Nina Yakovlina: At 85 she skis and speed skates and sleeps on her balcony

Yesterday I met a really extraordinary woman for an interview -- Nina Yakovlivna Averbuch. When I first walked into her apartment I thought I could be in a sweet little lodge in Maine or Oregon and the woman herself would fit in in Eugene or Portland, or even in Sedona, Arizona. She was anything but Soviet. The woman has never been married and insists on indepdendence in every way: she knits her own slippers and outfits, but you could never tell by looking at them. And what she made of her little apartment could really be a good example for all the people living in ugly clammy un-renovated Soviet wholes (as well as those living in European style" renovations with lots of gold and ornamentation and frills which post-Soviets seem to love so much now that they can. This woman lost her only brother on the front, and
both her parents were shot at Babi Yar just outside Kiev (one of the worst mass graves of the Holocost). But of all the people I've interviewed this woman was the only one that did not complain about anything. Not once did she say that she had a difficult life. Not once did she mention any sort of physical ailment. When an indoor skating rink openned last year in a suburb of Kiev she picked up the speed skates she hadn't used in 40 years and went down there. But when she saw the high price per hour of skating she asked if there was any sort of discount for veterans of the war. The woman behind the cashier asked surprised "YOU want to skate?" and then brought her to the head manager who offered her free skating privileges at all times at the rink. And she still goes skiing. She's travelled all over the world on her own in retirement, and she's been to more places than I in the US. Her friendly and open attitude has helped her make random friends in all these places (I'll hopefully be staying with one of them in Budapest). She was aparently some big-time engineer who came up with some new anti-corrosion techniques for underground radio communication for the Soviets. But looking at her apartment I thought she was an artist, not a scientist. This woman's creativity, optimism, and energy is really inspiring. She lives like my friends' parents in Park Slope but she's 85 and in Ukraine!