Angels in the Underground: Tales from Russia

     I can think of several reasons why Russia does not make a good destination for a brief stop over.  To start with, getting a Russian visa is only slightly less complicated than figuring out your own taxes and generally costs a little more.  The weather is notoriously frigid; crime is notoriously high; and before you go, you will most likely feel obligated to read one of those Russian novels slightly thicker than the Bible so that you do not seem the uncultured oaf. 

     What is worse, if you do manage to overcome the anxiety and red tape associated with a visit to Russia, you may then be faced with the daunting reality of actually arriving in Moscow and trying to adjust quick enough to enjoy yourself a little before you leave.  Which is exactly where I found myself one cold night.

     My road to Russia had started as a trip to Nepal.  I had planned a trekking holiday in the Everest region of the Himalayas and had gone to my travel agent, Abra, to purchase my plane ticket.  The cheapest flight at the time was on the Russian national airline, Aeroflot.  Through Moscow.  Abra was on the phone with Aeroflot making the reservation when I came up with the divinely inspired idea of a stop over.  I asked If I could stop in Moscow.  Yes I could.  Great!  I told her to give me five days.  That would give me plenty of time to take in the onion domes, ballet, and Lenin’s pasty corpse.  Abra chuckled a little but said nothing.

     Abra should have explained to me that the problem presented to the traveler briefly passing through Russia, is that the country is something like a geode.  To the untrained eye, it is gray, abrasive, ugly.  It takes a certain amount of skill to recognize and find beauty there, but when you finally do, it is all the more impressive for coming in such a hard place.  It is very difficult to learn how to spot geodes in five days.  Fortunately for me, before my time in Russia, which I split between Moscow and St. Petersburg, was over, I found one.

     It should be obvious to anyone who has ever flown into Russia that there is something special about the place.  When the wheels of the plane touched down on Russian soil, the Russian passengers burst into applause.  And I don’t mean a dainty little tapping the finger tips to the palms clapping.  It was a roar the likes of which I have never experienced outside of a sporting arena.  These people were seriously happy to be back in the Motherland. 

     At first I thought maybe they were just happy to be on the ground and alive.  Before the flight took off the pilot was out in the lobby at Heathrow Airport in London asking passengers to take his picture in front of a statue in the waiting area.  This was his maiden voyage as the head pilot.  Great!  The flight has been characterized by rough air and culminated in what seemed to me to be an outright nose dive to the runway.  At least twice on the flight I was sure the plane was going down and it was only through a supreme force of will I did not scream something to the effect of “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!”

     But we did not die, and furthermore, none of the Russians seemed to appreciate or even notice that we had all come through a very trying near death experience.  They were completely unperturbed by the flight.  Which made their ovation at touching down truly exceptional.  I learned on subsequent flights that Russians cheer any time they come back home.  A Russian returning from a tropical vacation to the frigid February temperatures and permanently gray skies of Moscow will applaud wildly at touchdown.     

     I found out shortly that the tumultuous excitement of the flight into Moscow is a necessary evil.  Had the flight not dulled my senses by overdosing me with adrenaline, I am sure that the taxi ride into the city would have killed me.  As soon as you step beyond the customs gate, a writhing mass of taxi drivers the likes of which I have not seen outside Asia assaults you.  I picked one of the men screaming “taxi!” at me, and we negotiated a price.  I had originally planned on taking a bus in, but it was 10 pm and  I was in no mood to try and decipher a bus schedule.  I decided to splurge on the taxi but promised myself I would figure out how to get back to the airport on the bus.

     My driver’s name was Victor.  Victor and I headed out the terminal into the ... snow!  It was early November and I was coming to Russia from having spent the better part of the previous month in southern Europe.  The cold hit me like the proverbial slap in the face, and while I staggered with shock, bracing myself against the frigid wind, Victor plowed on into the night.  As I chased after him I got to take a good look at him.  He was slightly smaller than a huge bear.  As I was admiring the girth of his forearms, I noticed we were heading not into the line of parked taxis, but into the parking for passengers.  I had read in my guide book that many Russians try to pick up a little extra cash by acting as drivers from the airport.  As far as the guidebook author knew, none of the drivers had ever taken a tourist to a shady corner, hit him over the head, stolen all his belongings, and left him naked to freeze in a harsh Russian November winter storm.  But it could happen.  My only hope in a fight against Victor should he decided to pummel me, would be to hope that some of my blood splashed into his eyes and blinded him long enough for me to run away screaming.  On the other hand, if Victor was just a hard working guy trying to make ends meet, what kind of a representative of America would I be if I said “sorry, I can’t ride with you because you might be a thief.” 

