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Russian lifetimes? (merged)

Just had another flashback as I was looking around the Chelyabinsk area with Google Earth; I'm driving along a narrow, rutted road, past some rural settling. The houses are low and squat, with flat corrugated iron roofs and painted bright blue, green and yellow. A boy and a girl, both about six years old, are walking by the side of the road, on the short, wiry grass. They're wearing identical brown coats, but the boy is wearing trousers and a black cloth cap, and the girl a dark-coloured skirt and a headscarf with brightly-coloured flowers on it. They're accompanied by a little mongrel dog who is running back and forth excitedly. He has a wiry coat that's white with spots in many different colours, and a short, stubby tail.


As they see me approaching, the girl squats down and puts her arms round the dog's neck, talking to him. I suppose she's telling him to be careful and stay with her, since her expression and everything suggests that. The boy stands by in awe and admires my truck, so I decide to put on a little show for him; I honk my horn and rev up the engine a litte, then I roll down my window and wave at them. The boy seems awed; apparently they don't often see trucks there, or, like most little boys, he just likes big vehicles!
 
Sorry, it's taken me a bit longer to post the new memory I promised - real life got in the way! The flashback occurred during my first Russian lesson I had that morning; it gave me that strange feeling of being two persons at the same time again, both my present self having a private lesson, and six-year-old Maxim at school...


It was my first day, or one of my first days, at school, and since books were scarce several children had to share one primer. Our teacher, a thin young man with a very serious face, split us up into little groups of two or three, each with a primer in the middle, and started explaining the letters to us. He wrote them on the blackboard, explained what sounds they stood for, and then made us repeat them, at first in chorus, and then he picked out single pupils and asked them to repeat.


The teacher told me to sit next to a pale, black-haired boy who was quite tall for his age but rather skinny, even by post-war Chelyabinsk standards; at the time I didn't know that the boy was going to become my life-long friend Yuroshka. When we talked later, either during the break or after school, I discovered that he was one year older than me but hadn't been able to start school the previous year, probably because he had been quite seriously ill. He told me he had also lost his father in the war, and that he lived in another part of the city but went to school here; maybe there was no school in his district, or no teacher. Whatever the reason, we were glad about it in the end, because we would never have met if things had been different!


There was a happy, smiling cow in the primer my Russian teacher used for my first lesson, to explain the sounds and letters, and when I saw that picture I almost laughed out loud; I think there was a cow in the primer I used as Maxim as well, and with the logic of a six-year-old I insisted that she looked like Natasha, so that's what was the inspiration for the nickname I gave to her...
 
Well, since you wanted the next installment, here it is! It's a memory of the day I died in that life, and with the usual perfect timing I had it while driving. It was a very vivid memory, but I would have preferred it at another occasion, as it really gave me a few interesting minutes of trying not to be sick into my lap :)


One day, I was about 30, but certainly no older than 35, I was told to take a lighter, smaller truck and drive stuff from one end of the factory premises to the other. I wasn't pleased because I hated that other truck - it may have been a GAZ, but I don't remember the type, only that it was light blue as well. It was unstable, too light for my taste and a pain to drive, but I know there was no way of getting out of it, so I heaved an inward sigh and climbed into the cab.


I think it was in the late morning that I had an accident; I don't recall what happened, I only know that it happened near the little office overlooking the freight ramp, the office of the man with whom I used to exchange those overly cute nicknames. (I think his name was Wassily, and he was about 45, big and muscular with a "walrus" moustache).


The next thing I know is being pulled to my feet by Wassily while he anxiously asks me something. I hear his words but am too dazed and they don't quite reach me, so I keep repeating something that could be either "I'm alright" or "I'm sorry", or something that doesn't make any sense at all. This time, I was almost able to hear the Russian, it began with "ya sd..." but I can't "hear" the rest of the word.


I lean on Wassily's shoulder, noticing in a moment of extreme clarity that he's wearing a shirt similar to mine, checkered flannel in green and bluish grey. There are a few others around, but I don't really notice them.


