ROSE - Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia - page 1

1 • ROSE
R OSE WAS CONVINCED it would be snowing when we landed.
It was September 2009, and the two of us were about to begin a new life in Russia.
Snowing? Sure, I thought. It's always cold in Moscow. It even snows in September. What
are the other clichés, honey? All Russians do is drink vodka, wear fur hats, and train for the
Olympics?
It was snowing.
We could see it as our Delta 767 from JFK made its final descent into Moscow.
“You know I'm a warm-blooded Mediterranean, right, Greene?” I did. But this question
wasn't meant to offer new information, rather to underscore the meteorological sacrifice my
Sicilian-Lebanese-American wife was making in beginning this new chapter.
In our warm apartment in New York City's East Village, Rose and I had spent endless
hours talking about the job that opened at NPR: Moscow bureau chief.
I had covered the White House for eight years, done some economic reporting in New
York, and was hankering for a foreign assignment. Rose had gotten a master's degree in pub-
lic policy, launched into a great job as a policy adviser for the New York City Council, and
was always hungry for a new adventure—she loves to explore and travel—but Russia?
Rose grew up in rural Ohio. Her Lebanese-American mom raised four kids, taught
school, and opened a family restaurant in a small town along Interstate 75. Her Sicilian-
American dad taught college law and pharmacy for four decades. I grew up in Pennsylvania.
My late mom, another academic, was a beloved psychology professor. My dad is a physician
in the pharmaceutical industry who shares my passion for late-night chats about politics or
yesterday's Pittsburgh Steelers game. Our parents all worked to make us worldly. Rose and
I talked about current events growing up, we traveled, and we read the Dostoevsky and Tol-
stoy required in class.
Covering the White House, I certainly took my swims in foreign policy, attending numer-
ous summits between Russia's Vladimir Putin and America's George W. Bush, who once
famously remarked that he looked into Putin's soul and liked what he saw (a moment when
I could almost hear Putin, a former KGB spy, saying to himself, Got him!).