By squeakyrobot
It’s always difficult to leave a good place. You’re cozy there, like when you wake up on a snowy morning enveloped by the warmth, softness, and familiarity of your own bed. It’s always hard to leave the bed for something cold or unknown.
I’ve been hopping around Europe for the past month and a half. It’s been an unplanned trip, as many of my trips are, but the one theme that has strung each chaotic day to the next is this: freedom. Freedom to do as I please as soon as I please it. Freedom to eat that weird thing or change destinations on a split-second whim or hang-out with that eccentric person who I met at the hostel. It’s been a month and a half of adventure, seeing friends and family, and completing bucket-list items. A month and a half of doing what I want.
And this freedom holds me captive. As such, I haven’t had time or need to prepare for my upcoming stint in cold, dark St. Petersburg. Okay, I’ve done some preparing, but this has mostly consisted of day-dreaming about a life in Russia and listening to Russian rap. It also meant dying my hair platinum blonde and buying heels to wear day-to-day. It seems that I fit in already. Russian society will see me and regard me as one of their own.
I’m sitting in Warsaw’s airport, waiting for my flight. The longer I sit here, the more I realize how unprepared I am. But momentary bouts of panic are dulled by lasting phases of serenity. Because while I’m not prepared, I’m convinced no one really is. Russia is the land of the wild. To go there with any sort of expectations would mean to have those expectations crushed, often brutally. I’ve traveled in Russia, I speak the language, I’m well acquainted with the culture, but I have no idea what I’m in for. Someone once told me that it takes a special type of person to voluntarily live in the former USSR during wintertime. I’m about to find out what that means.
And so I’m moving on. Out of my warm bed into the cold unknown. A cold Russian winter unknown. And I walk into this with only one expectation: it is bound to be life-changing.
Finally, an expectation that doesn't have the chance to disappoint.