28 years later...the memory of student time!

In some of my first posts I did mention my first foreign language was not English. I studied French when I was a little kid, both of my parents speak French, esp. my mom, she's very good at speaking, my father - at translating, writing. But the destiny took me not to the "Les miserables"'s shelter but to the land of the fairy tale's Snow Princess - the Russia.

Russian language is really difficult to learn, the calligraphy, the pronunciation, the grammar could terrify you from the beginning, especially the "gender" of the words - not only male, female,  they still have "middle" words, but I feel quite comfortable with Russian as many words from French so it was easy to remember, for verbs - Russian is much easier than French, French conjugation of verb was one of my childhood nightmares...

         My old classmates with some "senior" friends who also spent their student time in St-Petersburg

Here today, we are not talking about the language, but about the first gathering with my old classmates in Russia after ...28 years, since our graduation. We came back to Vietnam in late 1980s, some heading back to their hometown and I never met them again, few living in Saigon but the ambition of youth, the pursuit of other dreams took us apart...and then everyone seemed busy with many things in life, we rarely met in such a long time. To be honest, I may not recognise some of them...if without any "proper re-introduction"!

          To treat my old friends, my freshly baked black bread by American recipe, good taste but lack of the "Russian soul" 

As all of us used to study in Russia, so I decided to offer something in a Russian style. Being a student, we received first 70 roubles then up to 90 roubles to live on in 30 long days (just imagine by today exchange 90 roubles equal to only 2,5 USD!) so we didn't have chance to taste any Russian delicacies...what we know was those popular dishes for students in "stolovaia" (i.e student canteen) or those "street food" of the old time...that I heard, already disappeared from the streets in St-Petersburg : like my year-round favourite breakfast at "piroskovaija" (a traditional fast food store where they served deep-fried piroski filled with pork or cabbage and hot milk coffee) or my winter ice-cream covered in chocolate or my summer drink "kvash". All gone, I heard!

                Glamorous Russian caviar - it's definitely not our food in student time...

The black bread was the cheapest thing for us - 8 or 10 kopek (100 kopeks equal 1 rouble) per load, so I baked my first black bread as we all loved its strong sour taste. Back to that time, it took us a while to recognise the black is better than the white! I just mean bread! And I never questioned myself why it's black, but while following the recipe from the Internet - I thought the dark colour not only from the whole wheat, dark rye flour but also from the other two ingredients: cocoa and coffee powder, but when I shared it in FB, my Russian friends said, in Russia they use black malt and molasses.
One of my old classmates brought Russian caviar, salami.... Salami, caviar ? These are not the food we used to eat before - nor caviar, nor salami. Our student's sausage was much cheaper and bigger!

                 Russian salami was also not affordable in our student time...

I thought about the pork "kotlet" (i.e the meat ball) but then I realised how horrible was the taste of the "kotlet" at that time (probably because we just cooked what we got from the store, without adding any other ingredients!). So the "kotlet" out of the menu!  

Apple pie - why I came up with the apple pie? One of my first impressions in my very first day in Moscow was...apple. They were everywhere, along the streets, in the park, on the grass, along the alleys next to the famous Lomonosov's university...it's even much more than banana in Vietnam, so I wonder what Russian do with apple : later I know they do apple "kompot" (i.e compote) and drink it as we have tea at home! So apple pie is a good choice, especially it's served with vanilla ice cream!

            My apple pie is just so so, the apple filling was good but the crust pie - too thick and buttery! 

We talk a lot, we tried to remember those sweet or "slightly bitter" memories, our summer holidays to different cities in, at that time - Soviet Union, I've been to Sochi, someone remember that I was floating on sea water all the time, I've been travelling up to Latvia, around Ukraine, down to Baku, I even challenged myself to participate the summer "otriad" (it was very popular student's activity to make some money during the summer holiday - by working either in the farm in South of Russia or at some big construction sites in Siberia, the harder work, the bigger money you get!)

This's a souvenir for all participants to the "otriad" that I still keep, we all signed in this flag for our memory before departure. I was the only Vietnamese in this group, among the other Cuban, German students...we never met again after that summer as we came from the different faculties, universities...but now look at some names,  their smiling faces appear clearly again in my mind. It was very sweet memory with a lot of day and night activities : from nigh camp to mountain climb, from the cabbage harvest under the Southern hot sun in super-huge farm to the nude bath under the moon in the river...

          and here....it's me with the guitar that I never learn how to play...after this pic-nic!

Wow...28 years have passed. Many things happened in our life, but we never forget these years in St-Petersburg (I should call Leningrad, but I much prefer St-Petersburg, exactly same as Saigon than Ho Chi Minh city!). I never go back there, during dinner some friends, who recently visited back, shared different stories about St-Petersburg: a lot of new buildings around our student dormitories, without the student card no person is able to enter into this huge area which has been fenced for security, no longer "piroskovaija"...it's sad! I will come back to St-Petersburg some day, as a promise, as a wish and as a dream to revive our past.