Greener pastures

Last week I took what one of my friends called a "Hanseatic tour"--to Helsinki, Finland and Tallinn, Estonia. The excuse was to take part in an amazing conference on post-socialist memory--and I was indulging in my own post-socialist memories, since the last time I went to Estonia it was Soviet, in the year 1989. I wanted to see what post-Soviet Tallinn was like and to hear in person what Russian-speakers, Ukrainian refugees, and local Estonian-speakers feel about the place in these difficult times. 

That part of the world feels like home to me--the quality of light, the air, the occasional mist or even sudden downpour. Being so close and yet so far from the cities of St. Petersburg and Vyborg, where I spent happy days and have so many friends and dear colleagues, was a sentimental journey for sure. 

Back in that same 1989 my father came to the Soviet Union, traveling on his first-ever passport, to visit me during my year studying in Moscow at the Pushkin Institute for Language and Culture. One couldn't simply travel to the USSR at that time; it was necessary to book into an official Intourist tour. In Moscow my father stayed at the Hotel Kosmos, an absolute behemoth of a hotel with extremely long corridors so that it felt like hours before you could reach the elevators in the middle of the building.

Today my cellphone tells me that it's only $37/night to stay at the Kosmos. I'm pretty sure my dad paid significantly more back in the day! But then, there are probably not very many foreign tourists there at the moment, so perhaps the hotel room price reflects supply and a current lack of demand.

By the time my father visited I had mastered the intricacies of the Soviet travel system. I requested a telegram from friends in Leningrad that documented the square meterage of their apartment ("sufficient to host a foreigner"), received the necessary travel papers to permit me to leave Moscow, and accompanied his tour when it moved on to the "other" capital. So though in October I had only been able to see my mom and aunt for a few days when they were in Moscow, in April I went along with dad to show him sights and introduce him to friends in Leningrad as well. He rode in an SV train compartment, I in a more plebeian one, but we met on the platform at the Moscow Station and were able to enjoy a few more days together before he returned to the States.

At the age of sixteen I was studying Russian language at high school, and my dad said I could go to the Soviet Union "over his dead body." He was properly afraid of the Cold War and couldn't imagine that I would be safe there. Six or eight years later, he was there himself, and he enjoyed trying out the few Russian phrases he had mastered on the hotel waitstaff. ("What good does it do for me to ask "что это?" if I won't be able to understand the answer?!" he complained, quite logically.) Now, almost 35 years on, I cannot go to Russia--and he has actually died.

When you lose your parents, it takes some getting used to. I suppose the same can be said for this new cold war. While tramping along the "Alexander Path" on the Finnish island of Vallisaari I can communicate with my Russian friends via WhatsApp or Instagram, exchanging pictures of mushrooms we are seeing in very similar forest conditions, but I cannot get on a train or plane to visit them. Imperial desire, the Russian effort to take over Ukraine, means that I had to watch my valid Russian visa expire in my passport without ever making use of it.

Several centuries ago Vallisaari was taken over by Russian imperial forces, and now it's a pristine nature preserve ... with traces of casements and fortifications throughout. That imperial trace is visible in much of Finland and Estonia, but local culture makes sure it is just a trace in the landscape, just one more layer of history.

My mother and aunt also went to Helsinki after their 1988 Soviet tour, just as I had stopped there on my way to Leningrad the year before when I was a student. They loved the city, as do I--and this year I was struck by the design and scale of the infrastructure, so focused on the humans who use it. I may be getting a little melancholy here--all three of those beloved family members, my aunt, my mother and my dad, have moved on to greener pastures. But I can feel them in the landscape, on the streets and in the museums of cities they visited or places I've told them about, just as I can sense those Russian friends who seem so out of reach.

And the advice my friends give! "Stay away from the mushrooms that look like they come out of a fairytale. Those are the poisonous ones ... and they'll take you with them to the other side." Very useful advice indeed.