not so fast. A guard stopped me. I couldn't simply fetch it and exit. I had to show my luggage tag. I couldn't find it.
I was the naive tourist. Who needs that luggage tag? I had trusted good old Aeroflot to deliver my suitcase. I hadn't thought the other way round — that Aeroflot didn't trust me.
But just like in 2001, I was helped out by my savior, the slender man with the mild face — Pavel. After some brief argumentation, we were out and in a taxi headed for downtown Novosibirsk.
Pavel hadn’t changed much on the outside. A few more wrinkles like myself, maybe a slightly more stooped attitude. Later, I would learn that much had changed on the inside — and in his life.
The first hint came when he left me at the hotel. We would meet next morning for the long trip to the Altai mountains. But not just the two of us. We were to be joined by three ladies. And none of them was his wife.
I got a little worried. Who were these ladies? Pavel told me a little. He was no longer married. One of the ladies was Pavel's girlfriend. Let's call her Alla. She ran a small shop in the outskirts of Novosibirsk. Another ran a larger, successful business and had a car that would take us to Altai. Let's call her Bronya.
The third — well, not so much about her, except that she also had a car and wore a red cap with the letters Russia on it. Let's call her Dina.
What did the ladies expect from me? I tried to dismiss my worries. What's wrong with Pavel wanting to be social and introduce me to his friends?
I stepped out into the warm Novosibirsk afternoon for a lonely stroll. It took me to the opera building where I had met Pavel, his beautiful wife and his little daughter Manya on a snowy winter evening, fifteen years earlier. Now, I could admire the park around it. And the statue of Lenin still adorned the square in front.
How was Manya now? She understandably did not want to travel in an entourage of elderly and middle-aged people. I would not meet her until the end of my visit to Novosibirsk.
I was looking forward to it. What would the little trusting girl be like as a young woman in her early twenties?
I walked along broad avenues with posh clothing stores down to the railway station, a beautiful sea green building serving the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Inside, I gazed at an exhibition of children's drawings. One of them showed a bear crying in a field of flowers, with a train behind and warplanes above. Was it the Russian bear? And why was it crying, when the planes carried the Russian flag?
The next morning arrived with clear skies, two cars, three ladies — and Pavel. We were off. Well kept highways took us out of Novosibirsk and into the Siberian rolling plains.
Those plains were mostly grassy fallow land, mile after endless mile. What a relevation: If these plains had been plowed, planted and sown, wouldn't Russia be the agrarian superpower of the world? And if climate change blew its hot breath towards the northern permafrost and made it fertile, wouldn’t those green superpowers multiply?
I asked Pavel about this, as we passed still more rolling grassland and small villages and the road became narrower and bumpier.
It was a question of investments and people willing to live here, he answered.
Now, eight years later, I wonder if the food and climate crisis of the world will turbocharge such a development. Can we afford not to? Can Russia afford not to? Cynically seen, food can be their next gas.
Our first stop was at a restaurant. It looked new, and was modeled after a US roadside inn.
Already now, it became clear that the ladies were in charge of this trip. They presented me with gifts — a T-shirt with the ominous inscription “Back in Siberia” (I still have it) and other souvenirs. They wanted photos of me and themselves.
I had their spotlight upon me. Pavel just floated around in the shadows. I was getting a little nervous. Where would this end?
We drove on for hours and hours. Hills and woods replaced the plains. Siberian log cabins with window frames in cheerful colors adorned the lush green valleys. We were approaching the Altai mountains.
Our full-bosomed lady driver Dina cranked up the car stereo with Russian pop music. I asked Pavel about the theme of the passionate baritone’s song. Romance, he told me. My nervousness increased slightly.
Finally we turned onto the bumpy dirt roads of Artybash, a village at the northwestern end of Lake Teletskoye.
We were lodged in the cabin of one of the ladies' relatives. The ladies were busy loading off the cars. I was finally able to escape my company for a lonely stroll.
Artybash was living on tourism, but I found peace in the outskirts. Cows and horses behind wooden fences, gray with age. A man alone with his fishing rod by a pond, not in a hurry for a catch. At last, Old Russia was sending me a shy smile in the afternoon sun.
