Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
And then there are these poetic moments—a poetry that grabs you and touches your
heart in ways I rarely experience at home, or in any other country.
“Russia giveth. Then so quickly, she taketh away.” That's how my best friend and col-
lege roommate, Chandler Arnold, summed up his vacation when he came to visit me and
Rose during our time in Moscow. Each day, each hour, seemed to bring dramatic emotional
swings.
I remember one day in Moscow that especially struck me. I waited for a city bus outside
my office in the bitter cold. The bus arrived and creaked to a stop. The door opened, I
boarded, and reached into my pocket for rubles to pay the driver. He was in an angry
mood and kept speaking to me sternly in Russian. I used the little Russian I knew at the
time—“Ne ponimayu [I don't understand].” He was cold and mean and aggravated with my
lack of Russian, or my being American, or both. I finally found the change, but he refused
to give me a ticket, which you need to scan in order to pass through a turnstile and reach the
seats. I was trapped there, with him, at the front of the bus. He pulled to the next stop and
opened the door, fully expecting me to surrender and disembark. That's when a voice came
from the back of the bus. “Malchik!” (I had just been addressed as a “young boy.”) A large
woman, bundled up in a maroon overcoat and maroon fur hat, was approaching me hold-
ing up a card with a bar code. I saw two other older women, babushkas, in their seats, also
holding up cards. They were monthly bus passes. The first woman handed me her card. I
scanned it at the turnstile and walked through as the driver grunted. The woman then yelled
at the driver in Russian (I don't know what she said, but I liked it). Her generosity, and the
generosity of the other women who were ready to lend me their passes, filled my eyes with
tears. I returned the pass and held out the change from my pocket, but the woman refused
to take it. “Nyet, sadeet-yuh [No, just sit down]!”
It's just my own small taste of how Russians live their lives. Difficult things happen, and
you pray for the moment or day when things turn brighter. It's as if Russians can't appreci-
ate something beautiful without first experiencing something hideous. This is where Russi-
ans seem to find their strength. Our train is now heading from Nizhny Novgorod to Izhevsk,
in the Ural Mountains, so we can visit some babushkas who define finding strength in
tragedy.
When we were planning the trip, Sergei called to set up an interview with Mikhail
Kalashnikov. Yes, that Kalashnikov. He's ninety-three years old, lives in Izhevsk, and in-
vented one of the world deadliest weapons. To reach Kalashnikov, Sergei had to go through
the public affairs department of the Kalashnikov factory and museum. That's where our
trouble may have begun. “I'll need passport information for you and the American corres-
pondent,” the woman told Sergei on the phone. “Well, this is not for journalism, it's for a
book,” Sergei said. “Well,” the woman said, “the FSB may still want it—I need it in case
they ask.” The FSB is Russia's modern-day domestic security service—today's KGB. The
Search WWH ::




Custom Search