more on books

Reading Snowdrops - with its emphasis on the rotten side of Russia - made me think of the other books I have read about the country since I got here. Nothing has been worse than Rob Lilwall's Cycling Home from Siberia which stayed so much inside his self-centred head, that we never really heard from anyone else (sample - chapter 2 is entitled 'how shall I die?', followed by a quote from Fight Club.) In comparison Dervla Murphy's Silverland - also involving Siberia and a bicycle - may be be traditional in including some history and useful facts (rather than just what the traveler is feeling at the time), but shows both insightfulness and modesty in her engagements with people and place.

Then there were two authors who write about Russia through the prism of its literature; Elif Batuman's The Possessed and Rachel Polonsky's Molotov's Magic Lantern - the first of which I read very fast and without much concentration; and the second of which I have not yet got around to finishing. And enjoyed, in a fairly abstract way. But I can't help feeling that - except for bits of Murphy - A. D. Miller is quite correct when he admits that we write about Russia mainly to write about ourselves:

"Just as travel writing chronicles the traveller's preconceptions as well as his journey, so for some novelists, Russia is not, or not only, a sort of moral zoo, which writer and reader can visit with a safe sense of superiority. It is also a place to test their moral pride and presumptions." quoted from here.

Which means that Russians themselves, as themselves, (and in all their variations) don't turn up very often. Or that I am reading the wrong books.


And the eagle-eyed will note that the photograph here is from earlier in the summer. In fact the leaves in Moscow have almost all gone. Must get my camera back from London (where I left it) somehow.

downer

I realise that I have been quite grumpy since I got back to Moscow. In fact, my best friend G recently noted a longer term trend; that whilst the first volume of A Year in Moscow was positively funny, this quality has been much reduced in the second.

So I am aiming to make this the last complaining post, at least for a while. It's just that I had to fly back to London from Domodedovo (pretty much just for a day). And for the first time, our departure lounge was gate 3. I have seen other people attempting to use this gate before and have laughed a little. But now, my turn to experience the weirdness of a departure lounge in a major international airport that 1.) is tiny, 2.) has its exit gate stuffed in the corner, 3.) is already a cafe and 4.) had had all its chairs and 'normal' tables removed, so that neither cafe customers nor plane about-to-boarders can sit down. Presumably 4.) being the solution to the impossible crowding caused - when everyone arrives - by 1.), 2.) and 3.).

Okay, no more moaning....

up and onward

Back in my London flat, with the gorgeous smell of dacha-grown apples and the lingering sour taste left by our recent sporadic, meaningless riots.

And the end of another year in Moscow - with the beginning of the next only a few weeks away. A friend asked me how I coped with the winter snows and then laughed at the involuntary grin on my face. So, must mean I am looking forward to it.

that time again

At the end of each of my 'years' in Moscow, I have this (impossible) idea of trying to sum up what I have learnt in one single picture. This is last year's - and for this year, I wanted to capture something of that endlessly interesting but confusing juxtaposition that seems central to life here; the combination of lots of (often mindless) rules and regulations with little bother as to whether these are actually obeyed. It is illegal to cross the railway tracks. And everyone does it.

finding that metro feeling

feeling foreign

Since coming back from London I have felt quite dislocated, like part of me is still in the UK. This is not homesickness  - although of course I miss my friends and family a lot - but more a kind of exhaustion. I am suddenly noticing again the difficulties of being a foreigner and no longer just enjoying its novelty. I don't even mean the problems of not being able to speak the language (which still embarrasses me). This is much more about always being aware of even the most ordinary everyday routines, of nothing ever being possible to take for granted because you never quite know exactly what is going on. And that is tiring.

