The tiles were dirty and cold. The snow carried by the boots of the hurried passengers filthy melted in the diffuse layer on the whole length of the cold corridor. A guy with a floor cleaning machine was struggling without any chance to remove the dirty water from it. I searched some drier spots and seemingly untouched by steps of the travelers that were transiting the room. Under normal conditions, it would not have been a good waiting place. But there were a few degrees better off less than zero and snow did not cease to fall heavy and cold. The strap of the heavy backpack was hanging on my neck, while the small bag that I was carrying on my back caused me a trail of sweat down my spine. On my head, the cap was wet as well and my thick jacket felt suffocating. In these conditions, entering one of the halls seemed the best option. Shortly after we got rid of luggage, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and I grinned worried when I went over behind my wet back. The first impulse was to get rid of the thick clothes that I felt cold on my body. Still, I kept my clothes on, as the cold from outside and the cold stream corridor would make me feel more refreshed than I wanted to be. I arranged the luggage in order, one by one, making sure that the bag left beneath touched as little as possible from the black and filthy snow.
The others were in a similar mood. Smaranda hardly breathed under the thick scarf, with her hat fallen on one side. A few strands of blond hair can hardly been noticed sparkling on the light. She left her luggage in my care and sought to refresh herself while curiously watching the display of souvenir shops. Mark looked at his watch and seemed even more baffled that we had to spend two hours more on that dirty tiles. I said that I was going to check what time and at what line the train was supposed to come. Balu smiled beneath his thick mustache continually typing on his Nook in a rather desperate attempt trying to find a network connection. It was certain that latest information would be useful to us, as the train would have no connection with the outside world. I went out in the cold with wet clothes under the jacket. But I knew that's the only way to prevent a possible cold: to keep myself on the move.
We were in one of the train stations from Moscow prepared to embark in a journey that can be an experience that you live once in a lifetime, a journey of six days by train to Beijing, across Russia to Lake Baikal and then to the far Mongolia eventually getting to China. But until then, we had to endure two hours of waiting in unfriendly conditions.
There was no waiting room in the station or we did not know where to look for one. There were two huge underground holes, two cafes without seats and an open -air pool with desks where they sold tickets directly in the street. No roof, not even a cover to take refuge from rain or snow caught our sight.
We spent four days here, in Moscow, the capital of Russia and we thought that nothing could surprise us anymore. We were fascinated by a lot of contrasts and quirks, but we kept our enthusiasm in such a way as to be able to explore the places and see people and facts with emotion and joy in our soul. And if we add the four days of St. Petersburg, I could certainly say that Russia would remain a memorable experience for each of us.
Let's take them one at a time for me to be able to live them again and recollect from my memories the precious moments that we lived in Russia:
We arrived on October 24, at around ten in the evening in Oslo airport (Gardemoen). It wasn’t the first time when we were supposed to spend the night sleeping in an airport, so I came prepared for it. The emotion of the previous happenings, with the goodbye party and the farewell to our mates was still deeply overwhelming each of us. Even so, at four o'clock in the morning, the boarding time found all of us exhausted and not in the mood for talking. Moreover, the first plane that would take us to Riga was empty and rather strange. With only 12 passengers on board and the flight engine noise amplified ten times, the plane left the impression that it can open up at any moment and crashed to the ground. Luckily, the entire flight lasted less than two hours and the feeling of anxiety disappeared once we got down to earth. We quickly changed the plane to a more crowded, but less noisy one and after two more hours, we arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Besides, we passed customs control unexpectedly quick and we found ourselves out in a center of a city, as if we came out of a station instead of an airport. We had a look on a map and we lost several minutes to realize where to go. As everyone probably knows, Russia uses the Cyrillic alphabet, an alphabet totally different from what we are normally used to see. A bus driver saw us confused and took us under his protection. He understood where we want to go and explained that he could lead us near in his language. Although skeptical at first sight, we still left ourselves in his hand and we took the bus. I withdrew money from an ATM, but just enough to pay our ticket. Because of the extraction fees, the commission was more than the money that I got, but this, I found out later. (Actually, this made us aware that it would be easier to pay by credit card or to use cash, as foreign currencies can be exchanged anywhere in Russia without commission). After we got on our bus, we soon realized that the road would last more than half an hour and we relaxed while admiring St Petersburg’s architectural wonders. And, thanks God; we had what to look at. Wide boulevards, with huge buildings of specific architecture, traditional Russian columns that seemed to touch the sky and churches with their multi colored or golden towers that resembled sweet twisted candies amazed us from the very beginning. Therefore, we left ourselves stolen by the view until the nice driver told us that it was time to go down. Then, more than one hour had passed until we eventually managed to find the booked hostel. No, we were not lost as one may be tempted to assume, but we went slowly suffocated by our luggage and delighted by the many wonders that came on our way.
