My First Trip to Moscow

            I broke the process of getting to Moscow into steps.

            Getting dressed?  I could do that.  I did that every (okay most) days.

            Leaving the apartment?  It was a simple matter of opening the door and closing it behind me.

            Walking to the bus stop?  It wasn’t so far.  A ten minute walk maybe.  I like walks!

            Getting on a bus?

            My chest seized up.  One step too far.

            I don’t speak Russian?  What if they speak to me in Russian?  And then the metro!  What if I get lost?!  I mean, obviously I’ll get lost!  It’s me!

            I moved back a few steps and focused on changing my minimal sleeping clothes for something more appropriate.

            I wanted a day pass for the Moscow Metro.  This is something the website (  http://engl.mosmetro.ru/pages/page_0.php?id_page=8  ) promised me existed.  But I had no idea how to ask for this in Russian.  I had emailed a Russian-speaking friend as well as my head teacher asking what I could say to convey this.  But that was the night before and no one had responded, and my Russian skills were limited to the swear words that my boyfriend would yell out and the swear words some classmates had taught me to say back to him.

            My body froze with my dress still half unzipped and an arm positioned awkwardly over my head in the process of remedying that.  I knew the word for one.  I knew the word for day.  Leaving my dress open in the back I bolted for my small Russian phrasebook to double check these words.  Even if they weren’t grammatically correct, surely saying “one” and “day” to the woman selling tickets for which they had a one day option would understand.  Suddenly all the steps in my process seemed manageable.

            Was playing “Eye of the Tiger” not appropriate as celebration?  Too much?

            Well I played it anyway, only then finishing zipping up my dress and running to put on a bit of make-up.

            Volume up full blast, my email chimed happily and I skipped over to check it, restarting the song as I did so.

            It was my head teacher.

            He said he didn’t know how to ask for a day pass in Russian.  He said that I had lost.  That the other teacher who had arrived had already been to Moscow and he had only been in Russian for one day.

            My mood soured and I shut off the music.

            Now unhappily, I packed up the rest of my things and headed for the door.

            Stupid other teachers. 

            I waited no more than fifteen seconds once reaching the bus stop before the bus arrived.  I filed in behind the other passengers and watched them pass of their money and quickly take their seats.  But something about me apparently seemed off.  I handed the bus driver my money.  He looked at that note and then up at me.

            Don’t… I thought.  Please don’t…

            But he did.  He started to speak to me in Russian.

            My eyes widened and my mouth fell open.  “Uh…” was the response that I summoned.

            He stared back at me, but with a slightly more exasperated look.

            My eyes darted into the bus as though I would find help there, but I realized the absurdity of that idea.  I returned my gaze to the still-waiting bus driver.  “I don’t speak Russian…” I said in Russian.

            So of course, he repeated what he had said in Russian.

            Seeing that my admission of ignorance had done no good I could only shrug and shake my head.  “Uh…” I repeated, hoping it was universal.

            He only stared.

            I didn’t know what else to do.  Had I paid too little?  I reached for my wallet to see if that is what he wanted.

            But the bus driver stopped me with a wave of his hand, a huff, and a roll of his eyes.

            I was more propelled down the bus than I walked as he sped off before I had time to turn toward seats.

            I could feel eyes on me as I walked to the back of the bus.  I didn’t care.

            Getting on a bus?  Check.

            Sitting in the middle of the five seats at the far back of the bus I had no view through any of the windows, as many of them had had their curtains pulled shut and the others were obscured by the awkward angle and the heads of other passengers.

            When the bus came to a stop and nearly half the passengers made to get off I leaned over to the woman riding next to me, “Excuse me,” I managed, hoping my pronunciation was at least understandable, “Is this the metro?”

            “No,” she replied simply.

            I sat back once more.

            “Thank you…” I said sheepishly.  I told myself I wouldn’t bother her again, even though I knew it was a lie.

            But I didn’t have to.  A few stops later she turned to me and informed me that this stop was the metro.

            I sent my best rendition of ‘thank you’ in Russian as well as a wide grin as I gathered up my bag and a deep and followed her off the bus and towards the big red “M” marking the metro entrance.

            There was no question as to which way to go.  In fact, I don’t know if I could have managed to work against the stream of people pushing towards the metro line, but I diverted myself to the ticket counter and waited behind only one person before it was my turn to try for my one day pass.

            “Do you speak English?” I tried first, figuring my lack of Russian could possibly be a nonissue.

            She responded, but I couldn’t hear her through the thick glass.  I leaned in to indicate that I hadn’t heard.  “How can I help you?” she asked in English.

            Relief washed over me.  “I want a day pass,” I informed her.

            “What?” she said in Russian.

            My eyes narrowed.  She didn’t speak English at all.  I wonder if she had more phrases than the one.

            “One day,” I continued in English, because I knew English grammer.

            She shook her head, not understanding, and pointed to the sign that listed all the tickets and their prices.  In Russian.

