About two or three times a year, I leave noisy Moscow and travel to my hometown. A small town near Saratov. It’s about a thousand kilometers from our beautiful capital. And there, only there, I find real quiet. To be more precise, it’s a city of quiet.
There’s no rush here. People walk along the streets unhurriedly, cars move calmly. Most importantly, no one is in a hurry. It feels as if time has stood still. Of course, it hasn’t. The city is alive, but the pace is completely different. It sounds funny, but a “traffic jam” here means it took five minutes longer to get from one part of town to another. In Moscow, the same phrase means I’ll be late by thirty minutes.
In the evenings, you might get the feeling that you’re completely alone in this city. It’s not a curfew. It’s just that life is arranged differently here. People visit each other and have small get-togethers. Those who prefer to relax another way go to a cafe or take a walk in the park. And if the weather is nice, you can simply breathe in the fresh air on the embankment of the Volga River.
I miss this small but beloved town. The town where I spent my youth. The town where I once started a family.