When we finally arrived at the hostel, we were headed towards our booked room. It was a room for ten. We chose the most crowded one not because it was necessarily the cheapest, but based on the assumption that there we could easily get acquainted with more people and we could enrich our knowledge with a variety of new and exciting information.
And this proved to be right. Thus, we met Miles and Sonia, both coming from the U.S. in order to study Russian. From Miles, we learned about local interest for football and the local team Zenit. On one of the days we spent in Petersburg, 60,000 people braved the cold and snow to sustain and track their favorite team in an important match in the Champions League against a strong team from Spain (Atletico Madrid). Miles was there and he helped us understand what devotion meant to him even if it was about a football team. What matters the most would be to have confidence in what you love.
Sonia was working as a volunteer at an orphanage nearby. Unfortunately we could not go there because of rules that were not related to us and to our short time spent in Sankt Petersburg. Nevertheless, we talked for hours about her work with those kids and her enthusiasm and emotion was hard not to be noticed by us. Thus, just thinking that we could have to opportunity to get into this place, made us realize every child was beautiful and deserved all the best. At the children's home in St. Petersburg, volunteers were trying to prove there was no difference between orphans and children who have parents. Or, between children with Russian parents and those that belonged to different ethnic minorities and were not able to speak Russian. We all knew that every child, with or without mom and dad needed and had the right to education. Well, Sonia explained to us that the main task of volunteers and social workers employed by the Russian authorities consisted of providing to children all they could in order to have a happy childhood and hope for a bright future.
Also, in the hostel room we met two students from Russia that gave us a lot of useful information about the education system. I learned from the beginning, as I was advised before departure that discussions and communication with strangers could bring a lot of benefits to us. Thus, our interaction with people of all kinds, locals or tourists, sketched us a rather panoramic view about education and life conditions in Russia.
To get a different approach about our theme, we met with a professor teaching at two of the most important universities from the city in our fourth day spent. We chose to meet her due to her insight related to education and its relation to employability and her cosmopolitan view. Hence, she studied and taught a variety of topics in a university from US and she had a very good knowledge of English language. So, like in the case of Miles and Sonia, we had a common language that facilitated our discussion. Hence, we spent hours in a café near the university to get to know the Russian educational system, or, at least, get a clear view about it. We found out that nowadays the system seemed trapped in a transition period, with pupils disoriented from the discrepancy between what they learn in the schools and what they actually need to adapt to the market demands. According to her, they lack the initiative to attempt to find solutions by themselves and a critical judgment to analyze every situation they encounter. But, with a focus on self-initiative and self-motivation developed and encouraged by career services from universities, they may be guided towards professional development and a career that meets their individual expectances. Unfortunately, a lot of universities do not offer a qualitative career service and universities end up in seeing students as a source of income. It was strange to us to hear from a university teacher that universities were similar to business, but at a closer sight, this approach seemed reasonable and heavily sustained. It is the trap of political changes, a time when reforms make every social sector a room for experiment and stability seems a far-away goal. In this sense, I could connect the fault of universities with the fall of USSR and of the communist regime and the chaos created when people encouraged to take a workplace are suddenly forced to struggle for finding one. Therefore, as Elena Kournichkova explained to us, students would need to be guided and encouraged to develop their skills and initiative by teachers, instead of getting just the advice to accumulate data. Soft skills, such as communication, networking, and ability to learn foreign languages, precision and attention to details should be cultivated together with assimilating hard knowledge. So, it is not enough for a youngster to be professional in his field if he is not able to exceed market demands, which encompass team spirit and self-initiative.
Apart from the issue of employability, Elena gave us pieces of advice about our travel and the benefits of it for our development. Hence, she encouraged us in getting all the benefits that we can from this by getting to know people and finding a way of communicating to each of them, even if we do not speak the language. In this sense, she appreciated that we took the courage to struggle to become better and the will to adapt, as these features show our strength in cooperating with difficulties and getting prepared for integrating as good citizens to our society. As a personal observation, I learned from her insight the advantages that both the Russian and the American system of education offer to youngsters and I understood that getting the courage to act is essential for any improvement.
