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MrNatch3L |
This week was something of a milestone of my wife and me. Over the past 3 years we had become good friends with Patrick and Ilona. Patrick was the acting Consul General of Switzerland when we first met, and has held down the #2 spot in the consulate for the past year or so. He is of Italian lineage from the Ticino region of Switzerland, and his wife Ilona is from Riga, Latvia. So we had one thing in common right off the bat - another international couple. I think they are the first couple that we became friends with as a couple and which were not previously known by one spouse or the other.
It's nice to think we were brought together by music. Well, by a musician, actually - my jazz pianist friend Lynn Hilton. Together we explored the St. Petersburg restaurant scene which really blossomed during the years they were here. We took in some nice concerts, and did a few nice excursions out of town as well, including the ill-fated one that pretty much totaled our 9 month old car a few weeks ago. We all walked away from that which is the important thing. The rest we can deal with eventually.
Well, the thing about getting to be friends with foreign diplomats is that they don't get to stay in one place for more than a few years. We knew right from the start that the day would come when our friends would move on. Yesterday that day arrived and they flew the coop. We had a nice send off dinner at The Other Side Wednesday night, where enough of Patrick's favorite local Nevskoye beer flowed that we got to see his sentimental Italian side, which was great. Usually he is the very straight-ahead Swiss diplomat. And so a little past midnight, on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Bolshaya Konyushenaya, we said good-bye. And "Do svidanya". And "ciao bello". And "au revoir". And "auf wiedersehn". Gad those Swiss speak a lot of languages!
Well all is not sad and gloomy. Their next posting is in Athens! So once they have a chance to learn their way around, we have a standing invite to visit them there. One more place i would probably never think to go but will now have a good reason to. The guys are also building a house outside Riga and I'm sure sooner or later we'll visit them there. It's a little closer to St. Petersburg and according to my wife who has been there, it's a charming town. It'll be nice to see it in the company of a native person.
So I guess we have chalked up another experience typical of Life - some happiness mixed with some sadness. As Walter Cronkite used to say, "that's the way it is".
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