I
traveled to Kazan, east of Moscow, on a mission, to find out anything I could
about my ancestor, Ruth Holden. A medical volunteer during World War I, Ruth
died of meningitis in Kazan in 1916 at the age of 27. A paleobotanist by
vocation, she was buried in a favorite forest next to a church. Her physician
father tried to reach Russia to help her, but was not in time.
My sister Amy learned of her existence after making the film,The
Other House, written by our grandmother, Rebecca Hooper Eastman. The leading
lady's name is Ruth Holden, played by my niece, Rebecca Perkins. We found a
living Ruth Holden in her 80's who told us of the existence of her great aunt,
whose death was so painful to the family, it was never discussed. We supposed
Grandmother Rebecca named the character for Ruth in tribute. Amy plans to make a
documentary about Ruth's brief life. She has asked me to research the Radcliffe
archives at the end of my travels.
But Kazan in 2012 is a boomtown of traffic jams and new construction,
partly due to an upcoming international student Olympics, and there are no
forests in the city now. Emails sent from Moscow to Kazan museums yielded
nothing.
I
traveled from Moscow to Kazan on a sleeper, and though no one spoke English, the
soldier traded his lower bunk for my upper one, and my seatmate, headed for
Siberia, shared her tea, bread, cheese and jam. The next morning, my
Couchsurfing hostess, Gulnara, met me with her son Mark at the train. She was
excited to meet an English speaker, and elegant in a wool dress for her job as
an accountant. Mark would be starting university soon and it was his job to show
me the Kremlin, the historic area, after we inched through a terrible morning
traffic jam to their flat downtown.
The apartment was beautiful, large and modern, on the sixth floor. I
got the boys' room. Seven-year-old Ilya would sleep in his parents' room, Mark
in the kitchen with Thomas, the nearly hairless Egyptian cat. Father Max, a
lawyer, was away at the dacha, the summer house in the country. Gulnara is a
Tartar, and Max is Jewish. The huge bathroom included a sauna. Kazan's Kremlin is on a hilltop overlooking the river and a tourist magnet. There is a brand new mosque and a statue of a man in chains. Mark and I wandered through a history museum, but there was nothing to help me find out more about Ruth. Excellent in English, Mark would answer "yes" almost before my questions were out of my mouth. He walked me all over town, finally to a strange pedestrian shopping street. The city has a metro but we never used it. We stopped for lunch in a popular three-floor tea room, bypassing MacDonald's.
Another day the father, Max, appeared, and after dropping Illya off
to his grandfather, we fought traffic to visit a monastery outside out of town,
where a wedding was happening, and stopped at a restaurant coming back. Max
returned to the dacha to supervise workers there, and Gulnara, Ilya and I walked
around the center. Gulnara showed me photos of her trips to Spain, and that
night the three delivered me to the station for my trip back to
Moscow.
*
No sleeper, but a coach seat overnight to the capital. Upon arrival,
I had to change my ticket from Moscow to Minsk (or another 200-dollar visa was
necessary) for a ticket to my next destination, Tallinn, Estonia. Just dragging
my luggage to the right station was an ordeal. But I still had museums in Moscow
to visit!
Despite detailed instructions, I needed help finding my next home
from the metro. But Pejaoulsta, gde...otchen spaseba usually works. On the first
floor of a block of flats was my new couch with Valentina, who spent her time at
a hospital with a friend who had an untreated stroke in another country. But her
daughter Lisa was there with Zoe and Gregory, who did very well without diapers
though less than a year old. American dad Danny had to run off to his job on a
film crew. I sounded out Russian words to Zoe from her toddler books. She is a
beginning speaker in English, Russian and her own language. Lisa°s brother Alex
and his girlfriend would show up later at night, as did Valentina, who gave up
her bedroom and insisted on sleeping on the couch in the kitchen. At night the
ceiling glowed with stars from the time it was Lisas bedroom. Danny shared his
English books and I devoured Akira Kurosawa°s account of his childhood and
youth.
Another happy family home from which to venture out to metros and
museums. The state history museum on Red Square was one day, the old
Tretyakovsky fine arts museum another. Finally, a trip to Gorky Park, the
sculpture park for my appetite for Soviet era artifacts, and the new
Tretyakovsky museum with large paintings of a benevolent Stalin. A couple more
Couchsurfers squeezed in for the last night from Germany, then Zoe, Gregory and
Lisa saw me off to a tram to the station on the last day of my visa.
My train left at 6 pm but I did not reach Estonia until 4 am the next
day, and that spelled trouble, the conductress let me know. My seatmate left
early so I tried to sleep on the two seats and await my doom. Sure enough, the
train stopped, the lights went on, the officials came and I was detrained to a
nearby building and given a bench to wait for the banks to open (I had dispensed
with my rubles). An Azerbaijani's 50 ruble taxi ride ended up costing 300, but
after paying twenty dollars for the extra day - my August visa ended the 30th,
inexplicably - I was delivered to the Estonian border for another agonizing
wait, then a 2 euro taxi to the bus station and a ticket to Tallinn, the
capital. A new seatmate, an Estonia who lives in Siberia but prefers to speak
French to English, and thanks to the kindness of strangers, my new couch was
alerted I would be much later than expected. Farewell to Russia, hello Eastern
Europe!
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