There would be more such shy smiles. The next came at supper. The ladies were preparing a hearty meal — soup, meat, mushrooms and salad. I — the Western man well trained in gender equality — meekly insisted that Pavel and I should help with the preparations.
But — no. We were briskly parked at the dining table, each with a bottle of Siberian beer in front of us. The kitchen was women territory. End of story.
The meal arrived on the table. It became clear that we would all eat salad from the same bowl. Now, the ladies became a little insecure. Pavel had to use his interpreter talents to convey that insecurity to me: What did I — as a Westerner — think of such a habit? Did I find it barbaric and unappetizing?
I could reassure them. In fact, the rawness of Russian habits reminded me of my father — the communist. He ate bread in large chunks and drank kefir right out of the carton for breakfast.
Sharing food from the same bowl also reminded me of the Last Supper from the gospels. It was old, spiritual Russia giving me another shy smile.
A sixth person came in from the evening shadows and sat by our dining table. He was a stocky, strongly built man who watched me carefully in silence. Let's call him Kirill.
Pavel told me that Kirill was some kind of art dealer who traded with Cuban artists. Later, I discovered that he was into many more trades, some affecting us.
From time to time, he used Pavel to translate questions for me. The one I remember best, was: Do you believe in evolution?
Of course, I answered yes. I was a science journalist. But my answer was less important than the question. Why did he even ask? What did he think about the matter? His whole appearance made it easy to imagine him as a Russian Orthodox priest. Was Kirill a religious fundamentalist?
His terse scrutiny of me felt like a test of manhood. Tough or softie? He kept his judgement to himself.
Kirill personified an insight that for a long time had been clear to me: People from the United States and Russia are in some ways more equal to each other than to many Europeans.
The fundamental religiosity, the strong belief in national supremacy, the aura of might and power, the bigness and rawness — it was all there in Kirill´s presence, even if he never revealed much of his opinions. He was a silent enigma to me, and at the same time, his macho charisma spoke wordlessly in versals.
The next day, we were out rafting in the rapids of the Biya river. Pavel didn't come. He probably needed to escape from the ladies — and maybe me, too — for some precious hours.
And from Kirill. He joined me and the ladies at the raft rental store. Somehow, he gave the impression of being involved in this business too.
He made clear that he was an experienced rafter. The rapids we were allowed to force, were category one rapids. He had forced category five rapids, lethal if you lost control.
A long life has made me hypersensitive to the subtleties of male rivalry. Kirill had fought his first match with this tall, innocent Western softie, and scored five rapid points.
As I learned, category 1 rapids were pretty dull. Kirill didn't join us, so the ladies and I took selfies and paddled under supervision of a tired-looking young man. After an hour, we docked at the river bank and were driven home in the rain.
I was over-ripe for some exploration on my own. I wanted to go into the woods to open my pores to the landscape. I dressed up in raincoat, watertight trousers and boots.
But going alone was not an option. One of the ladies wanted to accompany me, Pavel explained. Incidentally, it was Pavel's girl friend Alla.
She wanted us to find mushrooms in the rain. I found none. She found many. Russians are mushroom lovers. And she seemed to take a fancy on me, too.
It is strange how you can be drawn into a relationship. There, in the miserable weather, in a dripping wet spruce forest, Alla managed to create a joyful, intimate mood.
When we discovered a small clearing with a view towards some small rolling hills half covered in fog, she managed to conjure it into a revelation.
I have a selfie video of that strange excursion. I can hardly bear to see it. I come across as an old half-in-love fool.
We came back together with a load of mushrooms for our evening meal. Pavel seemed unfazed by our disappearing act. No jealousy there, apparently.
Or — maybe he was hiding his feelings, not wishing to reveal weakness? Or maybe Alla had other reasons than romance for following me? Come to think of it, what was really the reason for bringing these women along for the ride?
