Roberta Goes To Russia

1. One way in which the Aquarium Hotel might as well be in Las Vegas: the landscaping and cleanup of the acres of asphalt parking space is being done by short, brown men who don’t speak the local language very well and are in the country illegally. Of course, here the short, brown men are Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Kazaks from former Soviet republics where unemployment is even worse than in Michigan.
2. Got driven to get my suitcase out of hock at Domodevevo. Interesting trip. At one point, we were part of a six-lane parking lot on a highway designed for five lanes. I asked the driver if this state of affairs was usual, and he said it was due to an accident ahead, which it was. Then, coming back, it looked like our route to the airport was backed up in the five (or six) lanes going back, so he took an alternative route that took us through the center of Moscow. You look around, and there’s tall office buildings going up, auto repair malls, clover-leaf interchanges, and, every once in a while, gilded onion domes of a church to remind you that you’re actually in Russia.
3. Today after I was retrieving my luggage from storage, I was dragging it one step at a time up to the main floor when a woman who was also going up the steps took hold of the handle and pulled with me. She was talking on her cell phone as we climbed, and when we got to the top step, she just walked away, still talking. I’ve had things like that happen every once in a while here. People are willing to help when needed without any further personal interaction. It seems to be very Russian.
4. Another way in which the Aquarium Hotel might as well be in Las Vegas: their room service menu features sandwiches with french fries, which they serve with ketchup, though the ketchup comes in an elegant little metal cream pitcher sort of dish. The sandwiches are also held together by little fluorescent plastic swords. The Aquarium has an added advantage: the tap water in Moscow is not safe to drink, which means they can charge you for bottled water. I’ve currently got three bottles of Perrier at nearly $4 each. I figure if I’m going to be living in Las Vegas, I might as well live it up a bit. Plus which the insurance will repay me some small amount of what it costs me to wait for my Russian exit visa.

1.TV pitchmen have it easy. As I rode the Metro yesterday, I saw a guy stand up in the subway car and pitch some magnetic LED lights. No one could hear what he said over the noise of the train, of course, but he had a good physical routine that demonstrated the wonders of the products he carried around in a big shopping bag. He actually sold one to a woman sitting a few seats down from me. Portland has no subway, maybe this is common practice in cities that do. But it was the first time I had seen such a thing, and his entrepreneurial drive impressed me.
2.More information about my hotel. It’s apparently attached to a big exposition center, which means when there are expositions, it’s in a great location to provide accommodations to people attending them. August will, of course, be major dead time for them, since, in Russia, everyone retreats to their dachas in August and tends their tomatoes and marigolds. And the financial crisis has hit Russia hard, so the Aquarium Hotel is suffering from the same things as all the big hotels in Las Vegas, which live on conventions and are currently hurting.
3.More cleverness on the part of my domovoi: when I had to replace the sim card in my phone, I also lost all my stored phone numbers, so there was no way I could call any of the four people I know in Moscow to help me, and I now had a new phone number, so none of them could call me.
4.When my insurance folks were looking for accommodations for me, the agent I was talking to had no idea how to tell me information about the hotel. She could find ratings (this one is 3-star) and prices, but not how-to-get-to directions. So she spelled out the Russian words for me as if they were in English, and I sort of back-transliterated. For instance, the street my hotel is on was YNNUA NCAKOBOCKORO (улица исаковоского). In a time when I have done stupid things like losing my passport, I take some pride in that technique.
5.One thing the domovoi has spared has been my pocket atlas of Moscow, with which I can find streets and Metro stops and figure out how to get from here to there. The one I have identifies not only Metro stops but bus lines.
6.I can’t remember whether I’ve said this, but I’ve had two great protections during this whole mess: I’m an American citizen, which means my embassy people have clout to help me and an established routine that produces an impressive-looking temporary passport literally within hours; and I have lots of room between my credit card balance and my credit card limit. I had access to money and power, however poor and lost I may have felt.

