I have no idea what I am doing!
Whenever I am asked why I chose to go to Russia, I answer that I have no idea. Like a lot of youngsters at my age, I wanted to go to USA, but not long before the final decision was made, some representatives from AFS informed us that they were going to send students to Russia for the first time ever, and maybe that would be interesting for me? I remember that I thought it was a pretty bad idea, while my parents thought it was a pretty good idea. Than a some point, our opinions changed. My parents came to think that it was a pretty bad idea, while I came to think it was a pretty good idea. Why this change came to happen, I do not know.
I remember leaving Trondheim on the train. I don't remember if I was nervous or not. I waved goodbye to my parents, who looked infinitely more nervous than me, and sat down to read a book.
What did we know about Russia? I remember having discussions in class at secondary school - which was some 5 years earlier - about the possibility of nuclear war. We were about 13-14 years old and had pretty much no idea what we were talking about. We were not really afraid, but we were still late children of the Cold War. And I remember that opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, I was at the cabin with my parents, glued to the TV screen. And not a single awake person in Norway did not know who Mikhail Gorbachev was.
And still we knew approximately nothing about what Russia really looked like, what people were like, how they lived, habits, clothes, family traditions. Not only did I - an 18 year old boy - know nothing, but I understand that also my parents knew absolutely nothing, which was probably the reason they in the end tried to convince me the idea was not so good. I am still wondering why they let me go at all - probably they understood that - despite the risks - this might become an unbelievable experience. Before we left, I was writing a little bit back and forth with my host family. They sent postcards from Krasnodar and wrote a little bit about themselves (I later found out that I had actually been writing with ANOTHER family) - that they were a "typical middle class family". I came from a typical middle class family in Norway. A typical Russian "middle class family" was not the same as what we defined as a Norwegian "middle class family."!
Sheremetevo airport in Moscow was our first meeting with the Soviet Union. Passport control. We were standing in endless lines in a tight underground corridor to have our passports checked, and they were checked by soldiers with guns, but absolutely no smiles. A girl in our little group had changed quite a lot (!!) since she took her passport photo, he looked in disbelief at her face, at the photo, back and forth, and then disappeared. He came back with an officer carrying a machine gun (sic), they discussed the passport back and forth for minutes, before they let her pass. It was an experience scary as hell.
Small jump ahead: My host family consisted of a grandma, parents and two children. They had a son that moved for a year to France not long after I came, and then there was my host sister. She was 5-6 (?) years younger than me, desperately sad that her older brother went away, and not overly happy that another boy came into the family. She became my very best friend. We had little or no common language the first days. My host brother spoke some French and a friend of his that visited the family a lot spoke quite well English, so he helped me a lot. Besides from that, it was a lot of pointing, drawing and waiving hands. I remember one of the first evenings - they served chicken, and as I was not completely sure how chicken was eaten in Russia, I grabbed the fork and knife by the plate (so, Russians would eat chicken with knife and fork... Weird, but OK) and awkwardly started eating chicken with knife and spoon - as did everyone else. It was not until the end of the year that I learned that they would never had eaten with knife and fork, but they were not sure what Norwegians did. And as I grabbed the utensils, so did they.. :D
I had the most fantastic host family, understanding, explaining, caring! They gave me all the best they could give, they never scolded me for they stupid things I must have done, they gave me all the love and support you could hope for from a family.
And so it started....
After I came back from Russia, I continued studying Russian language, literature and history at universities in Norway. For different reasons it never led to a profession connected to Russia, and I have only returned to Russia once since then. But, I doubt that I would have been living in Lithuania now if it had not been for that experience 23 years ago - I somehow feel that history has taken a turn and has caught up with me.
We lived for half a year in the Soviet Union, half a year in Russia, and we experienced through some pretty dramatic events the fall of the Soviet Union.
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