For every "rule" there is an exception...

…and his name is Igor. If you remember, a few posts ago, I wrote about the contrasting ways that Americans and Russians act towards people to whom they are strangers. I generalized and said that Americans are often quite friendly while Russians tend to be more reserved and less likely to involve themselves in the lives of strangers. Well, today that generalization was thrown on its head. Even though it is, I believe, a true generalization of Russian people, it is nice when that mold is broken.

We were in a shop looking at rocking chairs—Julie wanted one for us to use with David—when the sales lady asked us in Russian if we had any questions. Well, we did, but they were far beyond my or Julie’s Russian language skills. I was bumbling about when the guy next to me said, “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” (Do you speak German, for those of you who don’t). WELL, as it so happens, I do. Igor, whose father was military his whole life and was stationed in the DDR (old East Germany) when Igor was a kid, spoke German quite well. He was very patient with me, as my German was rusty and was constantly being mixed up with Polish and Russian in my head.

For roughly a half hour, as we were being attended to (the big issues were concerning how we could get the assembled, display model rocking chair home without getting it dirty or whether we could assemble one from the box without any tools to our names), Igor and I chatted for a while. It turns out that his parents live in Ukraine, he used to live in Tver, but is now stationed in the Far East, 100 km from Japan—Igor, like his father, is in the military. He was just in Tver for a few days for vacation before going on the Ukraine to visit his folks, when he decided to lend us a hand.
As I was sitting and talking to him, the thought ran through my mind several times that 20 years ago, this would probably never have happened. Our two nations would still be enemies separated by the “iron curtain”, etc. But now, instead, this kind Russian man saw to it that we were able to get everything sorted out and buy that rocking chair. He stayed with us until we were on our way, box in hand, heading out of the store—even though I have a feeling that he was late for an appointment (cause he bolted out of the store).