1.For the first time in my life, I haggled over a price. I decided to take a taxi from the Metro stop to the hotel where I’m staying, and the driver first quoted me 700 rubles. I suggested 500, and he said “600. There is terrible traffic between here and there. My lowest price.” So for 600 I got a ride in a rattly Lada driven with true Russian verve to the Aquarium Hotel, about which more later.
2.When the VISA charge finally went through at the embassy, I cried out, “Oh, thank you, God”, and the cashier, a young Russian woman, said, “Yes, all is in His hands, he does these things only to make you stronger.” Odd to find such faith inside so grim a place.
3.When I got on the Metro to ride out to where my hotel is, there were a couple guitar players doing whatever the Russian equivalent of Jimmy Buffet is, lively, laidback, feel-good music. Very refreshing to the soul, and my soul needed the refreshing at that point.
4. If I had left Russia as planned this morning, I would never have ridden on the Metro’s brown route, a circle around the center of Moscow. It was one of the things I had planned to do and never got around to. Today, in order to get where I needed to go, there I was on the brown route. I think my domovoi has a sense of humor.
5. The Aquarium Hotel, which the insurance folks found for me for the weekend, is a very strange place. It’s very new, very clean, very indistinguishable from a Best Western (except for the prim twin beds), with free internet, free breakfast, and handsome young Russian waiters who bring the room service food, which is excellent. The strange part is that it is at one end of a major shopping mall development which is, well, not very developed. I have not seen any other guests. I have to wonder whether I’ll be sleeping in laundered money for the Russian mafia. My only complaint so far is that I’ve drunk the two bottles of water they left on the coffee table, and I’m thirsty, and I hate to bring that nice young man all the way back up here just because I can’t drink the tap water. On the other hand, my window looks out into a parking structure, and somewhere not very far away serious construction sounds are being made, so maybe I can manage that second call to room service after all.
6. Problem for tomorrow: how am I going to get my suitcase from Domodevovo, waaaay south of Moscow center, here to the Aquarium Hotel, waaaay north of Moscow center? I barely made it today with just my purse and backpack. Maybe the express train into Moscow, then a taxi out to the hotel. I’m sure none of my children expected any inheritance.
7. The insurance folks also booked me passage on a Northwest Airlines plane that leaves Moscow at 5:50 am Tuesday, August 11, arriving back in Portland (via Amsterdam) at 12:05 pm. But that won’t happen unless I get my exit visa on Monday. The slick young man advised me to get out to the departure airport early Monday afternoon so that, if there are problems, as he put it, “we can make some calls, they can make some calls, it can work out.” I have no idea what the likelihood of that is. He seemed to think it was fairly likely, but then he’s a diplomat, trained not to say anything upsetting.

I took a train from the airport back into Moscow, and the Metro thence to roughly where the embassy is. I had already spoken to someone at the embassy who had told me that, now being Friday afternoon, I might get my substitute passport by the end of the day, but I would not get my exit visa, which requires the Russian foreign ministry to approve it, which won’t happen until Monday at the earliest. Thus, my new earliest departure date is Tuesday, August 11. Still, it seemed worthwhile to get the substitute passport, so I made my way (following some bad directions and some good directions and some probably misunderstood directions) to the American embassy, a big fortress of a building. Not only is each entrance behind a guarded metal gate, the whole embassy is surrounded by heavy concrete planters, currently sporting some lovely flowers that only slightly disguise the intent of the planters to dissuade any passing tanks that might get curious.

After passing the outside guard, a Russian man who spoke English with an oddly Brooklyn accent, I went to the inside guard, who made me leave my purse and pack behind when I went through the next locked door, watched over by soldiers in Desert Storm uniforms, apparently behind bullet-proof glass. There were pictures of President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on the wall, which cheered me up a bit, but in general life in the Moscow American embassy seems to consist of continual, detailed distrust of everyone who attempts to make it into the inner sanctum.

I started to fill out the needed forms, when the man who was helping me asked if I wanted to pay right then. “Sure,” I said, and handed over my one remaining VISA. “I’m sorry, the charge was refused,” the cashier said. My last resource, gone. “I used it earlier today,” I protested, hopelessly. “I’ll try again,” she said, knowing if it didn’t work once, it wouldn’t work the second time either. “Do you have enough cash to pay for it?” asked a very slick, controlled young man, the only American on staff I had encountered. I didn’t. “Maybe you could call VISA’s 1-800 number.” No, my phone won’t let me call outside Russia. Silence.

Eventually, the young American man volunteered to call VISA for me, which meant he did the dialing on a cell phone he let me use. After a three-bank angle shot among departments, I got connected to the right one, and the block on my VISA (due to the fact that I had used it in Russia, apparently, because, probably through the machinations of my domovoi, today in Russia is more suspicious than all the other days I used it in Russia) was removed, and I paid the $100 due for my replacement passport.

