garden with a fountain, which we also cleaned and repaired. There were also some things

that we painted, repaired, and adapted for ourselves. When, a year later, the lady owner came over to see how things were going, she went around the whole house and said that she had changed her mind about prolonging the leasing contract and wanted to go back to living in the house herself. So, we had to find another place to live.

Sasha in his bar

We were already spoiled by living in a house, so we rented another one. By this time, we already had gotten some furniture, so, for the new house, we only bought a big dinning table and a bar for Sasha. Friends gave Sasha a big grill, and we started having even more guests over in our house. We lived for a year and a half in this house; we opened an English pub on “Baker Street” in the back yard, we planted a real English lawn, getting a grate for the chimney. Apparently, all this green and the beauty around had an effect on Sasha and he started gardening. He got some cucumber and tomato seeds, put up some huge pots on the balcony and grew cucumbers and tomatoes. The whole department knew about the

“unfavorable virus background in the garden,” about the plans on marinating the pickles in a barrel, the fertilizers for the tomatoes, etc. There were as many as five cucumbers! Sasha fed three of them to our everyday lunch companions in the professors’ canteen and the rest of them were enjoyed by the family. I think, it went even worse with the tomatoes:

they succumbed under the “unfavorable virus background” not even getting enough time to produce fruit.

End of July 2005 Daria went to study in France, 10 days later Sasha moved to Norway and me and Stepan moved for the last time in Chile to the seaside, to a small apartment on the 25th floor with an incredible view to our beloved ocean. Half a year later, we joined Sasha in Norway.

60 CHAPTER 6. CHILE During the first year we heard a lot of stories about the south of Chile. And the second summer there, Víctor González invited us to travel to the south with him. I have to say that Víctor taught us a lot of things. When Sasha had moved to Chile, he was the director of the department and supported a lot of Sasha’s initiatives. He is a person of enormous knowledge and tremendous tact; one could talk with him for hours on different topics. He always knew where to find a good restaurant in a city and, according to Víctor’s classification, one could call city any town, where one could find a good espresso. By this time, we had gotten ourselves a car already. I remember how, at first, we were getting used to it by going for a ride at 5 in the morning, just so God forbids we met another car on our way. But we mastered it quite quickly and decided to take a road trip to the south in two cars. That summer my mom was spending her Novosibirsk winter with us. Sasha got along with her wonderfully and they had more culinary tastes in common than me and her.

Osorno Volcano So, we made the one thousand

kilo-meters stretch to the south in two cars and settled down in some cozy sum-mer cabins among lushy ferns on a lake with a view to a volcano. Stepan would go fishing and even got one fish.

We tried bathing, but as it turned out, none of us liked cold water. We spent most of the time driving around. There were so many waterfalls and moun-tains there. The forests resembled to a jungle. It seemed that we drove around every corner in that week, damag-ing the bottom of the car on the road bumps. However, as the experienced Víctor would say: “The bad roads take you to the most beautiful places, and

the good roads take you to places with too many tourists.”

Sasha with his mom in Southern Chile

I remember in one of these days, having driven for about 6 hours since morning un-der the rain and having made the last 20 km on some pretty bad road, we came to a spot of civilization. It turned out to be the natu-ral thermal springs Coñaripe. The owners of the land had built several pools with dif-ferent temperatures, decorated with natu-ral stone. A small restaurant and changing rooms in natural tree completed the pic-ture. We gladly submerged ourselves in hot water. It was so wonderful to lay in hot water, catching the cold raindrops in your month and looking at miles of mountain gorge. Since then, we became huge fans of the south of Chile and the thermal springs. We went there every year, taking with us my mom one more time and Sasha’s mom. We stayed in different places and it would seem that we visited every corner of the south region of Chile.

chapter 7 TO NORWAY

As I wrote earlier, we gave up on trying to find me a permanent position in Valparaíso, and we were sending job applications to Europe and the United States. Both of us wanted a permanent job and stability. We had more hope for Sasha’s success than mine, because his CV was much better. We also had a tacit agreement saying that he should lead and I would follow him, so that we don’t tear apart the family in pursuit of our personal interests. As it had happened earlier, when we all agreed that we should leave the country, Sasha began to act. But not always rationally.

For example, at one time he was quite seriously considering moving to a Middle East-ern country, such as the Arab Emirates or Lebanon. Paradoxically, we were saved from this move by the September 11 attacks. After dozens of submitted applications, Sasha un-expectedly received an email from Saudi Arabia, saying that he had been shortlisted for a professor position at a US-funded university specializing in petroleum engineering. While preparing for the interview, he read a bunch of literature about the university and the city itself, telling us how great it must be there. The phone interview went quite well. By the way, they called from the United States, from their Houston office. It turned out they were offering 5,000 US dollars per month, plus free accommodation and a car, free trips home once a year for the whole family and other perks.