The next day, we joined other tourists for a boat ride on spectacular Teletskoye mountain lake. The weather improved. The sun broke through the showers and cast it's god rays over lush slopes and waterfalls.
Then it was time to break up. New long hours on the road. Pavel and I were placed in Dina's car. Alla joined Bromya. We were on our way to remoter parts of Altai, further south.
After our first enroute accomodation in a tent camp, the United Female Alliance started to crack.
It started with Dina stopping at a gas station. She had made an agreement with Bromya that the two cars would meet there, but Bromya's car was nowhere to be seen. Dina started a frantic search for her, driving hither and thither at a mad pace.
Finally, Bromya showed up at a grocery store. Dina was mad. There was a quarrel. Why all this gross emotion over a small incident?
Pavel explained to me that Bromya was an independent girl who took no orders and didn't necessarily follow agreements.
But why were such agreements so important for Dina? Did she have some responsibility forced upon her not to let anyone in this travel company go solo? Is that also why Alla joined me in the rainy woods?
We drove on. The dirt roads went from bumpy to even bumpier. Dina silently cursed as the shock absorbers slammed. But she had to keep pace with reckless Bronya.
Finally, we were approaching our destination. And what a destination! We stopped at the Kathu yaryk pass, a magnificent viewpoint overlooking the Chulyshman valley.
The ladies' cars were already heavily punished, but the worst was yet to come. The mountain road into the valley could easily have been their death penalty.
Luckily, we were admitted aboard a sturdy Russian military style van. The road had not been maintained for the last thirty years, Pavel told me. We were thrown around inside the compartment as our driver negotiated the coarse gravel and the hairpin turns with reassuring routine.
It was worth the bumps. Down on the plain, the sun shone over small Siberian style wooden huts on grassy fields next to the Chulyshman river. Here — at the Tourist base “Katu-Yaryk” — we would spend our next three days in the Siberian wilderness.
The ladies gave Pavel and me a pleasant hut, while they stayed in a large tent. It was nice and a little unnerving at the same time.
They insisted on being leaders and servants at the same time. Were Pavel and I reduced to some kind of mascots, dogs to be given treaties?
That evening at the fireside, this attitude erupted into a more serious conflict. I didn't understand what was brewing, since the conversation was in Russian.
Suddenly, Pavel rose from the bench and walked briskly away into the dusk. I was left with the ladies. What to do? What to say? None of them spoke English.
After a few awkward attempts to understand each other, we had to give up. I went early to bed. Pavel was already under the covers.
He explained to me what had happened. Alla — his girlfriend — had told him that he wasn't a real man. We had a long talk that evening, the best during my stay. I got to know Pavel a little better, and understood more about his past.
Pavel had gone through a painful divorce from the beautiful lady I met at the Novosibirsk opera in 2001.
Manya had moved in with her mother. I understood that he had a deep bitterness towards his former wife. I began to realize that such bitterness was becoming a widespread disease in Russia.
Seventeen years after Glasnost, Russia was still in the afterthroes of the Soviet economic collapse and the following robberies by oligarchs. Ordinary Russians dragged along through difficult circumstances.
Such a barren life with few future prospects can make you bitter, stingy and petty. Such conditions can also spill over into personal relationships.
Like the relationship between Pavel and Alla.
I felt that Alla and Pavel were united in some kind of common fate of lust and disgust. They were like survivors of a plane crash in a winter night. They loathed their fate and each other. Still, they had to hug in order to keep warm.
And — the worst of all — maybe I had unknowingly so far played the part of a potential rescuer.
I started to become a little scared of the ladies. What were they talking about, that same evening in their tent? What were they planning for me?
The next day arrived with sun and fresh hopes. We were finally going for a walk along the river, down to a mighty waterfall.
We were once more joined by our mysterious Master of Ceremonies, the silent squid with a tentacle around many trades — Kirill. He seemed to be some kind of boss here, as well.
As usual, walking together in nature brought out the best in us. We were like a happy lot of schoolchildren on a holiday outing.
The ladies took a bath in the Chulyshman river. They were tough dames with strong bodies. Splashing around in the water seemed to reunite them in strength and determination.
