8 April 2009

I may have found my host family…
On Monday, I spoke with a woman named Olga who contacted the Hillel after reading my letter. I was given her phone number, but when I called her she said she misunderstood, and thought I was just looking for a place to stay. She said she isn’t home much, and I would more or less be living by myself. She said she did have a friend/neighbor, however, who took in foreign students from time to time and might have room. She gave me her friend (Vera)’s number, and said she would call her as well. Well, I spoke to Vera, and we arranged to meet this afternoon for tea.
This afternoon I spoke to Nikita, and he suggested I bring chocolates with me, and even suggested a brand. I asked the woman behind the candy counter, and she agreed that it was a good choice. The apartment seemed to be in a great area- right in the center of the city, a ten minute walk from the metro, and even near the train station. When I walked there however, the neighborhood was more than a little scary. There were a LOT of swastikas spray-painted on the buildings on her street. At one point I saw someone wrote in huge letters “1945 YOU ARE NOT PATRIOTS!” I saw 1945 written in a few other places, which makes me wonder if the WWII reference is the name of a local hate group. Someone had also spray-painted a number of times a stencil of someone throwing a swastika into a garbage can. There were also anti-white power signs and in a few spots I saw “STOP THE NAZI MOVEMENT!” I suppose it’s good that somebody is trying to counter the Neo-Nazism, but all the same I don’t want to move into a skinhead neighborhood. However…at the time it seemed like I was walking into an extremely hateful neighborhood, but the more I think about it the more I realize that pretty much everything I was seeing was anti hate groups… I need to speak to Vera about that.
When I got there, Vera was great. She was sweet, friendly, hospitable, and I ended up sitting with her for over three hours. She is a retired Russian professor who actually lived and worked in the same dormitory I am living in, and her husband is a retired German professor, and they have a son in his late twenties. She had a really nice apartment that they were in the process of renovating, and made tea for us while her enormously overweight cat licked my arm. She told me that unfortunately she doesn’t have a room available. They have two rooms to rent; one is currently in use, and the other will be taken in June. I was upset, because I really liked her and her husband, Anatoly. She suggested their neighbor upstairs, Lena, and called her to invite her for tea.
After about an hour, Lena showed up with her daughter who was probably around 10-12 years old. We all sat, and Vera explained the situation to Vera. She talked me up a lot, saying that I am very studious, I am not looking for someone who speaks English (on the contrary I want people to speak Russian with), and mentioned that I brought chocolates and said I would be a good tenant. The whole time, Lena looked at me like she was terrified. She started asking me strange questions, really personal and not particularly relevant. She asked me how my parents felt about my studying Russian, what they felt about me coming here, to name every single Russian author I had ever read, and what my parents do for a living. After the question about their professions, Vera asked her what that had to do with anything. Lena’s response was “I’m a single mother living with a young daughter, and I have responsibilities! This strange man wants to live with us, so I need to know who he is” to which I answered that I’m not from a family of criminals, so she has nothing to worry about. She then brought up price, and told me that my offer was ridiculously low, and her counter-offer was more than double what I had said. I told her I had to think about it, and Vera said we could talk about money later.
Finally, she said she would show me the apartment. Vera was tired, and said she would meet up with us later. When we got into the hallway, Lena told me that she didn’t feel comfortable with me, because ‘the kind of person who gets into politics is usually unsafe, messed up, and has a lot of problems.’ I told her that perhaps she didn’t understand me…I’m just a student, not a politician of any sort. She said all the same, she wasn’t sure how she felt about me. After that, we heard a door opening and Vera came out, having decided to join us after all.
We went upstairs, and they showed me a really beautiful apartment. Incredible for a single parent to have an apartment like that in the center of the city. Anyway, when she got to the room with the spare bed, she said very callously “I guess this is where you would stay…” and not another word about it. When we got back into the hallway, she asked about a couple museums in town, and if I had been there. She then said “well… we have to get going, my daughter has a lesson to go to. You should come visit us sometime…or rather we should meet up at the museum I was telling you about…” and then when I asked when we could meet again, she said to talk to Vera.
When we got back to the apartment, Vera asked me what I thought. I told her that I thought Lena didn’t like me and was afraid of me for some reason, and told Vera what Lena had said to me when we were alone. She said it certainly seemed that way, and from the questions Lena was asking me, Vera could tell that there had been a bad first impression. She said not to worry about it, and we went back to her kitchen. She said that she really enjoyed her time with me and wanted to help. She called a few friends asking about spare rooms, and took down my phone number to call me if she heard anything.
I went home, and ask I walked in the door my phone rang. Vera had spoken with Olga, and they came to an agreement. I could live with Olga, and go to Vera for breakfast, dinner, and in afternoons for conversation (they live in the same building). I would pay each of them part of the money, and it would come out to around the same amount I was expecting to pay from the start. It sounds like a great deal, I just need to see the apartment and ask some questions first (accessibility to laundry, internet, and things like that).
Aside from that…my request for an expedited multi-entry visa was approved, but in the same day I found out that the trip to Poland was postponed a month. Either way, it will be nice to get my new visa and be done with paperwork for the rest of my time here.