I hadn't been home for almost a year, and everyone who accompanied me on my long journey remained in the dark about where I was or how I was. Believe it or not, people were not in the habit of writing on social networks about everything that was going on, and I didn't have money for iPhone 3G.

It's hard to draw an analogy with what I felt on the plane home, but I guess that's what a person feels like who hasn't been home for a year, and the whole city is waiting for him there with the keys to a new apartment with one room full of cash and a beautiful wife with children in the kitchen. Absolute happiness, filled with momentary bouts of uncontrollable tears of joy from everything you see.

I couldn't stop smiling and felt that, in the eyes of my environment, I was the one to climb Everest, fly to the moon and go down to the Mariana Trench. Everyone had a boring 9 months of routine life, but I managed to endure and give birth to a new life for myself. And even if I didn't have Magellanic plans for the coming years, I would still be so happy just to be able to see everyone and tell my story.

When I landed at 6 p.m., starting a storytelling for the greeters, on June 11, 2009, by 3 a.m., I had finished the current hour of my life. It was like a short retelling of a very large book. Pasha, who is currently creating a website for a new trip, was the very person who met me at the airport and was the first to hear this story. Before that, he and I had lived in the same apartment for 5 years, and I missed him as much as I missed my brother and family. After all, it was to him, sitting in the kitchen in our rented apartment, that I first told him that I wanted to give up everything and try to start a new life under sail in order to one day go around the world. And he was the first and only friend who said he believed in me and that he had never heard anything more exciting. When everyone else said: “Don't quit your job, you're well paid, you won't find one later, and you'll have to start from scratch.”

A couple of days later, I was already in my dad's kitchen in Petrozavodsk and told him everything from the beginning, by dinner at my grandmother's place, who raised me, and the story repeated itself. By evening, I got to the bar where I had 13 friends together, we ordered a beer for everyone, and I started my story for the fourth time. I must say that this was the moment of fame, because usually a table of 14 people makes a buzz for the whole place, and we sat in complete silence, where guys occasionally asked for a smoke break or use the toilet and asked us not to continue without them. The waiters were standing at the counter and also listening to my story, almost without being distracted by other tables. Deep after midnight, I visited my dad again and, falling asleep, kept telling him something.

I don't remember if I told you everything or if I missed the most important thing, but I remember everyone listening to me, and I was so clearly aware that I was in the very moment I should be in. And I'm living my own life, not someone else's, and this is just the beginning.

📸 dad's room in Petrozavodsk

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