Post-GULAG

Finally released from a terrible tension I grabbed a hold of the road sign [literally in the middle of nowhere] to burst out in song, creating the first ever one-woman GULAG musical. Meghan’s reaction: ‘Are you serious?’

In the middle of the night before going to the only GULAG museum in the world, located in the Perm Region, I woke up with a brilliant idea – of course I would have to turn this experience into a couple of articles and sell it! I promised myself that I also had to write a post about it to my ‘other’ blog, and that everything I saw and felt and found out had to be registered in my mind, like small mental pictures, just like it would be in the mind of any serious journalist. Yet now, as I sit down to collect my thoughts and put down on paper what I experienced yesterday, what it was that I saw, and even more so – what I felt – and I find it almost impossible.

I was a slightly angry today because it was Valentine’s Day and my more handsome half didn’t seem to bother for most of the day. In the morning he was too tired and that’s why I got the very very bright idea indeed that I should tell him that to me ‘this day is not really a big deal’. After university, when his classes finished an hour after mine, I waited for him and then we walked home together but he didn’t do anything romantic at all. When I went for my jog I was pretty annoyed with him and the whole thing, especially since running through the city at night forced me to pass by countless happy couples holding hands and kissing. I came home, took a shower and then made myself a cup of coffee, seated myself in the kitchen [because we have wireless connection now – yes, we’re first Russian dormitory with wifi – I can use the internet anywhere I’d like to] and stared at an empty Word-file for about an hour. Trying to figure out how to tell what happened yesterday, while I waited for him. He came. At last. He came wearing his best suit, smelling wonderful, clean shaved, with a single red rose in his right hand. In the other he held a cake and a card. The card was full of sweet things about us and made me smile. Since it was late we decided to save the cake for tomorrow evening, after my first Swedish lesson of 2008, the start of my second semester as a ‘teacher’. Basically I and my more handsome half spent the evening kissing as if it was our second date…

I will write about GULAG another day. Its past midnight and I should get to bed as soon as possible because my bag is flying into Yekaterinburg tomorrow morning at five am, from Moscow via Prague. Don’t ask. The Russian bureaucratic system is like a bizarre acid trip, except it’s not lethal and not illegal, though it should be both. This country has made me a cynical person. My cynicism deserves a post of its own but tonight is not the night for this. This is the night for trying to gather up enough courage to actually open my bag in front of the airport people tomorrow, so that if anything’s missing I can hit somebody ‘responsible’ right way. This country has also made me an angry person.