6/23/2006, 18.35
Chelyabinsk, Russia
There is absolutely no logical reason behind my making it here. I should either be roaming the countryside, half starved, somewhere near Ekaterinburg, or dead. I know what happened & even I don't believe it!
The flight from Istanbul to Ekaterinburg went swimmingly; they even served a Turkish meal! As we were getting close I began looking out the window. It was breathtaking! Miles & miles of rivers & the greenest forests I think I've ever seen. It was overcast & slightly rainy, so the trees disappeared into the mist near the horizon.
As I was trying to get my breath back I realized, while absolutely stunning & remote...it was a little too remote. We were about to touch down at the international airport of this major hub city of the Urals, & yet no city was in sight! I grew anxious.
Surprisingly, passport control & customs was easy! I breezed right through; no inquiries, no unpacking, nothing. I kinda felt like I cheated. Of course, that still left me in a Russian airport in the middle of (beautiful) nowhere.
Luckily, I found the Ekaterinburg Tourist Office & the two there spoke English. I explained my situation & they told me everything I needed to know: the bus to the city (1h 15m long!), the best way to get to Chelyabinsk, even a hand-drawn map showing the route from the last bus stop to the place to buy a bus ticket to Chelyabinsk! They were wonderful!
Now begins a long day filled with embarrassment, awkwardness, pain, & unrivaled humiliation. Got a lot of that last one. Women & children may want to look away. Oh screw it, this isn't decent reading for anyone. Just leave now.
I circled the airport parking lot a few times until I found the bus stop & took off my pack to sit on. More than in any other country I've been in, people in this country really like to stare. Just like in Turkey nobody here speaks English, but while in Turkey when they find out you speak English they just look confused, shrug & leave you alone, In Russia they laugh at you. Loudly. So much for Russians not smiling. (Actually that still is kinda true...just not when they're laughing at you.)
The bus came, I got on near the back, & the bus went. It was big, old, packed & gave me cold war flashes. And I had no idea how to pay. Assuming payment was made near the front, I pissed off everyone by squeezing myself & my pack all the way up. Nothing. Now I was scared. Did I have to buy a ticket prior to getting on? I had a few rubles on me from the euros I exchanged in the airport bank, but I hadn't seen anything remotely resembling a ticket office or machine. Was I going to get arrested for stealing bus time?
As these thoughts were milling about in my head, a shorter woman with bright red hair (colored) & a blue & red sportsuit pushed her way through the crowd to me. It looked like she was telling me (loudly) how to pay, & a polite (quieter) business woman next to me was trying to explain. Of course every bit of it was in Russian. By now the entire bus was staring at me. Awkward.
Finally I noticed the short (louder) woman was wearing a fanny pack containing money & tickets! Thank god, because I was about to jump out the window. I paid her (by handing her all my money & letting her take out what she needed), got my ticket, & she left me alone. The bus kept staring. About 30 minutes into the ride the polite (quieter) business woman got off. Before making her way to the door though, she turned to me & said in a thick Russian accent "good luck." It made me smile. Then again she could have been mocking me.
I made it to my stop in downtown Ekaterinburg & thankfully got off the bus. I followed the map & sure enough ended up at the bus terminal. It was a very skillfully drawn map. Then I spent 20 minutes unsuccessfully searching for an ATM. Ironically, once I stopped looking it was the first thing I saw upon entering the bus terminal. I hate that. Fortunately though, I did not feel as though the 20 prior minutes had been in vain; it was broken. So I said fuck it & went to find out the price & see if they accepted credit cards. Had I known what was in store I would have walked the four-hour bus ride to Chelyabinsk.
There were about nine different ticket counters, each with the names of the cities they sold tickets to written above. In Russian. No phonetic help there. So I walked up to one, handed her the piece of paper that said "bilet do Chelyabinska" (ticket to Chelyabinsk) given to me by the tourist office at the airport, & held up one finger. She looked at it, then shrugged & handed it to the young woman behind the counter next to her. I moved over. She began speaking to me in Russian. Fast Russian. I looked at her apologetically & shrugged, a gesture I thought was internationally understood as "I'm sorry for being a dumbass & not understanding your language before visiting your country." It seems as if the knife-wielding sicilian is better versed in international body language than I...she began speaking louder & slower. Let me tell you, that sure helped a bunch.
