"My sudden love affair with Aitmatov nearly made me flunk my German exam in tenth grade. 'Heroes of Our Everyday Socialist Life' was to be the topic of our written compositions. I wrote an essay about Aitmatov’s novel The Place of the Skull. [My German teacher] managed to save me from flunking. But Aitmatov saved
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"In history class, I single-handedly denigrated the Soviet Union. We were sitting with our textbooks open. I felt bored. There was a photo of Lenin on the page. With my ballpoint pen, I drew Lenin an earring and a Mohican haircut... Forty years earlier in Thuringia, a schoolgirl had adorned a portrait of Stalin with
MorePart II of this five-part series depicts the beginning of the accidental pen-pal relationship between Diana growing up in the GDR and a girl growing up in the Soviet Union - the pivot of the whole story. We welcome readers to share their transnational cultural experiences with us, as well.
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Our LoveLy love columnist and I attended the LivelyriX open-air poetry slam at Leipzig's Panometer last week and had a very fun time; she wrote about it, I photographed, and you can see the result of our collaboration here.
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