avrelia

You probably will be surprised, but I haven’t forgot to finish my Moscow stories. I just didn’t write it. After so many days I am coming back to the last part of my Moscow visit.

I tried to write something meaningful, but when I tried to write something meaningful it turns silly – so I discarded several beginnings of the end of this story. And now I am just picking up where I stopped the previous part.

It was May 9, 2004, and I was alone in my apartment. My parents were in the summerhouse for the long weekend, my sister was with her friends for the long weekend, I was all by myself, and happy about it.
May 9 is a big holiday in Russia, Victory Day, celebrating the victory in WWII, or, as it usually called in Russia – The Great Patriotic War. Why this date? On May 9, 1945 Germany signed its capitulation to USSR. It signed general capitulation – to the Western powers – on May 8, but USSR representatives weren’t present, so we have it May 9. I love this holiday, even though it usually means just one extra free from work day and generally turns the first half of May into non-stop festival of doing nothing useful. Once it was a happy and sad, but rather clean-cut victory: we were attacked, we defended ourselves and other nations, and we won. Victory, yay! It is not just as clean-cut nowadays, but it still happy and sad. And, actually my own existence now depended on the victory then. Going on a tangent here, but when I am thinking about it, I am amazed how much my own history, the history of my family is interwoven with the history of my country. I am not sure I would exist if the events – big, noticeable events from history books - turned another way. And I kind of cherish my existence. So, yeah, we won the war. Together with other nations. And I roll my eyes at all declarations that USA single-handedly won the WWII. And, honestly, I don’t feel particularly bad seeing in Moscow treasures found by Schliemann in Troy. In a better world they would be in Turkey, and the Parthenon Frieze in Athens, and all other stuff where it was created. But in our world things happened the other way. We only can try do better the next time. By the way where did the antiquities from the Iraq’s museums go? Has anyone seen it since that days?
Sorry, I went into some strange place. Feel free to ignore. Let’s return to the sunny morning May 9. I was sitting before the TV and watching the military parade, a tradition for this day. I usually don’t watch it, but after several years, it was quite interesting.

Then I met with my friends, and we went to the small Botanical Garden in the centre of Moscow. Moscow has another Botanical Garden, vast green island on the north-east of the city. This one was originally organized (in XVIII c.) in order to grow healing herbs, and was called appropriately, “Aptekarskiy Ogorod” – A Pharmacy Garden. The name stayed, though the herbs were changed for rare plants as in XIX c. the garden changed the owner. For many years in XX century it was derelict and neglected, but lately – nice surprise – it has been renovated and pretty. You saw the pictures.

Another day’s gone. What was I doing in the last two days in Moscow? Walking mostly. Here and there, seeing friends and places that I haven’t seen before. Shopping. Books, shoes, lingerie, what ever else I decide will make more sense to buy in Moscow. Prices there are not exactly low, nut some things are still cheaper.

Went to a café with my parents. One of better developments in Moscow in the last years is that lots of affordable places to dine out appeared. Because in my university years it was a serious problem – to find a place to eat outside of home – mine or friends’. Striking contrast with Saint-Petersburg, where one can have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake in every bakery.

Saw a school friend. Her five-year old daughter is lovely and adorable, and talking non-stop.

Walked some more. I find it curious, how much time this visit I spent walking Moscow by myself. It felt good, though by the end of the visit I was in somewhat frenzied state of mind: “Oh I won’t have time to go there and there!” Well, so what? Moscow is so many places, to visit them all would take an absurd amount of time, yet here I would remember some place and wish to see it, even if I didn’t have any particular purpose being there, or even if I don’t like much the place in question. So I walked – but my pictures say it better than I do.

The same thing with the food. Here I might have dreamed of something that is hard to find in Canada, so when I was in Russia I could get it and eat it, only – at that particular moment I didn’t want to eat that particular food. But at least I bought and eat my favourite cake “Ptichie moloko” (Birds’ milk) It was as good as it should be. My visit was fully successful. ;)

Going to the end of the story, I am again struggling not to miss anything of importance. I’ve already talked about books, have I? I bought a load of books that look at me now and demanding to read them, even if I have too many other books to read. And I don’t know when I will read all book I have. And I still want more. And I begin a sentence with “and” way to often. Please stop me.

Packing things up was hard, so I allow my mother to do it instead. Well, I never sure how much food I can safely bring with me to Canada – with the custom regulations that generally don’t allow it. I’ve never had any problems with chocolate, but other stuff – I prefer to cheerfully say that I don’t have anything. Letting my mother to pack left my conscience in much better state. Yes, I know, it’s stupid. I want to bring my cheese to Canada without declaring it. It’s silly. Call me apple-green mammoth. Anyway, I took some cheese, some bread, some tea, lots of chocolate and my favourite cranberry liquor.

And then I was in Canada. Eventually.

So, here is the thing. If I love Moscow that much, what am I doing here? Thank you, this is a good question, I am working on the answer. I’ve never planned to live outside Russia for a long time. I rarely plan anything, but that’s another problem. My husband got a job offer one day – to work in Vancouver – and we decided why not? Go, see Canada, see the world outside. May be I should have planned better, because you know, I feel that I’ve lost four years doing almost nothing. Well, I had lots of friends, I learned English, I learned lots of other probably useless things, read a huge amount of books, embroidered a cushion cover, learned to drive, saw lots of beautiful places and weird animal, got obsessed with BtVS…
I cannot discount all those things. But I still cannot figure out what do I want from my life. And here is the thing: I want to do something meaningful here. Out of stubbornness, I guess. Just going back to Russia won’t make things right. I have to fix my life here. Besides, I kind of love the idea of living wherever I wish to live at the moment. This was, by the way, partly a comment to

gobi_rex's latest post that I never got around to post as a comment. So, I am in Canada now. I think – temporarily. Although, as modern Russian wisdom has it: nothing is as permanent as temporary.

Wow, I’ve made it!