Many years have passed. In March 1989 I was a student studying business in one Finnish university. I went to Leningrad to study Russian and I stayed there for three weeks. I met many people and we discussed many matters. We even went to one Soviet bank where we discussed with the manager of this bank how there could be a free trade zone between Leningrad and eastern Finland. I was not alone on this trip and there were five of us who studied Russian. Russian studies are useful now when I can exchange a few words with our Ukrainian refugees. Today was a cold and windy day and a Russian word ’ холодный’ (cold) came to my mind at our library. 34 years is a long time and I still have this blue wool shirt that I had in Leningrad in March 1989.
In March 1987, 36 years ago, I was in Moscow. It was an interesting trip. It was the Soviet Union then. I was just 19 years old and I visited many places in Moscow. I went to the area of the great national achievements where I visited one computer tradeshow of all Warsaw Pact countries. It was my first tech tradeshow (later in America I went to tens of high tech tradeshows). Then I also remember walking on the Red Square and visiting Saint Basil’s Cathedral with Olga and other people. My sister studied in Moscow and I took her two suitcases full of clothes that were sold in Moscow. People in the USSR wanted to have Western style clothes. Then I remember going to the Diplomat’s Club, which was one of rare night clubs because there were no discos and other Western style night clubs in the region of Moscow. We must remember that it was the Cold War and the Iron Curtain had not come down yet. It was a good trip and when I returned back to Helsinki one woman offered me a place to stay for one night because my train to the city where I studied left only in the morning. For a 19 year old student it was an adventure to visit different places. Five years after my trip the USSR collapsed and many of its republics such as Ukraine became independent. Now 36 years after I see the Ukrainian refugees daily in my little town. The world is changing as we speak and read.
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