This is Easier

My pictures so far are on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=2039892&id=18004091

Home is where the produkti is

I write this entry in a far more regulated state of mind than in the first. Jet lag is indeed a bitch, and it’s taken me a half a week to develop a sleep schedule that doesn’t involve me collapsing under my blood stained sheets immediately upon returning to my room.
The weather is colder than in the past couple of days, but still manageable. What I didn’t expect was the near-eternal lack of sunlight here in Russia; we had a special treat of a sunny day yesterday, but apparently, I can’t hope for too much of that in January. Oddly enough, the sun made the drab skyline of my neighborhood look almost beautiful.
MosGU is situated in a neighborhood called Vykhino, on the far south-east corner of the city. As I mentioned in my previous entry, my handlers have told me that it’s not the safest or best of areas, but from an outsider’s perspective, I can’t really tell the difference—the concrete slab apartments look exactly like the ones in other parts of the city I passed on the way here. Moreover, the people on the street tend to dress very well. In fact, the people here (especially the women) tend to dress exceptionally well everywhere they go. As my RA put it, “For Russian women, every day is a fashion show.”
Although, to take this tangent further, I may be getting a false impression of the expensiveness of peoples’ clothes due to the prevalence of fur in Russia. It occurs to me that in the US, decades of anti-fur activism have made real fur hats and coats taboo and exotic; in Russia, practicality clearly trumps such concerns. While standing in a metro in the nice part of town, I saw a rich woman wearing what appeared to be a tiger-fur coat, or at least a very convincing forgery.
But I digress…Vykhino! A neighborhood of broken dreams and new opportunities, transplanted Western trinkets and defiant Russian landmarks. I’ve only explored a bit of the commercial area, but here’s a very brief overview of the neighborhood services:
Right across the street from my gate, next to the bus and matshruka stops, is an old Soviet-style grocery store. They’re called produkti, and in case you’re wondering about the difference between a Soviet-style grocery store and a grocery store that happened to be in an old Soviet building, you can’t actually pick up food and pay for it. Instead, you look behind the counter for what you want, give your order to a clerk (usually an angry babushka, in my experience), get a ticket from the clerk, go to the cashier and pay, get a receipt, then go back to the counter and pick up your food. The process may be archaic, but this particular produkti picked up on at least one trick of Capitalism: being right next to the campus, the store takes advantage of the ubiquitous laziness of college students to jack up their prices.
But not to worry, because a 5-10 minute walk brings you to a Western-style supermarket called Rus Market. This place operates like any store in the US, save for a couple of minor quirks. For example, women with large bags must check them with a guard to prevent mass theft, and you have to tell the cashier how many bags you want and pay for them.
A further walk down the road reveals a small shopping mall. Here, one can find luxuries such as electronics and hair care products, as well as plenty of kitschy stuff. One small store on the second floor almost exclusively sells hookahs and samurai swords.
Of course, only suckers and foreigners do their shopping at these indulgent Western stores; the real action is at the market by the metro station. I haven’t actually been in it yet, but this is apparently where you can get anything from clothes to fruit to cell phones at low and negotiable prices. Buyers beware, though: your savings may be offset by the professional pickpockets roaming the oppressively crowded compound.
Animals are also a permanent feature of Vykhino. While we gathered for our first tour of the block, the RA ducked from a fat pigeon that took flight behind him. He explained that “you may not think that the birds are stupid enough to fly into you, but they are,” and cited personal experience to substantiate his claim. After being shoved on and off of metro platforms by belligerent babushkas with no regard except an angry word or two, I wondered if the pigeons were simply ingrained with the Muscovite character. Stray dogs also wander the sidewalks, but in contradiction to the horror stories I’ve heard about them, the ones here are quite docile. Today, a lab mutt followed us for a few hundred yards, circling us whenever a group of people approached from the opposite direction like a mercenary bodyguard. There are also plenty of domesticated dogs, including one bull mastiff I saw dressed in full Russian style in a doggie track suit.
After a few days here, I feel like Vykhino is a pretty good representation of 21st century Moscow. Russians have argued for centuries between Slavophilia, Russian Exceptionalism and Westernization, and this neighborhood represents the modern consensus: namely, the lack of one. The country seems to be having a hard time expressing its national character while embracing the conveniences of the West. Instead of offering a hybrid of these forces, this neighborhood presents a hodgepodge of contradictory statements and images. As if to confirm this, the most Westernized part of Moscow I’ve seen so far was Red Square, the eternal symbol of Russia, but that’s for another entry.

Airport Transit Blues

I arrived in Moscow yesterday, after the longest and most excruciating trip I’ve ever taken. I flew from Tampa to Chicago to Frankfurt to Moscow, with at least two hours of layover in each city and seven hours over the Atlantic. All told, I spent 22 hours in airports and planes, and since I unfortunately can’t sleep sitting up, my typical nervousness was exacerbated by maddening exhaustion by the time I made my descent into Domodedovo International.

The flight from Tampa to Chicago was uneventful. I cycled constantly between trying to sleep (I got maybe three hours of sleep the previous night) and trying to read Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, which I bought from Barnes and Noble the day before. I received a $50 gift card for Christmas, and I used it to stock up on paperbacks for my stay: two Dostoevskys (The Idiot being the other one) and two Thomas Pynchon novels. I heard that Pynchon required a lot of time and effort, so I figured, what better time to tackle him than during a three month stint on the other side of the world?