“We need photos,” said the Russian man behind the counter. “Go across the street, up a couple blocks, then turn left, go into the basement, and you’ll find the guy we use.” I did as directed, and found myself in a shop so obscure and tiny that I would never have found it, let alone gone into it without instructions from the State Department. The owner/operator managed to get pictures for my replacement passport that make me look almost as miserable and twice as evil as I felt, but what can you do?

I now have my temporary passport and a letter explaining how to turn it into a real passport once I get home.

So there I was, awaiting my chance to file a lost passport report with the Moscow police. Eventually, a burly guy in plain clothes came to fetch me back inside the barred door of the militsia office at the airport. I was sharing the room with a very tan man with bare feet, the policeman with the AK-47 (and a sidearm), and a trim young woman with short dark hair. Behind another set of bars were two more men, who clearly had no hope of getting out any time soon.

Another Godsend: the young woman offered to help with my lost passport report. The process consisted of the burly guy dictating to her as she wrote in Russian. They asked my name and whether I could write it in Russian (I could), my address (I didn’t even try to translate the “SW” in “SW Harbor Way”, I just wrote out South and West in Russian (юг and запад)), and when I had entered Russia. Intermittently, the burly guy, who was quite pleasant about the whole encounter, would indicate where I should sign, and I signed. So if you hear shortly that I confessed to killing Joseph Stalin in 1953, you’ll know why. The burly guy was also willing to take my Oregon drivers license as proof of identity, though he couldn’t read it. ID with a photo works even when the lettering doesn’t.

Occasionally, the barefoot guy would make some comment. Once he wanted to relieve himself, but didn’t want to go into the available bathroom because it was too disgusting. Another time there was something about his telephone number and a computer, and at that point the burly guy’s voice got very hard and sharp, and the barefoot guy shrugged and shut up.

I asked the slim young woman who she was because if she had not been there, I’m sure the entire enterprise would not have gone so happily. All she said was that she was “an acquaintance”. I think she and the AK-47 guy, who was quite handsome, had a thing going, and she was hanging out to be with him. She was clearly not there under duress.

Eventually, enough was written, I had signed enough places, the official stamp, whose handle was covered with duct tape, had descended often enough, leaving an indecipherable blue mark. The burly guy smiled, said, “OK, you can go now,” and handed me a copy of something with the admonition not to lose it. I had passed happily out the barred door and up the stairs, when I heard someone call me from the staircase. It was the AK-47 guy, holding my Oregon drivers license, which I had forgotten. He smiled (nice smile), handed it over, and returned downstairs.

You know, I suspect some of my Russian experiences are atypical. When I was here in 2007, all I saw of Siberia was pleasant sunny weather, bright blooming flowers, and luscious ripe produce. Now I move behind the bars of an outpost of the Moscow police and encounter only cheerfulness, helpfulness, and a striking lack of requests for bribes. I do hope I didn’t kill Stalin, though.

… but I was fortunate to encounter a merciful geek at the local equivalent of a Radio Shack. He not only diagnosed the problem as a bad SIM card; he not only replaced the SIM card for me for 100 rubles (maybe $3.50 tops); but in place of my missing passport he accepted my Oregon drivers license. Please send good vibes toward Alexander Romanov, who works at the Moscow Devadovovo Airport.

So then, reconnecting with my travel insurance people, I found out that I need to file a police report about the lost passport. (They can’t seem to get through by phone to the post office where I may or may not have left it.)

Fortunately, there is a police office at the airport. It’s about a mile and a half away from where I was, but it’s there. The door to the police office is barred — serious floor to ceiling bars — and the man who came to the door to deal with me carried an AK-47, honest to God, under his arm is position clearly ready for use if needed. Right now, I’m waiting upstairs because the staff person who handles reports of missing passports is on lunch break.

Assuming I survive making the report, I will take a high-speed train in toward Moscow until I get to where I can take the Metro to the stop near the Embassy.

Following Nanette’s (again) insightful advice, I’ve checked my big bag in the “protected room” and will pay 200 rubles a day, maybe $7.50, until I come to claim it. If I ever do.

In Russian folklore, there is the tradition of the domovoi, a household devil who spends all his time making trouble for the residents of the house. I remember reading that, but I can’t for the life of me remember what the appropriate ritual is to placate one.

I got up this morning at 4 am, rode a cab to the Domodedovo Airport, paid the cabbie and told him to keep the change, and strode confidently into the departures lounge to check in. That was the last thing that went right.

I then discovered that somewhere between yesterday morning when I mailed the modem to Boris and now, I lost my passport. As the nice Lufthansa man said at the checkin line, with only Germanic courtesy in his voice, “You cannot fly without a passport.”

