Cuban emigrant adapts to life in Siberia

A Russian couple spent tens of thousands of rubles to take home a stray dog they found while vacationing in Cuba, the newspaper Vesti Novosibirsk reported Thursday (April 16).

Olga Serikova and her husband, Vadim Veselovsky, were spending their vacation in Varadero, where they befriended a homeless mutt outside their hotel. At first, they gave it food from their table; later, they started to order a plate especially for him — “individual portions of chicken,” Serikova said.

The dog apparently liked both the food and his benefactors. “As soon as he heard us speaking in Russian, he would run toward us,” she told the newspaper.

The couple fell in love with the animal and, as their vacation neared an end, they decided to take it home with them. The Cuban authorities cooperated fully, providing vaccination certificates and other documentation. Other Russian tourists helped them care for the dog before and during the two-day trip to Novosibirsk.

It was an expensive and time-consuming proposition, but to Olga and Vadim it was a labor of love.

The émigré made a successful transition from the tropical heat to the Siberian cold in less than a month. On a diet that included borscht and tolchenki (potato patties) he soon gained weight, his new owners say. They named him Kuba.

Veselovsky says that he sometimes asks the dog, “Kuba, would you like to go back to Varadero?” The dog stiffens, Veselovsky says, as if to say, “And cross the ocean again? No, I don’t want to.”

The city of Novosibirsk is in southwestern Siberia. It is Russia’s third-largest city, after Moscow and St. Petersburg.