When my head gets a bit clearer, I insist that I'm fine and let go of Wassily. But after a few steps I realise that's not the best idea I've ever had, though I still stubbornly try to ignore the new onset of dizziness. Wassily, however, just takes me by the arm and says, "Maxim, you'd better sit down for a while in my office, you're as white as a sheet, boy". I don't want that, I want to go on working and forget about what happened (whatever that was), but he pulls on my arm and I think he'll leave me alone if I give in.


He helps me up the freight ramp and into his office where he sits me down in the chair at his desk, and then he or one of the others that have followed us gives me a mug of tea. I notice that the left side of my head is throbbing, right behind the ear, so I feel it and am quite surprised that my fingers are bloody. Someone gives me a tea towel, white with orange and brown patterns on it, and I scrunch it up and press it on the wound while using the other hand to drink some tea. The tea is good, but halfway through the mug I suddenly feel sick and only have time to dash out, drop on my hands and knees as soon as I'm out of the door before I start vomiting violently. (That was the fun part in the present-life situation, I really had to fight nausea then as well, and briefly considered pulling over, but fortunately it passed.)


When it's over, I sit up, feeling rather sheepish, and wipe my mouth. Wassily squats down next to me and says, very seriously, "I'll drive you home, Maxim. You can't work like that." His tone makes it clear that he'll have no arguments, so I let him help me up, and when someone hands me the tea towel, I hold it to my head again.


There's another blackout, I don't remember much about the drive home except from the fact that Wassily stops once because I'm getting sick again.


I have a glimpse of him asking me in which pocket I have my keys as we're in front of the door of our apartment, and then I somehow end up sitting at the kitchen table while Natasha bandages my head, carefully pulling the hair out of the way. I'm starting to feel a bit better again, I can speak and think more coherently, and when Natasha offers me some cabbage soup - my favourite kind, with potatoes and carrots as well as some leek and soup bones in it - I gladly accept it and I think I even eat some of it.


I "blank out" again, and then my head really begins to pound. Natasha has left the room, but Wassily is still there and somehow Vadim has arrived. (I guess Natasha is distracting Belanka so she doesn't see me like that and is worried.) I tell them I would like to go to bed and promise to see a doctor if it doesn't get better in the morning, and so they accompany me to my room and Vadim helps me to sit down and undress. I lie down carefully, first on my back, but then I turn over on my left side, as that's the side I usually lie on. I manage to arrange the pillow so that it doesn't touch my wound, and the dizziness goes away at last. Wassily pats my shoulder and tells me to rest and recover, then Vadim says something as well. I notice I'm drifting off to sleep, so I mutter something like "See you in the morning". That's the last thing I remember, though; I died in my sleep, very peacefully and without ever noticing it. I'm truly sorry for whoever came to check on me and found me dead, I really feel bad for giving them such a nasty shock!
 
Two more small flashbacks, just come in ;) I downloaded some Soviet-era songs from a website last night and listened to them this morning. Some were familiar, some weren't, and one triggered the next little flashback. It's called "The Star Lullabye", and from the mess Babelfish made of the lyrics, it's about a mother telling her son that he was named Yuri after the first cosmonaut Gagarin, and that he might be another Yuri the cosmonaut one day. When I listened to that song, I remembered how we used to tease Yuroshka, saying that he was a big loser because he was still "sitting around on his big butt on earth" despite being another Yuri. Poor chap, I wonder why he still came to Chelyabinsk on leave and visited his friends, he must have loved the pain! :) But he was quite good at poking fun at us as well, so the teasing wasn't just one-sided!


There was a song called "Drivers' Song", that also was very familiar; I have the feeling that it was parodied by Vadim as well. I wish I could remember Vadim's parodies because they were really funny and full of clever puns!


