NOTE #8 NO MAN´S LAND

Once again, I am sitting on the shore of the sea. Above me is a deep black sky, and below me are raindrops bouncing off the water, as if the sea were now the cloud from which it rains incessantly. I try it out and lie on my back to feel the warm drops directly on my face. Even the upside-down world is so beautiful. Sometimes even more beautiful. I think of the white summer nights in Karelia, when the sky is reflected so strangely in the silvery blue of the lakes that you no longer know where the earth ends and the sky begins. Back then, I also lay down on the earth with my eyes on the sky, waiting for a sunset that never came.

Karelia is an enchanted place full of myths and legends, which, like so many places on earth, has a turbulent past. There is a forty-kilometre-wide strip of no man's land inhabited only by bears, separating two ideological worlds. No man's lands hold a strong appeal for me, and Karelia, with its birch forests and silver-coloured lakes, is no exception. So, as a sixteen-year-old during my exchange year in Russia, I decided to search for this Karelian no man's land for fun, together with a Canadian friend. We took the night train from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, then on to Vyborg and hitchhiked – a Russian long-distance driver took us with a shake of his head – towards the north-west, towards the Finnish border. The closer we got, the denser the forests became. We didn't meet any civilians anymore, but now the lonely road was lined with Russian military personnel. Time seemed to have stood still here. It felt like the Cold War era.

When we reached the border, the Russian border guards waved the long-distance driver through without paying any attention to us girls. They already knew him and thought we were his daughters. But we hadn't thought our adventure through to the end because we hadn't expected to actually make it this far. So we suddenly found ourselves on the other side of the Russian border with a one-way visa that didn't allow us to return to Russia. Two stranded girls in no man's land. The Russian soldiers seemed at a loss and were completely overwhelmed. They had never had a case like ours before. After all, who travels to no man's land for fun? The longer we stood there, the more anxious we became. At some point, the Russian border officer in charge took pity on us and escorted us back to Russia in his military vehicle, dropping us off at the nearest Karelian village with a feigned stern expression and extracting a promise from us never to enter no man's land for fun again. Because there were only wild bears there and nothing else.
 
It's raining harder and harder, and I turn my face down because the rain is slowly becoming annoying. The sea is now back where it belongs, and everything else is very far away. I have visited Karelia and its silver lakes several times since, but I have never been back to no man's land. I have to keep my promise to the Russian officer.