There are many items I have inherited from my parents which I have no idea what to do with. Are they worth anything? Do I sell them? If they are worth nothing, do I donate them? And if the latter, who to? Today’s post was prompted by a post on
Today I remembered yet another box full of documents and papers which I had put away for sorting. Most of it is loose pieces of paper on which my grandmother, Olga Woronoff, had written notes and stories. Some of them are in English, a fair bit in Russian. The vast
As I have mentioned before, my father learnt Latvian, English, German and French at high school and also knew a smattering of Russian. As a Baltic-German who did his schooling in Latvia, it is not a great leap to presume he spoke German at home and Latvian within the wider
If I were ever granted three wishes, my first would be to understand every language in the world because I would then be able to comprehend all of the family history documents I have inherited. Not that I would need to know more than German, Russian, French and Latvian, but
If I could turn back time… I would go back to the time just before I was born. Those couple of months just before the birth of their first, and ultimately only, child when my parents were presumably discussing how they would bring me up. I would try to infiltrate
I have no system yet for sorting through the many photographs, documents and letters I have inherited from both sides of my family. Much of the time I cannot even read them as they are written in either Russian or German. Sometimes, when I pass them onto translators, even native