The other memory was about waking up one morning on the road, after having spent the night on the bed of my truck. It was very hot and stuffy when I went to sleep, and as I lift the corner of the tarp to peer out I notice that it has rained a lot during the night, so the rain and thunder I thought I heard was real and not part of a dream. I crawl out from under my blankets, stretch and yawn, then put on my trousers and shirt. The ground has turned into deep puddles and yellowish mud, no problem for the Blue Whale, but it would mess up my shoes if I put them on. I decide to forego socks and shoes and roll my trouser legs up as far as possible (being grateful that they come in two sizes, "too big" and "too small" but never really fit, for the first time) and jump down from the bed. The mud splashes up as I land, and that reminds me of some youthful misdeed of Yuroshka's and mine when we were eleven or twelve. I don't remember what it was now, only that we both got a good talking-to and a ringing slap or two for what we'd done, and we weren't allowed to play football for a week. But we both agreed that we had deserved the punishment and the fun we'd had doing whatever we had done had well been worth it! Maybe we ended up in the mud in some way or other as well, and that's why I had to think of it that day...
 
Had another memory I found rather interesting today, but since I'm very tired, I hope you forgive me for just copying it from my blog, where I typed it up!

Something funny happened today - I was going to the sound files of Soviet-era songs I had downloaded late at night some days ago; I had just blindly clicked on one title without even reading it properly. I had no time to listen to all the songs, so I copied them onto a CD to listen to them in the car - I spend a lot of time in the car each day, so that's the best place for things like that. Anyway, when I reached the song that triggered this memory, the one called "Devushku chaykoy zovut", it suddenly came to me - the title means something like "The Girl is Called 'Seagull'", and it's about the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova! I had read the article about her earlier, but I hadn't heard the song, so it took me a while to connect the dots. I'm quite pleased actually, because it helps place the memory very exactly, some time after 16 June, 1963. Now that is really nice, a very rare blessing!
When I realised who the song was about and what the title meant, I had a memory of Vadim and me sitting at the kitchen table, the window wide open, and the warm air coming in. (I only looked up the date of Tereshkova's flight a few minutes ago, I skimmed through the article when I first read it and I don't think I noticed the date.) We've both come back from work, and since we aren't ready to go to bed yet, we talk a little, and smoke. We enjoy those "man-to-man" talks very much; Vadim is the big brother I never had, or perhaps the father figure I never knew, even if he, too, only is about eight years older than me, like Natasha, and we talk about all sorts of things, sometimes just light-hearted everyday stuff, sometimes about deeper, philosophical things, depending on our mood and the events of the day. Sometimes we talk until well into the small hours, but losing some sleep doesn't matter to us.


We're sitting at the table, having pushed aside the checkered tablecloth because Natasha will kill us if we burn holes into it with the hot ashes from our cigarettes. We can't be bothered to go looking for the heavy cut-glass ashtray that is in one of the hanging cupboards over the sink and stove, we're using an empty food tin from supper instead. We're wearing short-sleeved checkered cotton shirts (I think that was the usual pattern for everyday wear, only Sunday shirts would be solid-coloured), and dark blue or black drill or moleskin trousers. I think we're both barefoot, as it's very warm, too warm for shoes or slippers.


There may be a newspaper on the table that contains an article about "Chaika" Tereshkova, or maybe we heard it on the radio at Doshka's; I'm not sure, but it wasn't that long ago. We talk about "Chaika", and I say something like "Just imagine, Vadim, such a wee girl up there in space, and for such a long time..." Vadim pulls on his cigarette, exhales slowly and puts his hand on mine. "Never underestimate women, Maximka," he says, "they're much tougher and stronger than we men care to admit." He tells me about some women he saw during the war, about what they accomplished and endured, then he gets up, pads over to the sink and takes something from one of the hanging cupboards - a glass, perhaps?


He returns to the table and sits down again, with his back to the window, and goes on talking. "Or take your sister," he says. "Your mother died when she was sixteen, and she brought you up all alone. I don't think she would have done as well if she had been a boy. We men have big muscles and big mouths, but if we're honest, we have very faint hearts." I chuckle and have to admit he's right. I tell him I think Natasha would have made a great cosmonaut, she certainly has enough stamina and backbone! I joke that her call sign probably would have had to be "Cow" and not "Seagull" then, and I half expect the door to open and Natasha to pounce on me exclaiming "I heard that!!!!" but everything remains quiet.