            I slid my money through the opening.  “One. Day.” I tried in Russian.  That paired with the correct amount of money, 200 rubles, listed on the site seemed like it should work.

            “Four?” she asked in Russian, holding up four fingers.

            No.  That is what her answer should have been when I asked if she spoke English.

            “Four?” I repeated in Russian, realizing that perhaps I had more Russian words than this woman had English.  I slid 200 more rubles through the slot.  I honestly didn’t care.  I wasn’t going home without getting to Moscow.

            She held up eight fingers now.  And I realized what she was doing.  At 50 rubles per ride she had absolutely no idea what I wanted.  I decided to just take the two ride pass.  This was clearly not working.

            “No.  Two.”  I hope my begrudged look wasn’t too apparent, but I could feel it cross my face.

            She nodded in understanding and gave me back 300 rubles and then passed me a bright red card with, I assumed, two rides on it.

            I said my thanks and made for scanners.  Scanning my card a bright one appeared on the screen.  One ride left.

            It wasn’t until I was staring up at the mess of Cyrillic telling me which track went which way that I realized that I had completed more steps with relative ease.  I was basically done.  Speaking new languages and figuring out buses may be daunting, but metros were a snap.

            Kuzminki to Taganskaya.  Taganskaya to Oktyabrskaya.  Done.

            Kuzminki was nothing terrible interesting.  But getting off at Taganskaya, being on the center line, it was much more ornate.  It was the kind of stop that people spoke of when they talked about the Moscow metro. My snail-pace reading of Cyrillic and my awed stares at the structure around me clearly marked me as not belonging, so I held my Lonely Planet guide in my hand unashamed as I didn’t think I could look more out of place anyway.

            I finally emerged into the day once more to find it cloudy and windy and that I regretted my light dress as the skirt whipped this way and that, but mostly upward.

            I sat at a bench under an huge statue and took in the fact that I was in Moscow for a moment.  The feeling was one of contentment.  I had never seen content as something good.  Happy was always the goal and contentment had felt like settling.  But looking at the onion domes of a small church next to enormous buildings and statues and gardens and the buzz of traffic all within my field of vision I felt the full sort of feeling that is meant, I believe, when people say content.

            Skirt pinned to my side with one hand and my guidebook positioned in the other I stopped a pair of Russian women to ask them where Gorky Park was.  They pointed across the rush of traffic and I thanked them, waiting for them to leave before I stared at the streets with no crosswalks.  It took my longer than I care to admit to see people descending stairs in order to cross below the street.  I followed their example and walked down the sidewalk until I reached a park.

            Gorky Park is an amazing place.  But I would find this out later.  Much later.  Because the place that I went to was across the street from Gorky Park: Art Muzeon and Krymskaya Naberezhnaya.  Though I would walk through believing I was in Gorky Park and tell people for the next week or so that, yeah, I had been to Gorky Park.  I had not.

            Arriving at around 9:30 in the morning, it was still fairly empty, but sets of statues with solemn looking expressions greeted me on the way in and, between the protection of the buildings and trees the breeze let up enough to allow me to release my rebellious skirt.

            I walked the paths through green, contrasting the town of Dzerzhinksiy where I now lived.  The playgrounds were surrounded by grass and tress rather than dirt and soviet-style apartment buildings.  It took only a few minutes of walking for the roar of the busy road behind me to fade away and I could listen to the sound of the wind through the trees and families talking in hushed voices, seeming to not want to break the spell of silence within the city of twelve-million.

            Throughout the park there were statues.  The first I came across were twisted metal depicting, more often than not, beasts or people from assorted myths.  In a gravel-filled square there were sculptures upon sculptures made of stone.  And just beyond that were metal sculptures, busts from mostly famous Russians, but others joined them as well.  I tried to take my time on these, but reaching above the trees was a man on a ship, standing tall above everything else around me, and I continually worked towards that until I reached the Moscow river.

           

I allowed myself to sit in awe.  I settled myself into a bench and looked across the Moscow River at, not only the statue of a man on a ship triumphantly holding a golden scroll, which I would later discover to be a statue of Peter the Great, but also at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, this one I recognized immediately.

     I opened my book to the history of Moscow and enjoyed the warmth of the sun that was escaping from between clouds and making the gold in the Peter the Great Statue and the Cathedral glimmer brilliantly.

            I could have sat there all day, but was interrupted by a call from my boss.

            The landlady was coming to my apartment.

            Now?!

            Apparently.

            I informed her that I wasn’t home and that it would take me probably an hour and a half to get home from where I was.

            “Great,” she said.  “We will see you then.”  And she hung up the phone.

            I put my phone away and closed my book, though my finger held my place, reluctant to give my time up in Gorky Park, as I was still wholly under the impression that that is where I was at.  I took another look across the Moscow River.  Even if the day had been cut short, it let me know that I could get where I wanted to be.  I hoped Moscow wouldn't go any place before I could get there again.