TOY CASTLE

— A lot of chocolate boxes had piled up and like a typical Russian – a hoarder – I couldn't bring myself to throw them away. I looked at them and thought, why not make a fortress? First I made a tower, since it was almost ready anyway – I made it from an empty cognac box. I cut it out, had a look at it, and then started to build beneath that tower. And then I started to build walls from other chocolate boxes (...) Well, Senka... he didn't ask for the fortress. When he saw it – at first just one tower, then another, then we started to make more. Our imagination started up and we made these battlements (...) Then he played with it a little bit, and then we were going to chuck it out because well, it was easy to do and had only taken a day to make, and then you could use it for a few days. But he fell in love with it and kept it, although there wasn't anything particularly interesting about it. He had lots of toy soldiers, very small ones... and Senka and I played with them. It was fun when you put them in the fortress. And then we started to shoot at them with rubber bands... right, Sen? You tied a little knot on one side, flicked the rubber band, shot at the soldiers hiding behind those defenses. Then we invented a drawbridge. Then a second gate was needed, because we wanted to have two gates (...) This all ended when those – what are they called? – Kindersurprises started to appear in the shops and those soldiers got placed on the back burner (...) We used different kinds of boxes: from Cognac, left over from birthdays, etc., and all kinds of "gifts" (...) I'm a surgeon by profession, and we don't get paid much. But that's not interesting, no need to get into that. These "gifts", they're payment for good work by our patients who think that our doctors need to be fed – since they're starving here.