I assume that some sociologist or anthropologist has studied the phenomenon of being a foreigner, there are probably stages just like growing up or bereavement, in which case I think I am currently moving to stage 2: 'Just wants an easy life'. Except, of course, I don't or I wouldn't be here. And it does mean I have started to take loads of photographs again; have got obsessed with trying to capture faces and interactions, both of individuals and in crowds, with all the added complications that brings of not being seen to obviously take pictures in the packed and jostling Moscow metro. 

the horrors, the horrors

I know that I was extraordinarily lucky to sneak into London, and then out again (to Sydney, Australia) a few days later, without being buried in snow for days at Heathrow.  All my sympathies go to the many people I met who had horribly delayed holidays, and I won't even be smug about how much better Moscow airports deals with bad weather. But - I was reminded of that specifically English characteristic of complaining; of always being ready to be offended at the the slightest alteration to the assumed smoothness of things; of an excess of sensitivity that someone else might be jumping the queue, getting a better deal. What is this English habit of for ever being ready to be cross about something?

Unlike the Russians I know who always expect the worst to happen.

back and forth

This time I have definitely felt a bit unsettled coming back to Moscow. I have a feeling that as the newness wears off, my enthusiastic awareness of, and reveling in, the differences between cities is also waning. This is becoming just one place where I work, just as London is another.

Is this how most immigrants, emigres and expats experience things, once they have been traveling back and forth for a while? It doesn't mean I want to be in one place, only that I need to find a way of being in both, beyond being a naive tourist here.

In the meantime I went out and bought a tin of baked beans (which I hardly never eat in England!), and a sure sign I am a bit homesick...

Handy hints for travelers 3: metro again

The metro is confusing for a couple of reasons. First, at interchanges, the stop will have different name for each line - and are often quite a walk apart. The lines are coloured, and this colour (almost always) appears in the signs, telling you which way to go. The second difficulty is that metro stations can often be huge underground warrens, both where different lines connect, and in the many entrance/вход and exit/в’ыход points. Look for the sign that says exit to town/город.

Shown is a typical metro sign, to be seen on most platforms. These are actually really clear. The horizontal top line lists all the stations on the line you are on in order and direction. The vertical 'drop-down menus' beneath each station title give the name(s) of the line and the stations that are linked from it (including, first, the name of the linked station of there is one.)

Simple.

Handy hints for travelers 2: metro

The other thing that everyone said before I got here is that you need to count your stops on the metro, because there are very few signs on the platforms and the announcements may be difficult to understand. What they didn’t say is that at each stop, the announcement tells you what the NEXT stop will be. This is helpful to indicate you are going in the right direction, but certainly confusing for a Londoner where the tube system tells you which stop you have arrived AT.

(Actually, now I ave been back in London for a few days I notice that they also announce the next stop on the tube; something I have clearly never noticed before!)

Going, going

What a fab flight for someone who loves flying, all the way up the western edge of Europe following the coastline and then over the top of the world - a curving blue and cloud horizon - and only finally southwards after St. Petersburg, creeping up on Moscow from behind.

 

And (unexpectedly) lounging in an almost empty business class, absent-mindedly listening in to the international business elite – 2 groups of 2 young men, as sleek and elegant as seals, impossible to pin down by nationality, just well-ironed and confident in their privilege. Also a shabby elderly Englishman who conformed to stereotype by turning out to be a diplomat (at least, that is the passport queue he joined at Domedevedeo airport). 

Making a move

So here I am - on something more than a whim but less than a fully thought-out career progression - leaving credit-crunch, fatcat banker, sleazy MP-ridden London for a job in mafia-run, bandit capitalist, blat-driven Moscow.

Thinking it is a good time to take some notice about what happens when you swop one place for an alternative, one set of stereotypes for another. So this is an exploration not just of somewhere else, but also of my own place in the world, wherever and whatever that is. Too much writing by the English on Russia is of the 'how to upwrap the riddle-inside-mystery-inside-enigma-inside-russian-soul-blah'. But moving to Moscow right now should be as much about what is going wrong with capitalism and post-communism in the early 21st century; and can surely offer a (personal) view into the complexities of cultural difference that we are all part of.