After about ten minutes of feeling like a complete jackass (& 9 minutes 48 seconds of the entire waiting room glaring at me), I finally got her to write down a price: 232 rubles. I had 130 rubles in my pocket. So I held up my debit card, pointed in the direction of the broken ATM & held up one finger to say I'd be right back. She didn't get it. I tried again. She didn't get it again. You know what they say about insanity, right? I tried one more time. And one more time, she didn't get it. I ran away. I just wanted out of the situation & away from the position of Official Waiting Room Peep Show.
Things began to look up when I got back to the ATM & saw that it was being fixed. Score! Of course I had no idea how long it would be, but at this point I didn't care. I just found myself a nice, out of the way corner to use as a vantage point & started waiting. For three minutes. That's how long it took for the young woman from behind the counter to find me. She spoke some more in Russian & then stopped, as if waiting for an answer. I felt like a disobedient child. Having given up all hope, I half-heartedly motioned towards the ATM. She said something else, followed by what I'm guessing was the Russian equivalent of "come on" accompanied by a wave of her hand.
And we were off! The pace of this young woman's walk surely would give most long-legged African sprinters a run for their money, no pun intended! We left the bus terminal & walked down the front stairs, through the plaza, across the street, & descended down into a dark metro station where I was pretty certain she was going to kill me. After turning some corners, presumably to lose any witnesses that happened to be following, she stopped & pointed at an ATM! Had I not been feeling the overwhelming relief a condemned feels when pardoned I swear I would have kissed her full on the mouth. I got the money I needed, returned to the terminal & bought my ticket. Of course doing so for some reason involved walking all over the terminal & being left alone standing in the corner of a room while some soldiers stared, made jokes about me, called the girls from the next room in to tell them the jokes they had just made up, & all pointed & had a merry old time blatantly laughing at me. I smiled at them & died on the inside more than a little bit. I don't think I've ever truly known what it meant to be humbled until that moment.
I finally boarded the bus & rode it for four hours or so until I was kicked off at the last stop in what I prayed was Chelyabinsk. Nobody, including the driver, could verify this in any language other than Russian, which left me with little recourse but to trust the young woman who sold me the ticket. After spending ten minutes warding off a terrifying one-eyed homeless woman who thought I was a deaf Frenchman & her baby, I spent the next hour aimlessly wandering around the city. What I was looking for I could not say; maybe I was looking for verification that I was in the right city, maybe validation that I still was indeed a good person, maybe I was just hoping to run into Olga. I realized a few things during this time: first, Russian pay phones aren't. Pay I mean. I had change & Olga's cell number, but public phones required some sort of special calling card which nobody seemed to sell. And second, I didn't even know the Russian word for hotel! That's the problem with traveling to countries that use an entirely different alphabet: you can't sound words out.
Eventually I wandered into an internet café & checked my email. Olga had written to me the day before & suggested I take a taxi from the bus terminal to her apartment. Talk about a great idea! If I was indeed in the right city. I ran out & found the fourth taxi I saw (I still had a bit of trepidation about talking to anyone). After some slight confusion over the different characters used to write out her address, we were off!
He dropped me off in front of a big building that had the correct address number on it. We bartered over the price, I overpaid him, & found the entrance. I battled with the call box from a war-torn future until somebody kinda let me in, & I ascended the frighteningly dark, dirty cement stairwell until I found the door that logically should have been hers...there was no number on or near it. Mentally preparing myself to be shot, I rang the doorbell.
I was met with silence, & then some stirring from within. Then more stirring. Then more. A male voice called out something in Russian (again, big surprise) & I responded by calling back "Olga Balovneva?". 92 locks could be heard being withdrawn, & the door opened to reveal a young man of about 19. Literally. He was wearing a Corner Bakery t-shirt & nothing else (presumably underwear). Behind him was a kind-looking man in his 40's wearing pants & no shirt & behind him, peaking out from another room, was Olga (who, after squealing, disappeared momentarily to put something else on...I didn't ask what she had been wearing)! Words cannot express the relief I felt! I was introduced to all: Sasha, Olga's younger brother & Misha, her father. Her mother, Irina, would join us from Plast (their hometown) later in the evening. Promptly after introductions Sasha, now fully clothed, ran into the hall to snap my picture, thus beginning a three-day candid photo battle between the two of us. After an invigoratingly-frigid shower (the hot water was off for maintenance) & a shave, the evening was spent in hospitality rivaled by none! Except maybe mom's, which certainly is saying something.