O’Hare International Airport in Chicago was very impressive. The biggest airport I’d seen previously was in Newark, so the walls of sleek new planes and massive terminals left me gawking. The other travelers darted nervously between information desks; major snowstorms were coming, and across-the-board delays seemed inevitable. I ignored the panic-mongers and got an authentic Chicago sandwich, complete with rotting lettuce and drenched in Italian dressing. At the armored currency exchange cart, a small Chinese woman gave me an incredulous stare when I asked her for rubles. “RUSSIAN RUBLES?” she exclaimed, as if to say, “Why in God’s name would this college kid be going there?”

With my errands done, I found my gate and watched the hodge-podge of cultures that one encounters at any airport. After a brief time watching businessmen, priests and soldiers of all stripes walk past, I came to a sudden realization. Even though I really don’t like cold weather, I regret living in Florida simply because warmer menswear looks so goddamn classy. Vests, trench coats, caps of all kinds, slick boots, leather gloves…it’s really easy to look like a bad motherfucker when it’s snowing. Of course, I wasn’t looking so hot myself in my second-hand ski parka, but I made plans to relocate to cooler environs after graduating.

Luckily, my flight to Frankfurt missed the dread storm by a couple of hours. I lucked out and got put in the “Economy Plus” section, which was like Economy except with another inch of legroom and a sense of unearned superiority. As the 777 crept across the Atlantic on the map in front of me, my sense of dread over the excursion I was taking grew to uncomfortable levels. People who know me will tell you that I’m usually not the kind of guy who follows through with things. But it was far too late to turn back now.

Frankfurt was more of a pain in the ass than I expected. To get from one gate to another, I went through a total of four passport checks and two security checkpoints, one of which required a full bag search. When I finally arrived at the inner sanctum of the Moscow gate, the nature and challenge of my trip became evident: for the first time, not a single loud American tourist was in sight. As my fellow passengers and I crammed into a bus to get to the runway, I wondered how long I would last in Moscow with my feeble grasp on the Russian language. My aisle mates on the plane were a young Russian woman and her adorable little daughter. The woman said something I couldn’t understand with a friendly inflection as I scooted into my window seat, and I offered a simple spacibo in return.

One thing I can credit for the final leg of my journey was the quality of the Russian airline food: my breakfast consisted of a warm blini stuffed with fruit and smothered in thick butter, as well as bread, meats, cheeses and yogurt. As with any good Russian meal, even pre-packaged airline fare, we received small cups of strong tea when we were done.

The baggage claim at Domodedovo was adorned with English-language signs with helpful hints for tourists. One warned “our Dear Passengers” about the risk involved with “unofficial taxis.” Apparently, the Russians call these “gypsy cabs:” unlicensed folks who use their private cars as cabs for extra cash. They charge much less than their official counterparts, but this of course comes with the risks associated with hopping into a random stranger’s car in Moscow and flashing cash around while speaking in broken Russian.

When I stepped out of customs, I saw why the authorities were so keen to warn foreign passengers about the gypsy cabs: the first thing I saw was a wall of squat, mustached men yelling “taksi!” at everyone who passed. One locked onto me and guaranteed “cheap fare,” and asked if I spoke German when I gave some international signs of refusal. He eventually gave up and scanned the crowd for another foreigner; meanwhile, I found another squat mustached man carrying a sign with my name. He spoke no English, but I gathered that he was waiting on a second student. He directed me to a seat in a dark corner near the bathroom, presumably to keep me out of sight of the cab drivers, and went back to the gate to wait.

After about a half an hour, the mustachio returned with our fellow passenger, a recent college graduate set to start a business internship. She had already lived in Russia, so I let her do all the talking with the driver. In the car, we talked a bit about what we were doing in Moscow while the driver bounced around to the pop techno beats on the radio.

The streets of the Russian capital reminded me of a trip I took to Kansas City, Missouri last year for a college press convention. All the features of a modern city were present, but the buildings betrayed their considerable age. I wondered what it must be like for people like our driver, who must have grown up in these same Khrushchev-era apartments, but who now share the streets with Ikea stores and Chevy dealerships.

The campus of Moscow University for the Humanities (MosGU) consisted of several tall buildings surrounded by fence and guarded at all entrances (I later found out that the school is not in the best of neighborhoods, so I was glad for the security). I was met at my dorm building by a Texan who served as something like an RA. We took a tiny elevator to the 9^th floor, where a locked section door concealed the block of rooms where I and about 15 other Americans would be spending the next three months. When I arrived, though, only two other students were around. The RA gave a quick tour, which included teaching me how to finagle my key to unlock the door (it took some practice to get right). He proceeded to pick up my bedding; the top cover had either a massive blood stain or a massive shit stain, but he assured me that these were much nicer than the bedding provided last year.

After 22 hours of stressful travel on three hours of sleep, I was grateful just to have a mattress. The next day and a half would be spent nursing a serious case of jet lag. I wouldn’t have to worry about my overwhelming sense of terror until Monday.