I feel we may have gone outside later on to continue our talk in the open, but I'm not sure, maybe I'm mixing that up with another occasion...
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I've just had another memory! I was hanging the washing and, since I needed both hands to deal with a sheet, I stuck the clothespin into my mouth. Suddenly I had a flashback of myself as Maxim standing on a ladder somewhere outside - I can't say where it was, only that the ladder seemed to be leaning against the outside wall of a house and I was fixing something.


It's rather warm, I'm wearing a short-sleeved shirt in the standard checkered pattern, and I've got a hand-rolled cigarette in the left corner of my mouth. (I suppose that was what triggered the memory, holding the clothespin in the same place.) I'm talking to a person standing at the foot of the ladder and holding a cardboard box of nails, handing me one whenever I ask for one or just hold out my hand. The person holding the box is male; maybe it's Doshka, and I'm helping him out because he doesn't seem to be the practical type. I wish I could see what I'm doing more clearly, though!


This morning, I also had a very faint impression of Natasha and me being dragged to a Komsomol meeting; someone kept nagging us about how great it was and that we should go, too, so we went because that person, whoever they were, just wouldn't shut up. But we both found it very boring, I seem to remember lots of bombastic speeches and little else. Sitting there trying to look attentive and interested instead of yawning our heads off was rather challenging, and Natasha and I decided that the advancement of Communism would have to take place without us. ;)


It seems to have been shortly before Natasha married Vadim, she must have been about twenty, and I, twelve...
 
Another "Maxim moment" as of this morning :)


I drove to the little town where my Russian teacher lives, about forty kilometres from mine. I arrived there a bit early, and so I went to the local gas station, as my car needed to be fuelled anyway. Pulling into that gas station was like taking a trip back in time; it would have been hyper-modern in Maxim's time, but you could clearly see that it was at least twenty-five years old. The pumps were old, too, though freshly painted and in good shape, and when I started fuelling they didn't give off a steady hum like the modern ones, but produced all kinds of clicking, whirring noises that seemed very, very familiar and even kind of fascinated me, as weird as that may sound. For the fraction of a moment, I was a bit puzzled because there was no huge blue ZIL but a little red Renault standing by the pump :)


Driving back,I had a brief flash of turning left into a big, two- or three-lane concrete or asphalt road as Maxim, one that must have been of strategical importance because it was so well-made. To get on it, you had to drive over a hump as the asphalt road lay a bit higher than the unmade one I'd been on, but that was no problem for the Blue Whale; I gently coaxed it over that hump and onto the road, maybe because the goods I was transporting were rather fragile and couldn't stand many bumps and shocks.


I could see other trucks approaching in that memory, all headed towards a large industrial complex. More roads converge there, and I catch myself thinking they look like veins leading to a heart, then I laugh at myself and think that I sound like Doshka, my poetically-inclined friend, who is very creative when it comes to metaphors and comparisons. Another truck driver slows down as he sees me approaching, but I wave him through and get fully onto the road after he's gone past. He honks and waves, and I wave back with my left, the hand I used for waving him through, as I was shaking the ashes off my cigarette anyway.


I also thought about the memory of standing on the ladder, and I think Michal's suggestion was right and it was at work. I have the strong feeling that the man handing me the nails was Wassily, and that he didn't get on the ladder himself as he had problems with his knee, either from a war wound or an injury contracted in civilian life, I don't know. Perhaps I was nailing a new sign over the door of his office; the sign probably said "Acceptance of Goods", as this was one of his functions. Incoming drivers had to give their papers to him, and he checked what they were carrying and told them where to take it, or had it unloaded on the spot. The drivers belonging to the factory went to his to get their travel routes and papers, and when there was little to do, they often gathered in his office for a chat.


The other office, the one with the Heroic Workers mosaic in the corridor, was somewhere in the main building, and it was a more administrative one, or perhaps the payroll office...
 
Unfortunately I have no clues as to Maxim's last name, but I feel his "middle name" may have been Nikolayevich. I have a very vague recollection of Natasha yelling "Maxim Nikolayevich ????, did you ???", but surely she must have meant some other Maxim. I always was a good boy :D


Just going from the gut feeling I have, Maxim's last name may have had two syllables, stress on the first and ending either with -in or -y. But that's just a very rough guess!