     Before I could decide which was the better course to take, Victor reached his car, threw my backpack into the trunk, and fired up the engine.  My bag was now a hostage.  I got into the front seat.

     But fearing that Victor might bludgeon me in a dark, cold part of Moscow turned out not to be the scariest part of the trip.  In fact, Victor did try to kill me, but not in the way that I feared.  Instead he tried to do me in by car crash.  We raced out of the airport at a little over 120 kilometers per hour.  The snow was falling in big soft flakes and there was a good inch of accumulation on the street.  Victor zigzagged, skidded, and weaved.  Victor honked, cursed, and gestured. When a bus blocked Victor’s path and forced him to slow down, he swerved over and with two wheels on the sidewalk, he passed the bus with his horn blazing.  I came very close to diving for cover under the seat, but I was still not sure if Victor’s intentions were to take me to my hotel or to rob me.  I figured if he was undecided himself, a show of cowardice on my part would only encourage him that I was an easy target.  I played it cool.  Most importantly, I managed to not throw up.

     Victor turned out to be a man of his word.  He took me right to the address that I had given him and dropped me off there.  Which is to say he dropped me off in the middle of a deserted neighborhood.  Dark and Quiet.  There was no sign for the hotel.

     I spent several minutes wondering whether I should be panicking or not.  I was entirely alone with no sign of shelter anywhere, shivering and trying to tighten my coat under my chin so snowflakes would stop dropping down the back of my neck.  However, my entire trip into Russia thus far had been one near disaster after another and no bodily harm had yet been done to me.  All things considered, I remained in an optimistic mood. 

     Until I found the hotel. 

     After wandering about for a good ten minutes more or less doing laps around the same dark, empty block to see if anything new would miraculously appear, something did.  I noticed a tiny little sign next to an extremely large door.  On the sign was written the name of the hotel that my guide book had assured me was the closest thing to a hostel to be found in Moscow.  A good deal more was written under the name which I could not read.  But I could read the set of numbers written there: 9:00-22:00.  I looked at my watch.  It was almost 11pm, also known as 22:50.  My hotel was closed.  Panic.

     After pounding a little on the door whose medieval proportions swallowed up my puny knocks and crushed any vague hopes I had that someone would hear me knocking and give me a place to stay, I was forced to turn to more practical matters.  I really had to urinate.

     I quickly resigned myself to the fact that I was going to end up spending the night somewhere in the Moscow subway system and decided that I would most likely survive the ordeal, but I was not willing to do so after wetting myself.  Worried that any Russian police officer that might come along and find a somewhat frazzled Yank peeing on the sidewalk might not look too kindly on me, I walked around to the darkest, most hidden corner of the hotel.  There was a pitch black alcove there, and I stepped in to do my business.  As I was about to defile Muscovite soil for the first time, I noticed that there was a door and a sign in the very back of the alcove.  On the sign were clearly written these numbers: 22:00-9:00.  I quickly zipped up and reached out to turn the knob.  It opened.  Five minutes later I was filling out paperwork in a lobby, and half an hour later I was deep in slumber not in the subway, but in a small, simple room.

     Moscow is famous for its subways.  People come from all over the world just to ride them.  Or so most of the Russians I met told me.  It is true that Moscow has by far the best subterranean public transportation architecture I have ever seen.  Marble floors.  Frescos.  Mosaics.  Sculptures.  And absolutely no graffiti.  The Russians do not want anything to detract from the aesthetic beauty of their subway.  And that includes any useful distraction like say, signs telling you the name of the terminal you are in. 

     In most subway systems I have been in throughout the world, signs with the name of the station occur about every 20 meters or so for the length of the platform.  Not in Moscow.  The name of the station is written once or maybe twice on the wall of the station on the opposite side of the tracks from the waiting area.  This may make for a pleasing atmosphere while you are privileged to stand in such a grand environment to wait for your train, but when you are riding the train and want to know trivial information such as where the hell you are, it is my personal opinion that it is better to have at least a few signs hanging where you can see them from inside the train.

     The upside to this practice however, is it gives you great incentive to learn to quickly read the Cyrillic alphabet.  Chances are, the name of the station you were passing through will either go racing by you on the wall before you have stopped, or racing by as the train speeds out of the station.  A few times I was lucky enough to happen to be in the car that stopped right in front of this vital piece of information, but not often.  If you can’t read Cyrillic at thirty miles per hour before you come to Russia, you will be able to after you leave.

