Month: April 2022

Planning

The last couple of days were the days of major planning. All of a sudden, all my subscriptions came due for renewal. And since all of them had to be altered, I had to call each place instead of renewing online. I am converting most of the subscriptions to one instead of two. Now that everything is open and people have more options, it has become harder for me to find people interested in attending shows with me. Also, I am out of town pretty often, and other people are out of town from time to time. So I figured there would be shows I won’t be able to attend, and I will be able to exchange these tickets for a second ticket to other shows. That’s my math:).

Also, it looks like I figured out my travels until mid-June. There are so many things I want to do this summer! As usual, before summer starts, I have tons of plans, and then I have trouble fitting them all in. And I didn’t even look at Ravinia and Grant Park Music Festival programs!

The only thing I need is for the weather to be cooperative. There will be a year since I moved to the city in a couple of weeks, and slowly but surely, I am starting to take advantage of everything Chicago has to offer.

Gorgeous sunrises – I will have them for more than four months!
My new favorites from IKEA

And The War Is Everywhere – Again

Yesterday, I dropped off one of my bikes for a tune-up. I was looking for a bike repair shop fin Rogers Park for a while, but since I had two neighbors who knew how to repair bikes, they never let me get to the shop :). Now, both of them had moved, which gave me a push to finally find a new to-go place.

I chatted with the owner about the time when I would pick up the bike, and I mentioned going to Europe next week. He asked where in Europe, and when I replied, he asked whether I was not afraid of crazy Russians being too close there.

I made full disclosure, and we talked a little bit about the war and how it feels in Europe, and that yep, Finland is a little bit too close to the crazy neighbor.

Everybody is asking me about Finland joining NATO as if I know more than the general public.

My Little Biker

I had my girls over for Easter Saturday. They took a train from Milwaukee on Friday evening, but not just that; they also brought Nadia’s bike with them and a bike seat for Kira. With all this equipment, walking from the Union Station to the CTA was a challenge. To minimize the walk, we decided to take the Brown line and then switch to the Red Line, and with all the waits, it took us 1 hour 40 minutes to reach my house(instead of one hour!). We made it and thus proved our dedication to reducing the carbon footprint, but it was a major project.

On Saturday, we could not figure out how to attach a bike seat to one of my bikes, and I thought that if all of this was for nothing, and we won’t be able to go on the bike ride, it would be a major disappointment. Fortunately, after multiple tries, Anna figured out how to attach the seat to another bike :), and we left – an hour later than planned.

Nadia was a champion – we biked all the way from my house to the start of the Lakefront Trail – it’s 2.7 miles one way! And it was pretty cold, especially closer to the lake. And Nadia fell off the bike several times, hurting different parts of her body, but afterward, she would get back on her bike and keep going. Amazing kid!

On the way back to the train station, Igor helped us to carry things, and it was tons easier! That way, we actually made it in one hour!

Easter Eggs Decorating

My girls were visiting, and I think that Anna enjoyed the eggs decorating projects more than Nadia 🙂

Russia Closed It’s Borders. Quitely.

One thing that Boris nor I realized until today was that Russia closed its borders from the inside. He only found it out when he was boarding the bus – the bus driver checked the passport and the vise and “a reason” that would allow a person to travel. Visa is not enough anymore. It has to be either a working visa, a resident card, or a passport from another country. I was shocked that nobody mentioned it earlier, and I have no idea when it happened because there was nothing like that at the beginning of March. And that’s precisely what I am afraid of – that he won’t be able to get back to Finland one time.

I don’t understand why people say that “the whole world turned away from Russians,” while in reality, the Russian government does worse to their citizens than any other country.

Another thing which we wonder about is the large number of Ukrainians traveling from Russia to Finland. If you are in Russia, it is understandable that Finland is the only way out. But I wonder why so many people with Ukrainian passports are in Russia at the moment. Boris says it was half of the bus, plus two more people boarded at the checkpoint. He says they were asked to go to the border control before everybody else and that everybody was exceptionally respectful toward them. Could they be the people who were “liberated’ by Russians? But then, why and how are they allowed to leave the country?

