Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
W
E ARRIVE
in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg at 10:00 p.m. Andrei Gorodilov, who lives with
his wife and son in the city (a half hour from his father in Sagra), is waiting for us in the
parking lot of the train station.
“David, Sergei, zdravstvuyte!”
“Andrei, privet. Rosa tozhe skazala privet [Andrei, hi. And Rose also says hi].”
“David, look,” Andrei says in his bit of English. He climbs into the driver's seat of
his SUV, reaches into the console to the right and pulls out a fading Aeroflot boarding
pass—with Rose's e-mail address scribbled on it: “I still have!”
I am really touched. “Andrei, she wishes she could be here.”
“I will be glad to see her.”
But that wasn't all.
“Vodka.” He reaches into the glove compartment, and there is the third bottle of vodka I
left to Andrei and his family: “I don't drink!”
I am really happy our first visit to Sagra was as meaningful to him as it was to me.
The three of us go to a sushi restaurant near the train station, attached to a hotel where we
get two rooms for the night. Sergei, Andrei, and I are squeezed into a booth ringed by fake
bamboo. Andrei is medium height, with a round face, brown hair, and bright blue eyes. He
is sipping tea—he has already had dinner—as Sergei and I dive into bowls of soup.
We exchange news about our wives. Andrei tells me that his wife is starting her own
business, selling replacement parts for excavation equipment. “I bought a property at a good
price during the economic crisis,” Andrei says. “But you know how long it took me to get
the permits to make it a business?” He snaps his hands into motion, as if flinging documents,
one after another. But now it looks as if the business will be in good shape to open. After
the difficult legal battle over Sagra, things are going better for Andrei. His wife may get her
business open—and his businesses are doing well. He imports excavation equipment from
abroad, mostly South Korea, and he owns a store selling custom-made fur hats.
I am even more struck by the connection between us. Rose, like Andrei's wife, has
dreams of opening a business, and after months of legal wrangling, she's close to opening
a restaurant in Washington, D.C. What's more, like me, Andrei travels abroad a lot—we
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