Paravin

March 25, 1949. rewrote hundreds of destinies. The stories of the children of Siberia are each worse than the other, however Monika Turlaja (84 years old), while looking over the pages of her history, keeps using the words "we got lucky".

It's not easy for Monika to remember the fateful day - tears swell into her eyes and the conversation trails off to happier events. However when the first emotions have subsuded, she returns to herself at 16 and once more walks through her fathers house: "It was a very early morning, the sun had just risen, the cattle had not been fed, when several soldiers arrived at the farmhouse. I was old enough to understand that this was not going to lead to anything

Hey, guys, I come back to Finland next monday, and I have a few hours off in Tallinn in between the bus & ferry. Does anyone have any advice on the key-notes I should see in the old town during the time I am there? Maybe just a cheap, nice Estonian food restaurant! :)

I, for one, really dislike family gatherings. My family is huge – while my branch is just a few, my great-grandmother was a hare in the bed, and managed to raise 8 healthy boys. This was starting from the 1940ies – my country was in ruin, people were being deported en masse and things had not looked a bit lighter even after the war had ended. One of these children was my grandfather brother – the oldest of the lot, a notorious alcoholic and overall rural man. While my grandfather became an electronics engineer, old Dzintars never quite got out of that rural mindset. Even now he still lives in a country apartment house with a supposed mistress he took a few years ago. Being sexually attractiv

Myths and folk tales have a tendency to reflect within themselves the essence of the society that forms them – which makes a lot of sense in retrospect. A society in a ‘”wild west” culture would fear what is outside the safety of their fire circle, or outside the safety of their ranch, village. A culture based on capitalism would fear a society of equality. We fear tangible things, and these tangible things turn into myths. I’m well aware of the bullshit American chuppacabras and big feet – hairy rednecks living in the Appalachian Mountains stealing your underwear while you were drunk on moonshine. But can you blame an innocent culture fearing such things? In my country they do things differ