This is a photo of my sister Irina Rozen, nee Kiselgof, who was a real beauty as a young girl, and my beloved daughter Olga Razumovskaya. It was taken at our dacha near Leningrad in the late 1950s, I think.
I remember that I was studying in the tenth grade, and they called me out of lessons, because my sister Irina was born, and I wasn’t happy about it. When Galina was born, I asked my parents to take her away, to take her back. They named one of my sisters after some woman called Galina, whom my father liked, as a young man – maybe, he had some secret love story, I don’t know exactly – and why they named my second sister Irina, I have no idea. My sisters went to another school, which was situated on Volkhovskoy Road.
I continue to communicate with my sister Irina. She is retired already, but she still works for the First Medical Institute: constructs different equipment, for example she made a tool to measure the composition of blood. There are quite a few such tools, but her tool is cheaper and more exact. People buy it with pleasure, even though there is no industrial production.
We are dacha neighbors. My daughter built this dacha not far from Gatchina, in Siverskaya. She started it ten years ago. The cottage looks nice; we have two verandahs, a kitchen, and a couple of rooms. In the upper story we have a stove, which is a fireplace at the same time. I like the nature around, these are interesting historical places, and here many noble families lived. The air is very clean, you can breathe it with pleasure, the river Orlinka is clean too and there are very many cranes in the neighborhood. We grow tomatoes, cucumbers and strawberries there. We plan to organize ecological tourist routes in this region, and I’m ready to provide excursions there, because I love those places.
Irina is very easy-going; it is easy to influence her. Her husband is an artist, and she is attached to him. They are very good hosts, they like guests, and they always have some company, even very ordinary ones, and some of their guests behave like they are homeless.