As for the company he worked for, Michal suggested Chelyabinsk Electrode Factory, and that doesn't sound too unlikely. I found an industrial complex near where I think he lived, at the right distance and location, but haven't been able to find out what it's called. Believe it or not, there are no maps of Chelyabinsk on the Internet, at least none that I could access! :rolleyes:


I remembered today that Vadim and Doshka had made a deal - Doshka let us use the car whenever we needed it, and Vadim did all the repairs it needed. It was a good arrangement, since Doshka wasn't really a practical person while Vadim was a very skilled mechanic; the little old white Moskvitch definitely needed its "personal physician"! I had a memory of Vadim working on the car one sunny day in summer, changing the oil perhaps, while Doshka kept him company and watched what he was doing. It's funny, Doshka probably was a lecturer at the technical university, and no doubt a very clever fellow, but the practical side of things just wasn't his world ;)


The other thing I remembered was that Belanka sometimes used to leave little gifts in my room when I was away for a longer time and came home late, when she was already asleep. It could be some flowers in a small coloured glass vase on the windowsill in summer, or, when there were no flowers, a picture she had drawn, or a small letter on my pillow. I found it very sweet of her and dutifully kept them all, probably in the drawer of my nighttable.


One of the pictures she drew was the four of us at a picnic, and one or two of the others were cosmonauts, of course. Everyone was obsessed with them at the time!


Two more little snippets:


In the first, I'm standing in the office of some chap at my destination for the freight I was transporting while he goes through my papers, looking puzzled and telling me he doesn't know of any freights expected for today. His office looks really pompous, with a large wooden desk, a fancy desktop lamp and a black telephone on the desk. There's a grey iron file cabinet to the left and something to the right I can't see clearly, perhaps another filing cabinet. There's a photo or portrait hanging over his desk - one of Lenin, perhaps?


The fellow goes through my papers again and again, he tells me he knows of no consignment. I'm not amused, especially because I really need a bathroom break! He tells me he's got to phone someone, probably the main office, and I sigh inwardly, resigning to my fate and wondering if he'd mind terribly if I peed into his waste paper basket ;)


The other flashback was of sitting at the kitchen table, on Natasha's lap. It must be shortly after our mother has died, as I'm about eight years old. Natasha has just come home from her shift in the factory, and she's still wearing her faded blue work coat and the headscarf that all female factory workers wear to keep their hair from getting snagged in the machinery. She looks very tired, but she has promised to help me with something, most likely my homework, and she's keeping her promise. She looks at what I've produced, and says "No, no, Maximka, not like that", then guides my hand to show me how it's done properly, whatever it is.


I snuggle against her and ask: "Natasha, can we ??? at the weekend?" (I don't remember what it was that I wanted to do, but perhaps it was taking a walk in the park or visiting Yuroshka) and she tells me she doesn't know but she'll try. I feel comfortable and safe in her presence, and I'm glad I have her as my sister. If only that Vadim fellow didn't take up so much of her time! ;)
 
By the way, I had another memory this morning as I drove to my teacher's - it was very cold, and my car, though it has a relatively new battery, had to cough and wheeze a bit before it started ;) Scratching the ice off the windshield while wearing mittens, I suddenly had the feeling I was doing the same to a little white Moskvitch (which would have been the same size as my little Renault), and again I felt the "phantom cigarette" in my mouth. That was really odd!


Anyway, it was very cold inside the car, so I decided to keep the mittens on until the heating had heated up, and that was what triggered the other memory. It was one of getting ready for work one cold winter's morning; I was wearing a thick parka, cap with the ear flaps down, mittens, and a scarf wrapped around the lower half of my face. I also wore knee-high boots and maybe even warm winter trousers; they were necessary because the ZILs, like all other non-luxury vehicles, had no heating and it could get really nasty until you'd warmed it up slightly with your body's heat!


Vadim started work at the same time as I that day, so we went together. I think the place where he worked was a little farther away, but we could walk part of the way together. Vadim was dressed quite warmly as well, but not as warmly as I since the place where he worked was usually well-heated.


