Traveling was always in my blood. I used every opportunity to see a new place. It did not matter much if it only was a suburb of my hometown of Saint Petersburg or an ordinary provincial Soviet town. I could wander with no purpose or plan in mind in an unfamiliar place for hours absorbing its atmosphere and trying to imprint details into my memory. A place may not have had distinctive features. Still, I kept going believing that this would change and I would come upon something exciting. What would I see if I turned that corner or climbed that hill? Would I stumble upon an unforgettable encounter or experience or a stunningly beautiful view? Quite often my wanderings were not rewarding. Their only result was aching legs. Nevertheless, one disappointing trip did not stop me from taking another. I was sure adventures awaited me and sometimes they did. Successful trips naturally encouraged me to travel even more.
My dream job at the age of 6 was to become a geologist. Geologists were the people who’d go to uncharted territories, explore and map them. What could be better than that! I also knew that it was a tough job and that I needed to prepare myself for it. The only area that I was allowed to explore then was a small park behind our apartment building. My family had no time to take me there, but they let me go to the park by myself. I climbed mounds of packed snow in the park imaging that they were mountains until my grandma would come looking for me. As I was growing I added to my “fitness routine” reading books on geology. Things changed in high school where we had classes on programming. Writing the code turned out to be even more exciting than the rocks. I got a degree in application development and I also learned that non-geologists could travel too.
One thing that I always knew was that my trips would be limited by the boundaries of the Soviet Union. Going to another country was not possible for me. Soviet citizens were not permitted to go abroad to see the world out of the fear that they would not return. I accepted restrictions on foreign travel as an immutable law of life and did not question them. The territory of the Soviet Union was enormous. I could easily spend my life roaming the vast expanses of my Motherland and never visit the same place twice. At the same time, no restrictions could stop me from dreaming about destinations far beyond the borders of the USSR.
As a child, I collected stamps. Country names on them quickened my imagination. I studied images of magnificent buildings the architecture of those looked so different from what was around me. Natural attractions like the Niagara Falls were so remote and unattainable that they might as well be located on Mars. ‘I will never, never see these wonderful places,’ thought I. My other passion was maps. I could sit with a map on my lap for hours. Maps were mysteries that begged to be solved. Maps were filled with adventure. I traced with my finger thin red lines that marked roads and imagined myself traveling them.
I did get to travel in the European part of the Soviet Union early in my life. My parents divorced when I was seven. 
Since then almost every school break I was sent away from home. Mom needed time for her personal life. As a single mother, she was eligible for free all-inclusive packages for her child to stay at a pioneer camp or to go on a tour. This was one of the benefits of the Soviet state. Mom always applied for these packages and often got them, although sometimes I begged to let me stay home alone rather than to go to a boring camp with strict discipline and little fun. Strange, but even unwanted trips reinforced my desire to travel.
In 1992 at the age of 36, I left Russia and immigrated to Australia. A few years later I started to travel in earnest. During one of the trips, I met my husband who also loves traveling. We married in 2001 and I moved to Colorado, USA to live with him. We travel together and take solo trips too. The frequency of my trips seems to increase as I get older. In December 2016 I quit my full-time office job and now have all the time in the world to see it.
Yours,
Natalia