He directed me to the information desk, where the nice lady wrote out for me the address, phone numbers, and Metro access for the American embassy. No one was answering at the American embassy. It’s 6 am, remember, I suppose embassy personnel at the “if this is an emergency involving an American citizen, please call” number need their sleep too.

At which point, doing a total dump of my purse for the fifth time on the off chance that the passport was really there and I just hadn’t noticed it the first four times, I found documentation for my travelers insurance. After a few false starts, I managed to get a call through to them from the pay phone.

Joanne (fellow theater goer who recommended that I get the insurance), I owe you at least a season of ART tickets. The insurance people are being GREAT!! They’ll help me get an emergency passport if we can’t find mine, they’re calling the post office station where I may have left the original yesterday (let them deal with the bureaucracy), they’re tracking down alternative flights for me, they’ll recompense me for part of the cost of my interrupted flight if I have to stay overnight, and just the sound of calm voices who know what to do in such circumstances was a Godsend. I now understand why TIP clients can’t remember what we said, just that we were there and knew what to do next.

Complications continue, of course. Since this happened, after getting a bit of cash from a bank machine, I managed to lose the only VISA card I have that will let me get cash from bank machines. Probably left it in the machine. I’m not entirely sure I should be allowed out in public unattended. I’ve got another VISA card, but when First Tech “rebuilt” their VISA machinery in July, they somehow invalidated the PIN code on it, so that I can’t use it to get money. They said I can go to any bank that deals with VISA and get a cash advance, but I’ll bet not having a passport will put a crimp in that. So anything I can buy with VISA without entering a PIN code, I’m OK with, which is probably a good thing, since it looks like the return airfare is going to be horrendous — not beyond my credit limit, but horrendous nonetheless. It’s summer, you see, and economy air fares are hard to find on short notice. At least maybe I’ll be traveling first class and have an internet connection so I can blog from the air.

Oh, and I didn’t tell you I managed within 15 minutes to lose the first sheet on paper on which the nice lady at the information desk wrote down the embassy info for me. She wrote it out a second time, never breaking professional decorum, though I suspect I’ll be coffee break gossip for the morning — “…American woman who lost her passport, then lost the information I wrote down for her. I’ll never understand why we lost the Cold War…”

So I am in the interesting position of watching my protective bubbles burst one at a time. American passport. No. Backup VISA card. No. Ability to get cash if I need it. No. There is now one VISA card between me and stateless, homeless vulnerability halfway around the world from home.

It might lead one to suspect that my Gemini nature is deeply split between the half that REALLY wants to go home and the half that REALLY isn’t done with Russia yet.

Well, at least I have internet access as long as my battery holds out.

Once I finish this post, I’ll send off the modem to Boris and spend my last day in Moscow standing in line at the post office in hopes that they will agree to send a package from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Of course, if they refuse, I’ll come back, plug the modem back in, and write another screed against Russian bureaucracy. So if you don’t hear anything further today, it all went fine.

Last night, Sydney Herbert’s friend Victoria and her husband Nikita treated me to a meal in what they described as a “Russian folk lore” restaurant. The restaurant, named Shchy for a traditional Russian soup, was decorated with birch trees. The waitstaff was in Russian peasant costume. We drank tea from a samovar — well, OK, we got really strong tea and diluted it with boiled water from the samovar, which is what samovars are actually used for, but that doesn’t matter, I got to drink tea in connection with a samovar. I drank a shot of vodka — seemed disrespectful to leave Russia without drinking vodka. Of course, it took me three sips to get through the shot — I am an alcohol wimp, but a respectful alcohol wimp. The food was absolutely luscious — a bowl of shchy with black bread sticks, stuffed cabbage leaves in a vegetable sauce, and a honey cake with sweet milk cream filling that I salivate just remembering.

Then we climbed back into Nikita’s Subaru sports car and zoomed to the Sparrow Hills, which give a spectacular overview of Moscow. Here’s me in front of it. Nikita does film work, and he managed to make me look glamorous, for which I will be forever in his debt.

I should have thought to get a picture of them. I didn’t. I’ll have to do it next time.

They made a list for me of Russian films they like and that I will grab from Netflix as soon as I get home. They were generous with their time and their conversation. They’re both Moscow natives and find the city too big and too crowded. Perversely, the time I spent with them has endeared Moscow to me. When I think of my time here, my time with them will loom so large that I may even forget the stone floors at the post office.