Pavel and I stayed ashore. Pavel probably because he had no desire to get cold to the bone. I because bringing swimming trunks had never occurred to me.
And I strongly felt that nude bathing was out of the question. This was macho country, just like in much of USA: Honest nudism was a threat to the titillating effects of bikinis and other near-nudity.
The Kurkure waterfall was indeed impressive. The ladies were taking selfies, and Father Kirill informed me that my T-shirt was too colorful, as it would attract insects. He himself was dressed in military camouflage clothes.
Maybe he felt that my orange color was unmanly. I remembered that on a biking trip in former East Germany two years earlier , a similarly coloured T-shirt had provoked some local guys to scream “Arschficker” — ass fucker — at me. Meaning gay.
Anyway, neither the assfucker t-shirt nor my balding, graying, aging body seemed to deter Alla. When I announced that I would like to go up to a vantage point to see the waterfall from above, she was the only one who immediately volunteered to go along with me.
We had a photo session on the edge. Literally, as Alla was sitting in her bathing suit at the brink of a cliff. Metaphorically, as her flirtatious gaze drew me to the brink of temptation and lust.
I am glad I did not fall. It would have been a madly unsymmetrical relationship — both ways.
I was not more “manly” than Pavel because of my personal attributes, far from it. More the other way round.
I doubt that I — a spoilt Western man — would have survived the ordeals of living through the Soviet and the Yeltsin years in Russia, like Pavel had.
I was not the “manly” ideal of Alla. At most, I was only her rescue line to a better life — if she could manage to grab it and drag herself out of Russian misery. Or so I thought. It frightened me.
The next evening, aggression reared it's ugly head once more. But this time, I felt the aggression was directed at me, not at Pavel.
Kirill had caught some small fish. They were a speciality around this part, the ladies explained to me. They boiled them in a grey, unappetizing soup and insisted that I should eat.
But first, they filled my glass with vodka and told me to empty it in one gulp while holding my nose. More glasses, more gulps, and then the horrible soup. I felt I had no choice. They laughed, and not in a happy way.
Had the coy, prudish westerner flunked his manhood test? Did the ladies want to punish me for rejecting their approaches?
Or — were all these suspicions and experiences of aggressiveness and manipulation just in my head? Maybe I fell victim to my own prejudices about Russia? Maybe these ladies just wanted to have a good time in their own rough way?
I needed to think — alone. My solution was to get up early. At dawn I took long lonely walks along the Chulyshman river. Pavel had told me that this was bear country, and that Siberian bears sometimes feed on humans. I watched out, but my solitude was never challenged.
Our last day in Katu-Yaryk had arrived. So had Kirill once more, with a Land Rover-style car. We were going on a ride to see the famous Каменные грибы — Stone Mushrooms.
We drove north on a dirt road next to the river. We passed beautiful rapids and made photo stops. Kirill fired up the car stereo with some really tasteful arty Western rock. I got the feel that he wanted to challenge me: Can you match this sophistication? I know your Western ways.
The Chulyshman valley widened out to a plain. A herd of seemingly wild horses galloped in front of our car. We arrived at the Stone Mushrooms campsite and were ferried over the river by a small boat.
I could see the stone mushrooms at a distance — stones balanced atop pillars of softer rock, an hours climb away. To be honest, they looked like a forest of hard-ons.
But I could also see dark clouds rolling into the mountain pass above. Soon there was flash and thunder. Then, rain poured down. Pavel and I took shelter under an overturned boat. We both had respect for thunder in the mountains.
But the ladies braved rain, lightning and thunder. What a fearless bunch! Or — had they crossed the line of resignation where the very fear of death is dead?
The thunderclaps — were they an echo of Russia's past — of war, terror and suffering, still scars in the souls of survivors? Were they traumatized children of hopeless times, seeking solace in giving death the finger?
Still, I reluctantly had to admire their foolhardiness. And they came back alive, like wet cats with nine lives and even more selfies.
But this took a long time. Pavel and I got tired of waiting for them. We waved to the boatman on the opposite shore, but he was in no mood for an extra trip to save us two cowards.
