Nadezhda Simonovna has long deserved her own column. Of all the people with whom I reunited in Russia after thirty-four years, she was the one I would have recognized anywhere. Nadezhda Simonovna is the mother of my friend Volodya. After a thirty plus year hiatus in communication, I had contacted Volodya about two weeks before our 2011 arrival in St. Petersburg to ask if he wanted to meet for coffee with Meryll and me. Russians don’t seem to meet for coffee. If I base all my observations on Volodya, they also want to meet you at the airport, drive you to historic places through god-awful traffic and take you home to a multi-course feast afterwards before asking when they can see you next.
Coffee? Hardly. Volodya asked for our travel details and called the moment we arrived in St. Petersburg to plan our meeting. The first destination would be to...



