WATERVILLE — Natalia Verkhovtseva stood inside the Maine Made & More Shop downtown Tuesday, a smile spreading across her face.

The 45-year-old supermarket director, who lives in Waterville’s sister city of Kotlas, Russia, said on her first visit to the United States that she loves being in Maine.

A group from Kotlas, Russia, sister city to Waterville, crosses the Two-Cent Bridge during their tour of the city Tuesday. The group arrived Friday and will leave later this week. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel

Members of the Kotlas delegation say the people of Maine have been their favorite part of their visit. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel

KotlasMayor Andrei Bral’nin sits in Waterville Mayor Nick Isgro’s seat in council chambers during a tour of Waterville. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel

Russian interpreter Sheila McCarthy, gesturing, speaks to the visitors. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel

The homes here are lovely, Verkhovtseva said through interpreter Sheila McCarthy.

“She likes very much the nature she sees – the flowers on the streets and in the parks and how people tend the gardens at their homes,” McCarthy said. “But the most important thing is that she loves the people.”

McCarthy, a retired Colby College Russian literature and language professor, interpreted throughout the day as six Russians from Kotlas toured the city. They visited the Two-Cent Bridge at Head of Falls, City Hall and the downtown before having lunch at Cancun restaurant and touring the Hathaway Creative Center.

They also were to meet the public at an afternoon reception at Waterville Public Library.

The Russians, all members of Kotlas’ city government – or duma – are in Waterville and touring Maine as part of a continuing sister city relationship that includes a 25-year exchange of friendship, culture and education.

Kotlas Mayor Andrei Bral’nin, 41, is the only Russian on this trip who has been to Maine before – this is his fourth trip – and he is staying with Gov. Paul LePage at the Blaine House in Augusta. When LePage was Waterville mayor, he traveled to Kotlas and has been to that city twice.

Martha Coury Patterson, with whom Verkhovtseva is staying, greeted the Russians at her Waterville home Friday night when they arrived from New York City, and Gov. LePage showed up to greet them also, Patterson said. The Russians have visited Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, shopped at L.L. Bean in Freeport and, on Monday, toured the Legislature with Rep. Thomas R.W. Longstaff, D-Waterville. They also spent about three hours with the governor, who hosted a tea at the Blaine House, gave the Russians a tour of the residence and his office and talked at length about the history of Maine governors, according to Sister City Connection member Mark Fisher. Fisher, an Oakland town councilor, is hosting Maxim Dmitriev, a car dealer in Kotlas.

Kimberly Lindlof, president and chief executive officer of the Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce, led Tuesday’s tour of downtown and explained that the Two-Cent Bridge is the oldest wire suspension bridge in the U.S.

The delegation walked across the bridge to Winslow. McCarthy pointed south to the Hathaway Creative Center as they were in the middle of the bridge, explaining that while it has been tough getting retail businesses into the former shirt factory, the offices are booming and there is a waiting list for the living spaces on the upper floors. Developer Paul Boghossian is planning to develop the other two buildings in the Hathaway complex, McCarthy said.

Bral’nin recalled visiting the former shirt factory when it was vacant.

“I remember when I was here first, these whole buildings are clear,” he said, referring to the three buildings.

Bral’nin said this is his second visit to the Blaine House.

“It’s very proud for me to stay in this house because I know a lot of Maine people haven’t been in this house,” he said.

Peter Garrett, a founding member of the Sister City Connection and Kennebec Messalonsksee Trails, explained the trail system, which he was to introduce to the Russians later in the day.

Inside City Hall, Garrett showed them the mayoral portraits that line the lobby’s upper walls, pointing to former Mayor David Bernier.

“He signed the (sister city) agreement in 1990,” Garrett said. “Mayor Ann Hill signed the first letter that went to Kotlas.”

The Russians visited Mayor Nick Isgro’s office and spoke with his and City Manager Michael Roy’s executive assistant, Amanda Esler. Roy is on vacation this week. The delegation was to have dinner with Isgro at Joseph’s Fireside Steakhouse Tuesday evening.

McCarthy said that the sister city relationship was germinated many years ago when Natalia Kempers, a Russian who worked at Colby College’s Miller Library, sent a postcard to the city of Kotlas, addressing it merely to the people of that city.

The postcard landed in the Kotlas mayor’s office, and the mayor knew a stamp collector who would be interested in the pretty stamps on the postcard, so he gave it to him, McCarthy said.

“The stamp collector answered (Kempers’ note), and he was in the first group of Russians who came here in 1990,” she said.

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