Then, we discovered a pack of cigarettes in our shelter. We were cold. Maybe the cigarettes would give us some comfort? We took one each, and puffed away.
Those smoke signals became too much for the boatman. We were using up his puffs! Soon after, he was there to rescue his not-so-well hidden treasure and to reluctantly ferry us back to a nice little inn with hot tea.
This is only to show that smoking is still a widespread habit in Russia, and that sometimes it pays to follow the local habits: We were ferried back, and Pavel and I bonded across cultural, political and personal divides for some precious minutes under that overturned boat. Even if I am a non-smoker.
That same evening, Pavel and I wanted to celebrate the end of our stay with a sauna. Kirill also had a hand with the routines of the Katu-Yark camp, it seemed. Anyway, he had fired up the sauna for us. With wood. Lots of wood.
It was a kind of three stage sauna. We undressed in a warming room. Then came a kind of secondary heat accomodation room. And then there was stage three — the sauna itself.
It was Kirill's final and ultimate manhood exam. I am happy to inform that both Pavel and I failed.
It hardly helps to have Russian macho when the sauna resembles a pizza oven. Had we stayed there for more than a few seconds, I'm afraid the fumes of roasted flesh would have dissipated from the chimney.
We took refuge in the secondary heat accommodation room, which was actually a perfect sauna. Thus rinsed of bodily dross and male pride, I spent the rest of the evening in the camp's assembly room. There, a state-authorized Siberian throat singer was to hold a concert for us tourists.
I think I was the only foreigner. It was deep, old Russia singing to us in the candle-lit togetherness of young and old.
The journey home was a fourteen hour marathon drive in Bromya's car. She really was an able driver. And she never got tired. She loved to drive, Pavel told me.
Still, we made a few stops. One of them was on my request. We passed a museum I would like to see — in Verkhneye Zhilino, the home village of the Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov. He was the second human to orbit the Earth, after Yuri Gagarin.
A museum had been erected to commemorate him. Pavel and I went to visit it. The ladies waited at the shores of a lake close by.
Unfortunately, the museum was closed that day. I circled it yearningly. Outside, we could admire the Vostok space capsule that Titov had traveled in. It was still scarred from its return through the atmosphere.
But then, old Russia smiled at me once again. An old, friendly man came out. He offered to open the museum just for us!
The old man gave us a full, personal tour. I got to see Titov's own paintings and drawings from the Siberian nature of his childhood and from his space flight.
There were space memorabilia like goulash space food in a plastic bag, spacecraft models and much, much more. I even got to see the old 78 gramophone of Titov’s parents! And I bought a tea cup and a t-shirt.
This is the generous, old rural Russia, Pavel told me after we had thanked the old museum janitor and bid him goodbye. There was a melancholy and longing in his voice.
Pavel and I rode on in Bronya's car. The hills smoothed out to grassy plains and the roads widened to highways.
At one intersection, Bronya took the wrong turn. She and Pavel discussed how to get back on track, but I could see on Google maps that they were still going in the wrong direction.
I tried to intervene and told Pavel that we needed to turn around. He just ignored me. I became increasingly frustrated. The long car trip took it's toll on me. I didn't want it to be longer than necessary.
Finally, I raised my voice over their Russian argumentation and told them to listen to me. Bronya got mad. Don't disturb my driving, she snapped to me, through Pavel's translation.
I think she — and maybe the other ladies as well, were disappointed by me. They had not gotten what they wanted from this trip. But they wanted some compensation. So we stopped at an ATM.
This trip had become much more expensive than expected, Pavel told me. So I had to pay for that. So many bank notes were needed that I had to withdraw them in several rounds. I think that both the ATM and I had the feeling of being robbed.
Darkness fell, and the lights of Novosibirsk painted the clouds dirty yellow. I started to feel really miserable. But Bronya was still vigorous.
We drove up to a block of modern flats on a hill and parked. We all went out in the drizzle. This was the home of Bronya. She and Pavel walked to the entrance. I followed, but Pavel stopped me.
