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Published: April 8th 2006
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Alexandre, Kolya, Kseniya.
Alexandre was also stolen from. Kolya helped a lot, keeping everyone calm and translating when administration needed him. I woke up this morning feeling low. The last week has been hard with so many difficult feelings filling my head, and I took the day off lessons to try and think clearly again.
When I got back to my flat from the post office at half past three my lap-top and mobile phone had been stolen.
My phone wasn't on the kitchen table where I left it, and when I looked up my computer wasn't there either. A man walked out of the appartment as I was walking along the corridor - as I didn't know anything had been taken then I thought nothing of it. Stupidly it didn't occur to me to ask him who he was, or even notice what he looked like. If he wasn't stopped by the woman in reception it means he was there for a reason, perhaps fixing something or looking for someone at the wrong door.
I told the people at the international office about it. They shouted at me for leaving my door open; when I saw Michael a minute earlier on the stairs he said that he had been in his room for all the time I had been out, so in any circumstance the flat would not have been locked.
I live with people I trust and it has always been taken as a fact that the people at the front door stop strangers from entering. It is their one and only job to take visitor's passports off them and ask them to show an invitation letter from one of us. The 'watchman' is always one of four fat old women, who unlock the front door for us to get in at night with a disinterested 'pozhaluista' as if we have called them away from their work, as opposed to asked them to do it. Today Galina was working, the most senile of the lot.
The international office called the militsiya. They arrived an hour later; four men in leather jackets, one with awful breath to ask me questions, another to interview everyone else on the corridor, a third to take a photograph of the room and the last to stand around with a clip-board staring at the girls. I told them as much as I could but I will never see either the lap-top or the phone again. "A dark-haired man of about 35 in a leather jacket" describes just about half of the men in Tver. My door wasn't locked which is an excuse for them to close the file before they have opened it, and Russians will never do anything to help someone who is not Russian themselves.
I didn't know what to do with myself for the rest of the day. I sat on the window ledge in the lounge and stared out of the window. Everything has gone. In the phone there were 120 messages, and the numbers of people I now have no way of reaching again. Including Katya. All my music that I had bought was saved in the laptop - 1105 songs - and all of my videos and photographs, not just from Russia. It will be possible to retrieve most of them from copies at home, but that is still a long time away and the things I won't get back mean a lot to me. The computer was also my way of watching films and - most importantly - my way of writing the university project.
The people on my corridor tried to find out what had happened - who had been here earlier and how did the thief get in if not past the lady in reception? Another question is: who else apart from us knew that I had an expensive laptop? Yenu knows a group of Russian boys, Maksim, Vitalii and Andrei, who are obsessed by it. The thief knows one of them.
Kolya came to my flat in the evening with two cans of Yarpivo and a pat on the shoulder. As we were talking Kaisa knocked on my door. Kolya had to go to reception straight away to translate for Alexandre; his digital camera was stolen earlier. There was a panic in reception as people tried to make themselves understood in French and Russian.
Seeing as no one else would do it I badly lost my temper with Galina, as she smirked "close your door" for the tenth time, and I received a punch on the head from her in return. I sat on Karin's bed and stared at the wall for an hour then went back to my kitchen, empty apart from piles of univerity work.
If I have been complacent while living in the obshezhitie it is because I had already paid my dues as far as living poorly is concerned. The flat is my third Russian home and I was treated badly in the first two.
Fyodor Tyutchev wrote: "It is impossible to understand Russia with your brain - you just need to believe in her". The last two weeks at Tv.G.U have taken away the faith that I brought with me. I will not say that life in Russia is bad - my diary will contradict that a thousand times - but I have had enough of the injustice and incompetance.
One sentence in my diary about a dirty shower equals five minutes under it every morning. The uncomfortable lessons that I barely mention any more take up three hours of my days. And there are many, many more bad people than good.
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Kira
non-member comment
alexandre's mother
Je parle mal l'anglais. Je sais que vous avez appris le français à l'école, c'est donc en français que je vous dis MERCI pour ce blog. Je suis très heureuse de voir ces photos. BRAVO!