Good night, sunshine!

Since the age of eighteen, I have changed several housing situations. In Bulgaria, I lived with my family in a big apartment in Varna and often visited my grandparents in the countryside. In the U.S., I have lived in a dormitory in Massachusetts, shared a house with strangers in New York and had the fortune to stay in the fine apartment of a wonderful alumna. I have never, however, experienced such a complex living situation as the one I am enjoying now in St. Petersburg.

The study abroad program arranges it for all its students to live with host families during their stays in Russia. Home stay, you would think, is as old as the world and shouldn’t have surprised me at all. Well, probably that holds true for home stays in Paris, London or Vienna, but is definitely a new and all-engrossing experience here, in Russia.



My host mother, or so-called hazyaika, is in her 50s. She loves cooking, solving crossroads while sipping her favorite black tea and watching musical TV shows. She also loves putting on make-up, reading educational books and feeding the ducks with her 3-year-old grandson, Ilyosha. In short, she combines so many different nuances of Russian culture that simply knowing her is enough to become fully acquainted with Russia.

Nina Anatolievna prepares my breakfast and dinner, does my laundry, gives me advice about life and blesses me before I set off on a trip. She shows me the gifts she bought for Ilyosha, offers me a warmer scarf or rainproof shoes and tells me stories from her youth. She is a good cook, half-insomniac, very well educated and my personal bridge to smoothly cross from one culture to another or, better yet, from the outside world to my understanding of it.

I will be leaving Russia in a month and know exactly what I will miss most about it. I will miss going to the kitchen, telling my hazyaika, “Good Night,” and her responding softly, “Спокойной ночи, солнышко!”

Alice in the Wonderland needs space

After having lived in St. Petersburg for three months, I thought it just natural to turn around in a city and see tall apartment buildings and streets crawling with seemingly busy passers by. Certainly, I thought it natural to hear the sad engine roaring of past-their-time vehicles. My new comfort zone in Russia, however, had to be disturbed by the efficient organization I found in Helsinki.

I arrived in Helsinki last Tuesday at around 1 p.m. and it was already getting dark outside. It seemed to me that this gloomy weather and lazy drizzling never left my week vacation. Already sitting in the orange Finnish metro with my friend Nikolay, I was slowly getting disillusioned by the empty spaces and rural areas I saw through the window.


“I read in the newspaper that a week ago someone threatened the metro passengers with a bow and arrows,” Nikolay warned me. I thought about the guy who pulled out a gun from his plastic bag in the Russian metro in September.
“Yeah, that sounds crazy,” I said and kept staring at the hypnotizing orange of the metro doors and seats.

On the next morning I was ready for a more eventful day. I took the same orange metro line and decided to get off at a random stop nearby the city center. I had never felt more like Alice in the Wonderland before. I had entered some mini land where the streets were mini, and the buses were mini, and the buildings were mini, and the dogs were mini. This is when I decided I wouldn’t go to a restaurant in Helsinki to avoid being served a mini portion. Suddenly, I, who have always yearned to live in the open and see the sky, was getting suffocated by all this space. Against my will, this suffocating feeling prevented me from fully enjoying Helsinki’s modern trade centers, park monuments or cobblestone pavements. I couldn’t wait to return to St. Petersburg.

Today, the Petersburg metro was again packed with seemingly hurried strangers, wet from the snow outside. Nn the street I heard again this familiar and sad engine roar from a dark blue Skoda driving by.

Sob at the Movies

Movie theaters give me a great deal of privacy. Having been seated among friends only 10 minutes into the new Russian movie, “The Admiral,” I realized I could sob away during the dramatic scenes. The comfortable embrace of the darkness and the loudness of the special effects worked together to hide all visible and audible traces of tears.

The friend on my right in seat 25 told us that “The Admiral” was like the Russian “Titanic.” His words took me back in time to the premiere of “Titanic” in Varna. I distinctly remembered my strong concentration and persistent efforts not to cry. Drowning passengers, sinking hopes and the eternity of true love—none of that moved me. Clenching my jaws tightly and biting my lips, I looked at my mom sitting next to me. She was already wiping her tears and verbally attacking the villain, wishing for nothing else but Leonardo to kill him. My task had become harder but more challenging. How proud I would be if I could say that my mom wept at “Titanic” but I didn’t shed a tear! So, I held the tears in my eyelashes and reached for some popcorn to distract me.

I continued proving to myself the emotional stability that I lacked during various dramas, thrillers and even happy-ending romantic comedies. My movie partner would cry and I would just laugh, suppressing the flow of tears and the hurricane of emotions in my stomach.

It wasn’t too long ago when I realized I couldn’t help it anymore. When the saddest moment in the movie came and the music grew more dramatic and tenser with every second, the same well-known feeling started suffocating me and I gave in. Still hoping I could control it, I looked at my crying friend sitting on the beige leather sofa in our living room. Our eyes met, overflowing with tears, and we smiled. We smiled at our stupidity, our excessive sensitivity and at the realization that we had just shared and lived this moment to the fullest.