Anna Z

It happened quickly as I thought it would.  No, Anna hasn't written me but if someone were to search for her name (in English anyway) this blog shows up on the first page of results.  No big thing, certainly, being that there's not much competition for "Anna Zareva" or "Anna Tsareva" on the search engines.  Of course if that's not her real name it will be very unlikely she'll type that into Google.  If it is maybe she will.  I have no idea what the average frequency is but I've got to believe most people type their own names into search engines from time to time.  We'll see if she does (and chooses to respond). 

Too much spare time perhaps.  I looked back at some of the emails I saved from Anna and they date back to 2002.  It really is foolishness to dwell on these old emails and I understand that.  It's not that I've thought of them or her constantly over the last five years (I haven't).  I do think she is special, though.

I read the other day of a man from Italy who also corresponded with Anna.  Apparently he came to some of the same conclusions.  He was certainly disappointed but more, I think, on losing a pen pal than any sort of love interest.  Perhaps if I locate her I'll forward her contact info to him as well, if it's ok with Anna.

I've been lucky enough to actually get help from a different "Anna Tsareva"!  I found her on Facebook and thought she might have been the girl from a few years ago.  She's been a great help and very nice!  As I can't read, write, or speak a word of Russian she's going to look around on some websites for me and see if she can find Anna.  Thank You Anna!

A few years ago I started a project that we can call "meet women online".  Match.com and Yahoo Personals were becoming big things and I thought "why not?".  Being that I treat a lot of things as "projects" of one sort or another I began this quest the same way by researching the various dating sites out there and seeing what they had to offer.  As part of that search I quickly bumped into what we can call Russian Women dating sites or Eastern Bloc Dating sites.  Somewhere in this process my quest went from mere curiosity to intent interest and "meet women online" became "meet Russian women online".  Thru this I met Anna.

To this day my email box fills with various messages from agencies, women, supposed scammers and whatnot that I have to believe originated with me putting my email address out into the Russian cold.  I haven't actually answered an ad or email in probably four years.  I remember the process growing old and boring after a few months.  What was the point, really, if I was never going to actually meet any of these women?

I did, however, take a trip to Central Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) in '04 that I have to credit at least partially to my initial curiosity with these Russian dating sites.  I even met one beautiful woman of Slovak origin who spoke Russian as a second language. Another woman (just as beautiful and the first one's friend and our translator) spoke Slovak, Czech, German and English.  Nothing much else came of my use of these sites though except, of course, that I "met" Anna.

Anna Tzareva (or Zareva) answered an ad I placed somewhere and wrote me much like all the others.  I don't remember what caused me to save her email but likely there was something funny or unusual in it.  What I do know is that by the second email I knew I was corresponding with someone interesting.  I also knew, of course, that the chances were high (probably 90% or better) that I was corresponding with a scammer but her emails were just too interesting to delete without reading.

A little time passed and I started going out here and there with someone local and the emails from Anna went ignored and soon stopped.  Then, in December, I got a "remember me?" type email that was so well written and genuinely funny that Anna's name and photo (as she sent it to me - no idea if it's really her) became embedded in my memory into one of those spots you can easily pull up years later, mostly without even thinking of her directly.

So it is today.  This time the memory jog was a movie review.  There is a new movie out called Juno that I have not seen yet written by one Diablo Cody that somehow instantly brought Anna to mind.  I don't think it had anything to do with the movie itself but more Diablo's own story.  Much as Ms Cody went from being a stripper to a writer I see Anna not as a scammer but an extremely talented writer.  It is this Anna (the brain) that I intend to find.  Thus this website.