We were in the corridor, getting ready to leave, when Belanka came into the small corridor where we were standing, still in her nightie and with tousled hair, as she had only just got up. She looked at me and declared "Mummy, Uncle Maxim looks like a cosmonaut!", and I laughed and saluted her in a mock-military style. Natasha took off her jumper and put it round Belanka's shoulders, telling her that it was far too cold to be "running round the flat in a nightie", then she handed us those milk-can-type containers and told us to hurry up so she could get Belanka ready for school and go to work herself.


Vadim quoted a verse from one of the many songs about cosmonauts that were popular back then, perhaps one from the one about the technical progress from horse-drawn coaches to railways to rockets that I found on the Web a while ago, the one with the chorus that goes something like "Come on, cosmonaut...and don't forget a song on the way". (I cheated for that one and used a dictionary.)


Belanka must have been about seven in that memory; she was born around 1954, so that must have been shortly after Yuri Gagarin's famous flight, and shortly after I had returned from whatever "voluntary" civilian service I had done instead of serving my time in the army. I'm not too clear about what I did, but it's likely that I was a radio operator somewhere, a great job for a gnome like me ;)


What was really funny was the text my teacher did with me today; it started with "Maxim is in the park. Hello, Vadim", and I really had to bite my tongue so I wouldn't laugh out loud; explaining what was so funny would have been quite a challenge!
 
Another little update - sorry, this thread is really becoming huge! I had one flashback as I was driving home last night, but it clearly wasn't triggered by the weather, as the memory was in late spring or early summer. The other was triggered by something I saw on Ebay, but more of that later.In the first one, we're hanging out in Gagarin Park, Vadim, Doshka, Wassily and I. Doshka and Wassily are sitting on a bench and playing chess, while Vadim and I fool around. The bench is painted green, of course, and the paint is flaking off in places. It must be somewhere near the lake, since I think I can see the bandstand in the distance. Wassily, Vadim and I are wearing black or dark blue knitted jumpers over our shirts, and Doshka is wearing what looks like a brown corduroy jacket. It's pretty warm in the sun, so we soon take off our jumpers and jackets, though, ready to put them on if we get cold again. Wassily and Doshka are sitting on the bench, facing each other, and concentrating on their game. They both loved chess, something Vadim and I couldn't understand but didn't mind. Wassily is thinking about his next move, and I tease him, saying "Come on, old man, you'll lose anyway, why waste your energy on thinking?" Wassily looks up and meets Doshka's eye, asking him if he has a newspaper handy. When Doshka asks what he needs it for, Wassily replies, dead serious: "There's an annoying little fly pestering me, and I want to swat it!" I pretend to have no idea what he's talking about and make some general remark about the weather, just as if I hadn't heard. We loved teasing Doshka and Wassily for being such avid chess players, and they returned the favour by saying that it was a game for grown-ups and not for silly little boys like us :) The other memory came when I was looking at the other goods the Ebay seller from whom I got the ZIL-157 manual was offering; one was a book about how to build transistor radios with do-it-yourself circuit layouts. When I saw that book I remembered that this was something Doshka was good at, if he had the parts he could build a transistor radio from scratch. I think he built the radio he had himself, or he repaired an old, broken one by replacing part of its components. Getting at those spare parts can't have been easy, but perhaps he knew the right people, or he found another radio, where something else was broken, and used the parts from it that were still good...I've attached pictures of the book cover and one of the pages; it does look a bit like the one Doshka had - I'm sure I saw it while visiting him one time!

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It's been a while, but I've just had another flash - a very tiny, insignificant one, but I thought I'd share it ;)


It was a memory of meeting Yuroshka at the station when he came home on leave after he'd been promoted - I don't remember what rank it was, but I feel it was something like a lieutenant, not really high up but more "in the middle".


We went to the station to meet him, Vadim, Lyoshka, another young man of our age (the name "Vanya" comes to mind, but I'm not sure if it was his name), and myself.