Stay here, he ordered briskly. Why, I asked. To look after the car, he said. The atmosphere was tense. The trip was over. He was tired. I was tired. What now?
After Bronya and Pavel had unloaded the car, I was told to join them up in her apartment. It began to dawn on me what was brewing. She very proudly showed me all her appliances — western-made washing machine, dryer, refrigerator, freezer and TV.
From what Pavel had told me, Bronya was a successful businesswoman. This neighbourhood was the uptown of Novosibirsk. And now, she was going to throw a party for me.
Or — rather for her well-off friends, I suspected. She wanted to show me as a trophy, an exotic alien from the planet of West.
This was the moment when Russia really came up to my throat. I think Pavel sensed that I was about to crack, so there was some low-key discussion, and then I was back in Bronya's car, on my way to the Park Inn by Radisson hotel near the railway station.
Seldom have I been so glad to stretch out in bed as that night. At last, I was free in my oasis of westernness in the middle of this crazy, traumatized, raw and destructive country. Or so it felt as I closed my eyes.
When I opened them the next morning, it felt different. The sun shone over Novosibirsk, newly washed by the night's rain. It was my last day in Novosibirsk.
Pavel and I had agreed to meet at the reception. At last, I would also meet his daughter Manya.
We met at the Novosibirsk Zoo. It was very appropriate. Pavel had told me that she had lost faith in humans. She trusted only animals. She studied to become a veterinarian.
At the Zoo, I could see that she had a hand with animals. She worked as a volunteer there, and fed a horse with carrots. They both looked so happy and deeply connected.
But even if she despised humanity, she was still a child of her age and longed for the fruits of human technology. Her desire was to own an iPhone.
I decided to give her one. I remembered the little hand grabbing mine in front of the wind-swept Opera house that winter evening, fifteen years hence.
Something in me wanted to show her that you cannot reject trust in people without rejecting life itself. Trust is a game of chance that only children and the wise dare. Trust is like holding out your hand in a dark winter evening. It can be slapped or it can be stroked, but what else can you do?
I wanted to show her that humanity is not all evil, that people are like weather — sometimes unpredictably bursting into flames and thunder or freezing you with piercing winds, other times thawing you with smiling streaks of sunshine.
My little streak of sunshine glittered under the glass counter in the classy electronics store. Manya paled as she saw the price tag. She discussed with her father in a low voice. I sensed that she could not accept this gift. Such a large sum of money could be used for more pressing causes. She pointed to some cheap chinese Android phones with a hesitant finger.
But Pavel gave her a go. The clerk wrapped the iPhone with feminine gestures, as if it was a priceless piece of jewelry.
Then she was off — like a fearful animal fleeing with a prey that must be hidden.
Pavel and I went out to see Novosibirsk. We visited the chapel of St. Nicholas, believed to mark the geographical center of Russia. It lay like an island of white and golden peace in a river of traffic on busy Krasny Prospect. Out of that river came a person I thought I would not see again.
It was Alla. She had dressed smartly and tastefully, as if she regretted the excesses from the wild trip. I also sensed that she wanted to make good with Pavel again.
Sometimes, returning to the resignation of your everyday life can be like picking up the notes of a deeply familiar melody. Her little shop in the outskirts of Novosibirsk waited for her. And Pavel waited for her.
Later, we went to a park. An amateur choir of old ladies held a concert there. They wore beautiful local folk costumes and were accompanied by a man on accordion.
Their strong voices hit me in the abdomen and pushed tears out of my eyes. Old Russia was singing to me.
Again, it reflects how similiar USA and Russia are in important aspects. I experienced the same deep devotion and emotion on a concert with a gospel choir from the Deep South.
Deep South or Deep East — the voice of Man reaches out like a hand in a dark winter night. And you take it.
The plane left back to Moscow and Oslo, Norway the next morning. Would I ever see Pavel and Manya again? As a matter of fact — yes, just two years later.
The next post in this blog will tell you about their visit to Norway and how that visit deepened my understanding of them — and of Russia.
