Detail, but I think this part here is slightly off:
> Fast forward to March 1998. Saint Petersburg. A cafe next to a canal. Hans is meeting a woman. Nina Sharanova. A mail-order bride.
According to his Wikipedia entry, Nina was the interpreter involved when he arranged to meet a mail-order bride:
> In 1998, while working in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Reiser reportedly arranged to meet a Russian woman he selected from a mail-order bride catalog.[15] Five months later, he married the pair's interpreter, Nina Sharanova (Russian: Нина Шаранова).[16]