And once again, about “Moskva.” I heard two interviews, one of the retired US admiral and one of some British expert, and they both second what Boris “decoded” from the official statements. Boris still says that it should have sunk within minutes, and that’s what Ukraine states. I am a little bit afraid to be happy, but I am.

***

I heard a news story on BBC today about Russians who fled to Georgia and how many Georgians are unhappy with that. I heard a Georgian official explaining that they require any Russian who wants to open a bank account in Georgia to make a written statement that they are against the war with Ukraine, and they understand that Russia occupies parts of both Ukrainian and Georgian territories.

I was shocked to hear some Russian businessmen saying in the interview that this requirement is unfair because “they may be prosecuted for that when they will return to Russia.” I don’t understand how somebody can say things like that. Do they really plan to go back to Russia? To Russia, where would standing against the war and aggression still be a crime? They think about returning, and they can’t do as little as to be grateful to the country that sheltered them?

It Sank!

Yes, it did!

That is for the words about the Kursk submarine, which I will never forget and never forgive: it sunk! That’s a payback – it sank, sank, sank! I could not imagine this news would make me so happy.

About a week ago, Boris and I talked, and he said: you should tell your Congressman to send anti-warship missiles to Ukraine! I asked him why, and he explained (Boris is from a navy family, so I trust him with this knowledge). Anna told me that “we send what Ukrainians ask for, and they ask for javelinas.” Just two days later, I first heard that Ukraine asked, and we sent the Neptunes! And then – today! It was so-so literally what Boris said that would happen. When I called him, he sounded very satisfied with the choice of target, and then he asked: why it didn’t sink? It should have. I told him that it was not confirmed yet, and a couple of hours later – hurray!

Dark Ages are Coming

Boris says it feels like you are in the movie about Nazi Germany. He didn’t say precisely that, but he said that the signs of time look horrific, and I asked for details. And when he described to me the advertisements and the signs on the streets with the letter Z made of St. Geroge ribbons, I asked him whether it looked like a WWII movie.

Although I talk with many people from Russia these days, it was the first time I felt this cold horror. I think you need to be somebody like him or like me – somebody who lives abroad but at the same time knows how the streets used to look during different historical periods.
We will have a lot to discuss when he is back in Helsinki on Friday. When he was in Saint Petersburg at the beginning of the war, it felt different; it looks like Nazification was proceeding fast.

I know that many people can’t leave Russia; in fact, there are way more people who can’t than those who can. For them, seeing the Dark Ages coming should be unbearable.

A Picture From St-Petersburg

Boris sent me this picture this morning, and it made me laugh and cry. This shot was taken by the Swedish Consulate in St- Petersburg:

I am imagining the police trying to find a reason to stop it (and yes, I am aware that the colors are wrong).

Tonight

There was a program change for today’s CSO concert because maestro Muti tested positive and had to quarantine for a week. I didn’t want to return my ticket, but at the same time, I still had a lot to do to get ready for tomorrow’s PUG and needed to have normal sleep. And at the same time, I loved the updated program – several of Mozart’s piano concertos. I was going back and forth, and I decided to go to the first half of the concert at the very last moment.
I had a lot of positive emotions. I love it when a conductor is contacting from the piano, as Mozart himself did, and I love this full of light music, so bright and beautiful, a real celebration of life.
Also, I loved it when I saw that the Ukrainian flag was now permanently displayed on the right side of the stage, and the musicians continued displaying the ribbons in Ukrainian colors.

And I loved that the weather was finally warm, and I felt like Chicago is back.

I decided to take a Brown Line for the half of the way home to look at Chicago from the elevated level. I passed a young man on the planform talking to another waiting passenger: every morning I look outside and see the lake, and I can’t believe I live here! OMG! How much I can relate!!!