The Russian Hero Who Cost Me a Girlfriend
I nearly once married a Russian girl from Tula. That was a long … long time ago… She was fascinating, beautiful, smart, challenging, exotic, with a personality of her own… For a few months, we were fascinated by each other… We held hands, looked into each other’s eyes when we spoke, and watched each other’s movements with admiration. Everything seemed to work…at first … until it didn't. In effect, the cultural gap between us had an extraordinary ability to turn perfectly innocent conversations into big misunderstandings, … sometimes at astonishing speed. I vividly remember one evening, The Evening that would become legendary between us… trying rather foolishly to impress her with my supposedly broad cultural knowledge, (Needless to say, during our courtship , I read every Russian book I could get my hands on…for obvious reasons!!) I asked her about Ilya Muromets ; I asked if she knew the story… Of one of the great heroes of the Russian mythology, Muromet...