Sasha got very excited about this prospect. When I asked him what I would be doing there, he replied that I would be enjoying (⁉) life, looking after children, and then, five years later we would save enough money and move to Canada. As you understand, “enjoying life”

would be reduced to housekeeping, because their laws ban women from driving, and I would not even want to leave the apartment without a niqab when it is 40 degrees Celsius outside.

It was early June, two months were left before the planned departure for Saudi Arabia, enough time to sign the contract and get visas. Sasha was like a cat on a hot tin roof, reading about the Middle East and its culture, making plans and trying to convince me that it was a great option. Time was passing, but he still did not have the contract. At first, they were mentioning “administrative delays” in their polite replies, saying that “the documents are about to be signed”, and “we will let you know shortly”. By the end of August, they stopped answering at all. On the morning of September 11 we were watching the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center in New York, not remembering about the upcoming move. The more surprising it was to us when several days later Sasha received a letter from Saudi Arabia, saying something along the lines of “for reasons beyond our control, we cannot proceed with your candidacy.” We got an impression that the university administration knew something about the upcoming attacks, and decided to stop hiring foreigners several months before the attacks. In any case, our “Arabic epic” happily ended in failure.

On several other occasions, the positions that we were shortlisted for, got canceled for various reasons. This happened in Agder, Norway, where three candidates were shortlisted for two full professor positions, Sasha being first, and me third on the list. Unfortunately, the positions were canceled due to loss of funding. Still, for several months after this, we kept a photograph of sunny Agder on our home computer, a city where we had once hoped to travel to, at least for interviews. On another occasion, I was among the top three female applicants at the University of Oslo, but the opening was canceled because of a lawsuit from a male applicant, who accused the university of gender discrimination.

61

62 CHAPTER 7. TO NORWAY

Sasha with Arne Stray, Stein Arild Strømme and Helge Tverberg (left to right) at a dinner after an interview in Bergen in 2004

But in 2004 Sasha got invited for an interview in Ireland. After a week spent there, he came back both sad and hopeful. Seven candidates were shortlisted for a single opening, and he ended up second. So again, he did not get the job, he did not happen to be in the right place at the right time. But the Institute’s director, Stephen Gardiner gave him a hope saying that another position would likely be opened, as the first and the second candidates were so close in their qualifications. And Sasha came home with that hope. Aside from talking about the interview, he told us a lot about Guinness. Sasha found time to take a tour to the Guinness Storehouse, a real beer empire, and brought back as many stories about beer, as stories about interview questions. Apparently, beer is in such high regard in Ireland, that when on the very first morning after leaving the hotel he asked a stranger for directions, he was told: “Go straight ahead for two blocks, and after such-and-such pub, at the corner of that pub, and another pub you will find what you are looking for. In other words, the Irish coordinate system is tied to local pubs.

Back in January 2001, when Sasha was staying at the Mittag-Leffler institute in Stock-holm, working with Björn Gustafsson, he traveled to Bergen using his own money to give a talk there. While in Bergen, he had a frank conversation with Stein Arild Strømme, then director of the mathematical institute at the University of Bergen. Stein Arild said bluntly that Sasha was not going to get the position he was applying for, just because the institute had different strategic goals. But he also said that soon, in the coming 2-3 years, new posi-tions would be opened, and Sasha might have a chance to win them. Therefore Sasha was closely following job announcements in Bergen.

Finally, in November 2004 he got invited to an interview in Bergen. He was euphoric when he came back. Even though he had not got an official response, Stein Arild had told Sasha almost directly that he was going to get the job.

The official response came in mid-January 2005, just 3 hours before Stephen Gardiner’s

63 letter with a job offer for a position in Dublin. Oh, what a comedy began! Sasha had spent the preceding three hours explaining how wonderful it would be to live in Norway, but now he could not stop coming up with new reasons why life in Ireland would be even more wonderful. I have always said that making choices is hard, but not having a choice is worse.

This time we had to choose. Everything was taken into account: the pay, my career per-spectives, children’s education, healthcare, future pension and many other things. Sasha’s ultimate argument in favor of Ireland was Guinness. When the decision to go to Norway was almost final, Sasha, trying to clear up his last doubts, kept initiating new discussions about our choice. He would try to approach the subject carefully. Here is what it looked like.

Sasha at his favorite factory in Dublin

“You know, when I visited the Guin-ness brewery, it was filled with such a deli-cious smell of roasted grain, and there were strong draft horses there…”

“Sasha, they say that Norwegian nature is stunning, its fjords are unique, and the air is cleanest in the world.”

“But you know, it turned out that Guin-ness has several varieties…”

“Norway has free higher education, and we have three children.”

“Yes, but when you pour Guinness into a glass, to avoid foaming you should…”

“Norway has free healthcare and gen-erous pensions…”

“Yes, but when Guinness…”

“Norway supports gender equality, and it will probably be easier for me to find a job there.”

“Yes, but Guinness…”

“Housing in Bergen is cheaper than in Dublin.”