We waited at the station, smoking and talking, but when we saw the train Yuroshka was on pulling into the station, we all straightened up and put on very serious faces, trying to look as much as a guard of honour as possible. (We were just pulling his leg, of course - like always!) We hoped he'd be on the train, since he had only told his mother in a letter which train he was planning to take, and she had told us. I think she had asked us to meet Yuroshka at the station, since she had some sort of health problem, perhaps rheumatism or arthritis, that made going to the station and standing there waiting very difficult for her.


The train was relatively punctual, much to our surprise, and as it slowed down we lined up on the platform as we had decided, and put on serious faces - not very easy when the corners of your mouth are twitching and trying to form a smile or laugh! We were relieved to see Yuroshka really was on that train; he looked rather strange in his brand-new uniform and coat, carrying a dark leather suitcase in one hand. When he spied us, he started walking toward us, and when he was close enough to hear Vadim gave a little sign with his hand and we called out a greeting in unison; it may have been a silly one, or we just burst into laughter because we'd tried to be serious for so long, I don't know. There was a lot of hugging, cheek-kissing and patting each other's backs, and when it was my turn to hug Yuroshka, I noticed that he smelled of what must have been a kind of perfumed soap. Of course I couldn't resist asking him if he'd fallen into a flowerbed somewhere on the way :laugh:


Vadim sized Yuroshka up, declared that he looked splendid in his new uniform, and then stated: "If I were a girl, I'd propose to you." Yuroshka replied: "But you are a girl", and Vadim put on a puzzled face and declared he must have done something wrong at the registrar's office some years ago if that was the case, then he shrugged and added "Perhaps nobody will notice..." ;)


We walked away from the station chatting, exchanging news, asking questions and talking excitedly, then squeezed into Lyoshka's old Moskvitch and he drove to the place where Yuroshka's mother lived, somewhere near the city centre, I think. We were very glad to see our friend again, and his mother thanked us a thousand times for meeting him and bringing him home. I think she urged us to stay for lunch, or at least a few snacks :)
 
Soviet Memories?


Does this stir anyone?


The Soviet national anthem is the most powerful and inspiring in the world, in my opinion. Does anyone remember it?


Lonewolf
 
This doesn't answer your question directly, but I thought that if you haven't read Reynardine's Soviet memories yet, you might be interested. :) Thay can be found here and here. I believe there is also a link to her blog about these memories there.


Karoliina
 
lonewolf said:
Does this stir anyone?
The Soviet national anthem is the most powerful and inspiring in the world, in my opinion. Does anyone remember it?
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Gives me the creeps. This life and the immediate past one. While I have nothing against Russia, Russian people or Russian culture, Soviet power I equate with Nazi power.


Michal
 
krasny


I love it. Then again, I love anything Russian. I got some soviet medals for my birthday, and some ceremonial pins too. Red is my favorite of all colors. I took Russian my freshman year of college, and I loved how red and beautiful are basically the same word in Russian. However, the anthem doesn't stir me too much- only a little.
 
Just discovered my russian PL


The last two dreams had revealed my russian past life!


This past week I went to bed asking myself any cue about where was my PL, this one I've having images. The first dream I was talking to my actual husband in russian (I spoke four languages now but not russian at all!). And my husband was looking at me without undestanding.


The second one, I looked to my watch and clearly I said " here is half past six in the afternoon but I still have the time of that place". And my watch had 12 pm. That means the place I was asking for, is six and a half hours behind me.


I made a research and it seems like a Russia was the place! close to the Urals Monts and Mocow. I'm still looking about many simbols I saw in my previous regression, like religious crosses, churches, and a ring that I saw in my hand.


What a impressive discover!!!!!!!!!!


Lizzi
 
It's interesting how you can get information in dreams in so many different ways. Good luck, Lizzi. :thumbsup:


Karoliina
 
In the 17th Century I was Tsar Alexis. In this lifetime I was never overly interested in Russia, because I was so repulsed by the Communist Government, and feared the possibility of a nuclear armageddon. Still I felt an attraction for it's historical architecture and folk music. As I studied history, I have always noticed that I favored the monarchs, and felt saddened when they were killed by revolutionaries, such as during the French Revolution and of course When Tsar NicholasII and his family were murdered.
 
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