Eternity

When you are about to become a professional linguist you are becoming more “serious”. You start looking for a job and…Bingo!.. the job itself finds you. But then it turns out not to be the job of your dream. I was about to join the army of secretaries when my whole nature rebelled and this very second the phone rang and a voice on the other side started to apologize for rejecting my candidature in Moscow. However, they still wanted me…in Vyborg! The very name of the city induced a pleasant thrill in my stomach. Thus, Vyborg has become my Choice (in Russian the words “Vyborg” and “choice” sound almost the same). It should have been a challenging course for the young wrestler in the world of financial sharks where they intended to introduce me.
Meanwhile Vyborg’s nature, its legends and people concerned me much more than tobacco, chocolate and perfume which I had to sell. I plunged eagerly into the magical world of the water town where all roads led to the Vyborg Bay, part of the Gulf of Finland. One day wandering around an abandoned mansion, the former catholic monastery in the city center, I approached its window looking at the whole city through the nests on the roofs and there up in the sky above deep waters of the Vyborg Bay I felt that this window of the decayed monastery in which one could hardly recognize a religious building and which had seen both Finnish, Swedish and Russian princes and princesses would be My window to Europe. Then I could not even imagine the prophetic power of my comparison. As very soon I was asked to work on the ship with the name mocking at me - “Princess Anastasya” as my name is exactly the same (except for the title, of course). The Russian Titanic sailed between St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm, all the cities whose traces Vyborg reflected in its small green harbour, a shelter from Moscow fuss and rush for money. I was again back on the road only this time my road passed over the seas.