“Yes, but talking about Guinness…”

Two weeks earlier I received an offer to transfer to a permanent position at the Univer-sity of Valparaíso as a full-time professor. The UniverUniver-sity of Valparaíso is not as prestigious as Santa María, but the position was higher than Sasha’s. A couple of days earlier, Daria received a letter of admission to INSA (Institut National des Sciences Appliquées) in Lyon, France. So in fact, the choice was even more difficult: between the settled life in Latin America and new horizons in Europe, where we would again have to solve the two-body problem, and make sure that Stepan continues his education. In a new language, with new people.

Six months later Sasha and Daria left for Europe. Stepan and I moved to a small apart-ment near the seashore; he had to complete the school year, and I had to complete the semester, now teaching at two universities. Sasha had half a year to understand whether he wants to stay in Norway. The bridges had not been burned, and he could come back to Chile any day if he wanted.

During the first months, he kept calling me daily, telling me how much he was suffering, how uncomfortable it was in the hostel where he was staying, how expensive everything was, how bland the local meat was. The computer screen was literally sinking in floods of tears during our Skype calls. When I became seriously worried about the possibility of

64 CHAPTER 7. TO NORWAY water damage to my computer, I told him: “Ok, I got it, you don’t like it in Norway, so come back.” Apparently, this totally serious suggestion made him take a different look at the country. Already in the following week he was telling me how he picked mushrooms in a forest, how he found a rental apartment, how he was getting used to the bus schedule, and how great it was to work at the Institute, in a spacious office, with working printers and secretaries doing everything immediately, notmañana.

Our first own house

In Chile, we grew tired of frequent moves, and we agreed that Sasha would try to buy a home for us, if he liked it in Norway. And in case I wouldn’t like the place, we could always sell it and buy another one. So in mid-October, after two months in Norway, he bought a cozy three-bedroom apartment. For the first time in his life, Sasha owned his own home; at the age of 43, he finally fulfilled yet another dream. Four years later we bought a big house.

As Sasha put it, “I live in my house on my island, makeryazhenka¹, grow apples.”

At home… Still at home! At home in Russia, at home in Chile, at home in Norway.

Everywhere we have lived, we felt like at home. A month after we came to Norway, the TV was broadcasting a soccer game, and Stepan together with Sasha were cheering loudly, even though Sasha was not a soccer fan. When I asked who was playing, to my surprise they simultaneously answered that our team was playing against our team. It turned out that Chile was playing against Norway. When during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Norwegian women won gold, silver and bronze in the 30 km cross-country race, and Russian men occupied the whole podium after the 50 km race, we held a special celebration with champagne, being proud for both countries.

I am deeply thankful to Stein Arild for his warm attitude towards us. I don’t know why he was so kind to us. Perhaps, because he had spent two years learning Russian when he was young, which contributed to such a warm affection to everything “Russian”. Perhaps there were other reasons. But already on the third day after my arrival, I got a job, though temporary, and began giving lectures. Six months later I was again put in charge of a lecture course, and one year later he offered me a 12-month contract as a researcher.

As I wrote earlier, Sasha bought our first apartment in Norway pretty quickly. Another professor, Helge Dahle, lived nearby with his family; his wife’s name, Gunvor, sounded very exotic to us. Helge quickly became friends with Sasha, and after I arrived, it grew

1Translator’s note: a traditional fermented milk product in Russia.

65 into a friendship between our families. It was at Helge’s house that we tried the tasty Norwegian fish soup for the first time. It contained unbelievably many ingredients: several varieties of fish, shrimps, herbs and roots. They even invited us for Christmas, which is considered a very private, family celebration in Norway. Helge and Gunvor taught us a lot about Norwegian traditions and customs, sometimes making fun of them.

At Helge Dahle’s

We had to make serious efforts to adjust to the new mentality. For instance, in Chile, it was considered incredibly rude not to greet your colleagues every time you see them in the institute. In Norway, on the other hand, even when you see them for the first time in the morning, you won’t always hear a“God morgen.” And it is not because they don’t care about you, or are in a bad mood, but it is just because they don’t want to disturb you unnecessarily: what if you don’t want to get distracted from your inner world. The level of politeness when addressing a woman gradually fell from the Colombian“Mi reina!”, to the Chilean“Señora!”, to the Norwegian“Du!”, just because the language does not have any other words for this.

Having sorted out the everyday trifles, we began learning the language. We discovered that there is no such thing as a monolithic Norwegian language, but there are as many dialects as there are islands and villages in Norway, and even more than that. So after abandoning the hope to ever speak good Norwegian, we decided that our “Norwegian” is a specific dialect born in the two Russian-speaking offices.

Soon, Sasha’s son Leonid got admitted to our Institute’s PhD program, and moved to Bergen. So our family became a little bigger, and now we had two sons in Norway. Inter-estingly, Sasha and his son complemented each other perfectly: Sasha was a theoretician, more a professor than a craftsman, and Leonid’s engineering approach often saved Sasha in his domestic technical adventures. Often, Sasha would reach a dead-end, and looking puz-zled at a broken resistor, transistor or a lawn-mower, he would call Leonid and get useful