MOSCOW — I had been feeling a little down over the weekend in Budapest, where I spent over half of my life, for no obvious reason. But as the airplane touched down in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, I was overwhelmed almost at the same instant by feelings of joy, optimism and excitement about coming back home.

This is considering that I am not a Muscovite by birth and never even lived a day in this city until 10 months ago.

It is a city where the climate is too grim, the prices are too high and the people are too rude, but also a city with which I am intimately bound by a common language, culture and history.

It occurred to me all of a sudden that I had been living abroad for over 20 years of my life — for most of my life, really.