     Or you can do what I often did and figure out the number of stops you are riding and count them off on your fingers as you go.  This worked quite well for me and actually only brought a minimum of strange looks from the Muscovites.

     But the confusion does not end with the subway ride.  The first morning I was in Russia I thrashed my way through the subway in an attempt to get to Red Square.  Walking up the stairs to the street again, I caught glimpses of the square across the street from where I was.  The colorful onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the emblem of Moscow, teased me, showing glimpses of red here and there through the buildings around the subway station.  I grew excited as I realized that there was only one thing standing between me and one of the most impressive expansions of urban scenery in the world: a big street. 

     No problem though, I have crossed thousands of streets in my life.  I looked around for a crosswalk.  No crosswalk.  I looked for a stop light.  No stop light.  How could there be no stop lights?  A fairly steady flow of heavy traffic raced through the city without a pause.  It was as if Fifth Avenue in New York had become a freeway with no way across it.  Fortunately for me, I am an extremely talented jay walker so I just waited for a little lull in the traffic and set out. 

     I hadn’t taken more than three steps out from the curb when I heard the shrill blow of a whistle.  On the other side of the road was a traffic cop blowing his whistle at me and waving me back.  Failure.

     I walked up the street.  I walked down the street.  There were people on the other side so I knew there had to be some way to get there.  I went back down into the subway to see if I could find a way out on the other side.  I couldn’t.  I sat down and rested for a little while.  In my consternation I must have been putting on quite a show for the locals because eventually, an older man walked up to me, and saying nothing, he pointed to a staircase descending beneath the street about three blocks away.  He made it clear to me in gestures that even a slightly mentally challenged foreigner could understand, that if I went down those stairs I would find my way across the street.  I thanked him profusely and ran off.  Indeed the stairs led to an underground passage.  At long last I had found the conduit.  I could now cross the street.  What a feeling of freedom!

     For two days I bounced around Moscow.  I gaped at Red Square.  I toured the Kremlin.  I studied the pallid figure that may or may not be the actual corpse of Lenin.  I went to the Bolshoy Theater.  I visited museums.  I showed my passport and visa to every machinegun toting cop in the city.  Some of what I saw was wonderful.  Some was frightening.  Some was sad.  But after two day I was ready for a little change of scenery.  My intent was to ride the night train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, spend two days in St. Pete’s, then take the night train back to Moscow to catch my flight on to Nepal. 

     I think in the Soviet days there was a something along the lines of a Department of Creating Incomprehensible Bureaucracy.  These people developed the system for selling train tickets to foreigners that is still in existence.  It works a little something like this:  First you go to person A and get documents 431 and 678.  You then fill out the top third of document 431 and deliver it to person B between the hours of 8:09 and 10:13.  You then fill out the bottom third of document 687 and take it to person C who will put a little stamp on the bottom after getting a passport photo, blood test, and three letters of reference from you.  You must then fold document 687 into a perfect origami likeness of Catherine the Great and show it to person D who will then arbitrarily decide if you will be allowed to get on the train or not.  Small mistakes you might make in this process will subject you to the snickering and mocking of the agents you are dealing with.  Large mistakes subject you to having to start all over again.

     But against all odds, I managed to get this entire process completed in about two frantic and frustrating hours.  The train was to leave at about 10pm, so after I had dinner I decided to just go and wait at the train station.  My guide book told me that the trains to St. Pete’s all left from Bellaruska Station.  So I went down into the subway and opened up my map so I could count how many stops were between me and Bellaruska.  And that is when I met my angel.

     “Excuse me,” my angel said in the heavy but very understandable Russian accent, “Maybe if you speak English I can help you find something.”  My angel’s name would turn out to be Boris.  Boris was probably in his late thirties.  He had the typical Russian garb on: various shades of gray.  His hair was a little disheveled and he was a bit scruffy about the jaw.  But the very first thing I noticed about Boris was that he must have been almost entirely blind.  He was wearing a pair of eye glasses that were at least a centimeter think.  He also looked as though he had been in a serious fight in the not too distant past.  Both of his eyes had been blackened and he had a long, ragged gash arcing across his forehead.

     I told him I was looking for the train to Bellaruska Station, and he told me I was in the right place.  I then happened to mention that I was headed to St. Petersburg.  “Then why do you want to go to Bellaruska?”  I told him my guidebook told me that was the station that I needed to go to in order to get my train.  In not so many words he told me that the guide was full of crap.  He offered to take me to the proper station.

