Russian trip, Part 1

I was really nervous the night before I flew to Moscow. My stomach was tied in knots at the thought of going to a country where I didn’t speak the language. And not only that, but I also don’t know the Cyrillic alphabet.

Chinese people kept insisting that I would be fine because “just speak English and you’ll be fine.” But I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be like that. Maybe it was because my couch surfing host told me that the cab drivers wouldn’t speak English, that the subway stops were only in Cyrillic, and had sent me the directions to her house in Russian, knowing full well that if I needed to ask for directions, they should be in Russian.  

I also had a feeling. Maybe it’s from my years in China. Of course they’re completely different countries. BUT the fact that they are both huge in land and population, relatively ethnocentrist, with a history of isolationist communism, gave me an inkling—the Russians were not going be fluent in English in the same way the Chinese can barely introduce themselves let alone help an illiterate foreigner navigate the subway.

My anxiety coursed through my veins as I imagined getting lost, abducted, and deported. But there was nothing I could do. After announcements in Chinese, Uyghur, Russian, and English, my plane was finally taking off and there was nothing I could do but plunge in head first. 

After a sleep-deprived and frantic week of proposal and conference paper writing, I slept almost the entire flight. I woke up disoriented and confused. Where was I? It would be good if I could keep sleeping forever and I’m pretty sure my legs don’t work anymore, I thought to myself.

I shook off the cobwebs of drowsiness and realized we had arrived in Moscow. My first impression of Russia and the Russian language was a nice plunge into the ice cold waters of a type of “we’re not in Kansas anymore” culture shock. We arrived at customs and there were signs in Russian and English over some of the lines: “Russian Citizens” and “Diplomats.” But there were no signs in English for “foreigners.” There was a petite Russian girl directing people in Russian to go to which line. She said something to me in Russian and pointed aggressively. I showed her my passport and my visa. She stared at me like I was the stupidest person in the world and pointed again, this time pointing more vigorously and with a raised voice and a nodding head. I had no idea what she was saying, but I lined up in one of the corridors without any English on it.

I’m sorry, but I just have to ask. If there is one place in the airport where you would need to have something in English, it would be the corridor at customs where the foreigners are supposed to go. Just saying.

So I walked up to the counter and the lady looked at me from above her reading glasses. “From?” She asked in English. “America!” I responded with a big smile, perhaps too cheerfully for her. She glared at me. “NO. Urumqi. NOT America,” she said looking at my plane ticket. She scoffed and rolled her eyes.

Oh. She meant which city I was flying in from. I thought she meant, where are you from. Sorrrrryyyyy.

My couch surfer had told me that the taxi should cost about 1200-1500 rubles. I got out of customs and was wondering around looking slightly confused and lost, when a group of men with official-looking name badges offer a taxi. I ask how much and they said, 8,750 rubles!!!!!!!! 8 times what it was supposed to cost. So I told them I only had 2000 rubles on me, and they said they’ll give me the special price of 7,000 rubles. WHAAAAAAAAT?

So I started walking towards the signs that say “public transportation” and one of the taxi drivers followed after me at a slight jog. “Wait, wait wait. How about 3,000 rubles?”

“I told you I only have 2000 rubles on me.”

“OK, then 2000 and 10 euros,” he says. I bet he gets a lot of foreigners that way.  

“No, I don’t have euros on me.”

“Ok, then 10 dollars.”

“No, I don’t have dollars on me.”

I had Chinese yuan on me though. I didn’t tell him this, however.

So finally he relented and I got the ride for 2000 rubles. The driver said something to me in Russian, but all I could do was respond and say, “Sorry, I don’t speak Russian.” He nodded and grunted in response when I show him the address my couchsurfer had sent me. He takes me straight there, and I listen to the audio version of “Brave New World” as we pass the city lights, gas stations, billboards, and hotels that line the highway we speed down.

After some wandering around the neighborhood and showing a couple people her address, I arrive at my host’s home. She is a very petite and cute girl with a short, curly dirty blond hair, and a warm, comfortable, clean 1-bedroom apartment. She pulls out her sofa bed in the couch, and shows me the bathroom and the kitchen. A luxury space for the next 3 nights. Her name is Tatiana.  

I ask her if she lived in the US, since her English is quite fluent. It turns out that after getting her MA in computer science, she did a 1-year internship in San Jose in California at a tech company and she is currently working from home with a cushy paycheck as a coder for a US tech company. She would be moving to Ukraine next month with her boyfriend and getting a cat.

How old are you?

24.

I nearly fell off my chair. 24??? I practically screamed. YOU’RE SO YOUNG.

She laughed. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way, she chuckled.

Indeed, youth is SO wasted on the young. (I say with sarcasm).

I was just totally floored of this total put together bilingual computer scientist with international experience, an MA, a live-in boyfriend, and a salaried job by 24. I’m still shocked as I’m writing this.