After four days, we left Sankt Petersburg and eight hours later, we reached Moscow by train. Buying a train ticket to Moscow was not an easy task, as we encountered difficulties related to the language and a long time of waiting because of the process to purchase a ticket. Hence, we found out that in Russia one had to present an identity document for being able to purchase the ticket. Whether you are a child or adult, you must be logged in STARE database trip. For tourists, it seemed almost impossible to buy tickets only from the agency or station ticket office and often the price paid was much higher than the real one. But we got help from Miles and owing to his fluent Russian, we managed to buy tickets cheap as we were locals. While getting on the train, we were surprised that despite the fact that the whole journey lasted eight hours, the train was special, with great coaches, comfortable seating and a large space for legs. I could not remember ever having so much space in any journey.
Then, we stayed relaxed with our legs stretched out and the eyes on the window catching every sight from the beautiful landscape. Winter took mastership over the entire country, while the wind was blowing and the snow seemed to form white waves with multi-colored lights. But in the landscape that was running in front of us, I saw images of the people that we met, places we had seen and museums full of history that we got the opportunity to visit.
In Moscow, we arrived on time and we took the metro to our accommodation. It was snowing pretty and delicate, and we felt joy and enthusiasm for discovering the second point of our trip. However, an hour later, after wandering the dimly lit streets of a Moscow district, with the same heavy luggage on our backs , our joy seemed to leave place for cold and discouragement. In this circumstance, I called the phone number that we got and a woman came before us. The woman, aged about 50 years, owned an apartment on the fifth floor of a block of flats. Smaranda heard about it in advance and arranged to sleep in her home for a much lower price than we had to pay at the cheapest hostel. The place looked similar to a traditional old house and nothing seemed to resemble to a location for tourists. With the dark from outside the night and our eagerness to experience life in Russia closer to the locals, we accepted the conditions and we found ourselves crammed into a small room. And if that was not enough, we had to share the room with a friend of the host, a Frenchman that was working in Moscow.
The room had two bunk beds resting on one wall and three smaller beds piled each on other sides of the room. A table placed in the middle and a black cabinet diminish the space next door in the room. The room was high -ceilinged with a yellowy light bulb in the middle. The walls were covered with wallpaper that had once dressed colorful and traditional Russian motifs. Unfortunately, in the present it was washed-out and shriveled in places, but with the same color as the ceiling and the frame of the dirty old door or the one of the window. On one wall, we noticed a traditional rug, while on top of the Wardrobe, an old traditional Russian painting tried
to make the room friendlier. The bathroom was down the hall, divided into two rooms, one for the toilet and one for the shower. The misery that came out especially because of the age of the house was easily to be taken into account. The kitchen, as tiny as a shower room with two sinks and taps included a hose, a sink with different old plates dirtied as the time passed by disorderly thrown on every corner and an antique stove probably much older than me that we were wondering how it still worked. Everything was sticky from tiles to tableware from the faucet to the sink window sill not open. What is more, half of the small ladder near the little table from the kitchen, the place where you were supposed to sit while eating, was occupied with old newspapers.
We said that in India we might face even worse conditions and should never weep for what we have. We decided to stay and adapt to it. Surely there are people in this world who live in conditions much heavier than that.
Thus, another four days when Moscow showed us why it deserved to be called impressive followed. Starting with the Kremlin wall on Red Square to orthodox churches with high towers that made you feel trapped in the pages of a storybook and continuing to Boulevard Gum Arabic where we found famous shops that remind us of market and consumerism and ending with the promenade street Arbat, we could say that Moscow offered us surprises on every small step that we took. The cold weather, the beggars in the subway, every shop with food from the streets, stores with shelves full of souvenirs and not the least the famous wooden dolls - matryoshka completed the image that we had about Russia: a rather vague, but at the same time complex one.
We did not care about the weather or I rather say we tried to fight against it. Although it was cold, we spent hours and hours from morning till late afternoon in the streets, eager to find out and know everything about Moscow. But that seemed normal for a city so beautiful and it did not pass long time until we understood that four days would not be enough for getting to know the capital of Russia.
Nevertheless, when I went to the station to embark to the Transsiberian or I may say the Trans-Mongolian, I felt like we managed to accomplish something important, that we can be proud of. . Everyone that we talked, each word that we managed to mutter in this strange language would remain in our mind and we would feel proud of how we managed to make ties to people in an unknown country, with a language and writing hostile to us, but nice and friendly people and landscape. We got a lesson from every place and picture that we took, but, more than everything, people that gave us a hand without any obligation and expecting no benefits taught us that one can smile even when outside is cold, and when the little sun-rays are unable to warm the air.
Yet, leaving Moscow did not mean leaving Russia, as the train would offer us five more long lasting days of Russia, with strangers, boredom and unexpected. After two hours of waiting in the cold, we embarked on a new adventure.
Next – The road through China, the Transsiberian experience
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