     Decision time.  Just as when I had taken the ride in Victor’s cab, stories about the terrible crime in post-Soviet  Russia flowed unbidden to my imagination.  Was this some kind of trick to get me alone and then rob me?  Maybe.  But far from being the intimidating presence that Victor was, Boris was small, slightly sickly, and above all else blind.  While I was deliberating, he had my guide book about two inches from his face squinting so hard to read it that watching him was enough to make my cheek muscles cramp with empathy.  I figured even if this guy had a gun, he wouldn’t be able to hit me, so I accepted his offer to guide me to the proper station. 

     Boris became my guide and my angel.  If I had not accepted his help not only would I have been in the entirely wrong part of the city to catch my train, my impressions of Russia would have been ugly urban landscapes, harassing cops, and bad food.  Instead most of my impressions of Russia were formed in the next couple of hours talking to Boris.

     Boris had been born in Dushanbe, the capital of the newly formed Republic of Tajikistan.  He had been married and had a son.  When his son was one year old, Boris was exiled from the Soviet Union for reasons that he did not seem in a hurry to explain to me and I didn’t push him too much.  He had been granted temporary asylum in Austria where he stayed for six months and then permanent asylum in the United States.  He had lived and worked in Washington DC for six years when his exile was lifted and he was allowed to return home. 

     Boris, I am sure was not one of those Russians who cheers when a plane he is on touches down in the country.  He would have liked to remain in the United States, but his family had not accompanied him and he missed them very much.  He returned to his native home of Tajikistan which had been thrown into a Hobbsian nightmare of infighting between local warlords after the Soviet withdraw.  There Boris had worked as a relief worker.

     Boris had stories that would curl your toes of the things he had seen in Tajikistan.  He spun tales for me of kidnappings, explosions, and street fights that were hard to believe.  Indeed I probably would have been very skeptical of such stories had he not shown me hideous scars to back up his claims. 

     Boris had been kidnapped and held hostage twice by different warlords.  The last time, he had been released after being hit in the back of the head by a piece of shrapnel.  He showed me the scar while trying to convey to me the extreme pain that he had suffered which was only dimmed by a sea of Vodka.  The pain was gone now, but the wound to his head had damaged his vision, leaving him nearly blind.

     Recently the building in which his offices were set up was bombed.  In the blast he had been thrown and broken his nose which had resulted in the two black eyes that I had observed.  With his headquarters destroyed, Boris’ relief efforts were put to an end, and he returned to Moscow with two families he also managed to bring out of the battle zone.

     Boris told me all of this in a little pizza shop next to the train station.  He sat there with me for several hours waiting on the train.  He told me about Tajikistan and the clumsy efforts of international attempts to relieve the suffering there.  We talked about Russia and America and the future.  And while Boris himself outwardly showed little affection for Russia, he was genuinely concerned that I found what was good in her.  He gave me advice on what to do in St. Petersburg and taught me a few important phrases in Russian. 

     And he saved my butt.  Twice.  The first time he saved me was when he convinced me that I was headed to the wrong train station for a trip to St. Petersburg.  The second time came shortly before the train was to leave.  Boris walked me to the right section of the train, but when I tried to board, the conductor refused to let me on.  Apparently I had missed a crucial step in the ticket acquisition process that none of the agents had informed me of.  I lacked a simple piece of paper that was necessary for all foreigners to ride the train.  Before I had the time to panic, Boris yelled something that sounded distinctly unflattering in Russian at the conductor, grabbed me by the arm and ran off toward the ticket window.  The long line of Russians standing at the window didn’t slow Boris down one bit.  He pushed them all out of the way, yelled at the ticket agent while pointing to me and waving my tickets in her face.  The crucial slip of paper was immediately produced and soon I was saying goodbye to Boris and settling into my bunk for the trip.

     Had Boris not been there, I would not have even been able to determine the problem much less get it taken care of in time to not miss the train.  Boris had saved the day again.

     As we said farewell, Boris did ask me for a little money to help support the families he had brought back from Tajikistan, and I gladly gave him some.  Was there really such a family?  Who knows?  But as far as I am concerned, the money I gave to Boris was well earned.  He had guided me through the totally incomprehensible intricacies of the Russian rail system, gone out of his way to sit and talk with me, befriended me.  But most importantly, Boris left me with the impression that Russia is full of such people.  If in spending a few days in Russia I managed to bump into such a person, they must be all over.