It was 2 am for me at that point, so I quickly went to sleep and slept for 8 hours. I pretty much died of comfort and happiness that night, I thought I would die with the luxury and comfort of a full night’s sleep with nothing on the agenda the next day.

The next morning, I woke up at 11 am my time (8 am Moscow time) and had fruit for breakfast, and like the workaholic that I am (You can trust that I would never let you down in that respect, my friends), I worked on my conference paper for the next 6 hours. Tatiana got up and also did work and made me amazing green tea from China. At 2 pm, we went on a walk in the park. It was cold, but I was prepared coming from Xinjiang: long underwear, hat and gloves, and I was set. She lives nearby an absolutely beautiful park with trees with the leaves changing, which we don’t really have in Urumqi (First because there aren’t that many trees and second, the leaves just turn brown and fall down in the course of one week because the weather changes so drastically).

We talked about stereotypes: she told me that Russians stereotype Americans as always fat and always smiling. And I said that Russians were always drinking vodka and always hating American capitalist democracy.

We walked along a huge lake, talking about politics: the crisis in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia, the US presidential election, gender inequality, and homophobia in our respective countries.

I relaxed the rest of the evening and I felt gluttonous with all the free time I had.

The next day, I worked on my paper a bit more, and I went out on a walk by myself in the afternoon, listening to Brave New World. On my way back, I stopped at what looked to be a somewhat high-end grocery store.

I’m not saying I live in poverty in Xinjiang, but the kind of lifestyle I choose to live in the neighborhood I choose to live in, I do not frequent super stores like Wal-Mart, and as a result, I only frequent the butchers and the fruit and vegetable markets where they sell nothing but meat, fruit and vegetables. You know, the essentials, the things that the doctors in the US tell us that we’re supposed to eat more of to avoid obesity and linked diseases… So when I walked into that grocery store, it was not a super store mind you, it was a small neighborhood grocery store, but its contents threw me into a shocked and mesmerized trance. Cheese, wine, beer, salmon, chips, crackers, sliced bread, lined the store in neat little packages. My mind was overwhelmed with choices, and also a desire to BUY ALL OF THE THINGS. It was this consumerist, deep instinctual desire to consume all of the pretty little packages, the luxuries I have not had access to in Xinjiang. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was a mixture of a deep desire, a deep longing, and self-pity to have denied myself these luxuries. The desire to consume was almost instinctual, and yet there was a confusion, my brain was overwhelmed by all of the choices, I could barely handle it and wanted to run screaming from the place. And it was also depressing, to think of consumerism and materialism as feeding on our human instincts, our insecurities, and our deep desire for luxurious and yet unnecessary goods that are only perpetuating our cycle of misery as humans to want, want, want, more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger is better. Why can’t we be happy with just fruit, vegetables, and meat? This is still mind boggling to me as I write.

So I left that store, and I went to the slightly cheaper and standard grocery store recommended by Tatiana. I was waiting in line when a guy started talking to me in Russian, but I had no idea what to say, and more embarrassingly, I didn’t know how to say, “sorry I don’t speak Russian.” The cashiers were also talking to me in Russian and I could barely muster out a “sposibo.” (thank you). So I went back to Tatiana’s and declared that I needed to learn Russian. And so began my adventure with learning Russian, the Cyrillic alphabet and a few necessary phrases, the one being the most important and the most used: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I don’t speak Russian.”

Never before had so many people approached me to ask for directions on the subway. I’m so used to be the obvious foreigner in China, that it was strange to me to have people look at me and not know that I wasn’t Russian. Three different people approached me asking for directions. And I could do nothing but stare back at them wide-eyed. It was time: I needed to memorize a few phrases. Here is a screenshot of the phrases I was practicing:

The next day, Tatiana and I went out to eat at a Ukrainian restaurant. We had dumplings with cabbage in them that were TO DIE FOR. I also had borscht (TO DIE FOR) and some chicken thing. I had no idea that beets and cabbage could be so amazing. 

I’m ashamed to admit that I never dared try borscht before because it looked and sounded weird. But it was heavenly. Lesson learned: never judge a soup by its name.  

We walked around the outside of the Kremlin and through Red Square, where Lenin’s body still rests, and the square was amazingly beautiful. Moscow as a whole is absolutely stunning and Tatiana took me on a walking tour of downtown Moscow: libraries, coffee shops, luxury brand shops, golden domed churches, Dunkin Donuts: Moscow had it all. Also, Russians are beautiful (though most of the girls were stick thin). I walked around staring with my jaw scraping the sidewalk.

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The next day, I headed to the conference, still struggling through the few Russian phrases I had memorized. I navigated my way through the subway and only got lost once. The subway was gorgeous: ornately decorated chandeliers and Christian-themed paintings lined many of the stations around the city center. 

(Not my photo, found this along with others on Google Images of "Moscow subway")