This is my last post from Russia.

Well, maybe not, if you define “from Russia” as being “written in Russia” as opposed to “posted from Russia”. Having no internet access doesn’t mean I won’t write stuff and post it later. There, that makes me feel less like crying.

I think everyone complains about the post office. Here’s a paragraph from statistician Nate Silver’s blog “538: Politics Done Right”.

“… my couple of experiences at the Post Office since moving to Brooklyn a few months ago have been really awful. The first time I went, to mail out my tax forms on April 15th, I had to stand in line for the better part of 20 minutes to buy a couple of stamps. The second time, when I had to mail out some forms for a passport renewal, the clerk “serving” me decided literally without warning or apology half-way through processing my forms that it was time for her break; it took a good 15 minutes, with most of my personal documents slid conspicuously under her window, before someone came to relieve her. The third time, when I had to send some corporate documents to Albany for my consulting business, things were going smoothly enough — until I actually had to fill out the shipping receipt, and discovered that there were literally no working pens available in the entire building. I had to go across the street and buy one.”

Admittedly, his 20 minutes in line is trivial compared to my couple hours, but the 15 minute break in the middle of serving someone is identical. And the pens worked here.

Nate goes on to say, “There’s probably only one customer service experience that is routinely as bad as the Post Office: FedEx Kinko’s.” So private enterprise doesn’t please him any more than what the government runs. I should tell him about Mail Boxes Etc.

OK, I’m going to write this up and then maybe I won’t need to post it.

I am now entirely ready, eager, desperate to go home. I’m lonely, I’m bone-weary, I’m tired of not being able to communicate, I’m tired of living in other people’s spaces, I’m tired of not contributing anything to the world around me except my dollars.

I want to see my cat, I want to see my children and my friends, I want to wander around my own place dressed (or not) however I want, talking to myself, leaving the door of the bathroom open, grabbing a midnight snack when I feel like grabbing a midnight snack. I want to know where the stores are that have the things I want to buy, I want to know how to get from here to there without having to plot my journey laboriously and then write down for myself the directions I just figured out so I won’t find myself lost with no fall-back plan. I want to be able to go to a play or a movie and understand what the actors are saying. I want access to my stuff, my books, my toys, my junk.

I have had stretches like this before on this trip, but they always felt like they had a visible end to them, so I haven’t written about them. Clearly, this one too has a visible end – in a little over two days, I’ll be packing to go home. It’s just that I’ve got only two more days in Russia, only two more days in Moscow, and I don’t want them. I want right now to be Thursday, not Tuesday, with a cab coming to take me to the airport.

Tomorrow night, Sydney Herbert’s friend Victoria Torgan and her husband are going to take me out to dinner to a “Russian folklore” place where, they assure me, my T-shirt and jeans will be just perfect. I haven’t met these people except by email. I don’t want to be the sodden lump I am now when they are reaching out so generously. I’m afraid I will be.

And Thursday, I’ll send the modem to Boris, and then I won’t have access to the internet until I get home, barring occasional wireless hotspots in the airports.

I haven’t ridden the circular Metro route. I haven’t been to the Tretyakov or Pushkin museums, I haven’t seen the inside of the Church of the Savior, a ginormous cathedral I saw on my bus tour last Saturday. I’ve only got two days to do those things, and I have no energy to do them.

I want to be home. I don’t even want to go home, I want to be home.

Am I no longer in love with Russia? No, it’s not that. I’m very, very glad I came, I got more out of the trip than I could ever have hoped, even aside from the language skills. I have been fortunate to meet people here whose friendship I treasure, and I’m carrying back with me Yelena’s letter to the President.

But I’m so tired. It seems very likely that the trip has been too long. I probably shouldn’t have tacked the outing to Moscow onto the end.

Hmmm. I just heard a gunshot. I wonder what that means. I wonder whether I should call the police. Almost certainly not, not with my Russian in the state it is, not to mention all the things I’ve heard about Russian police.

Which reminds me, as I was coming back from sending my package, I saw a car with a blue light slapped onto the roof, like detectives do. The noteworthy aspect of this was that the car was a sleek, new, black BMW. Moscow detectives must get paid REALLY well, one way and another. Or else Moscow’s idea of an unmarked police car is REALLY different from, say, New York’s.

OK. I guess I’ll post this and go to bed. Ludmilla has gone to her dacha again, so I’ve got the place to myself. If only there were a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in the freezer!