vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #555 / Opinion / Reading article...

When traveling from one side of Russia to the other across a country 9,000 kilometers-wide with 11 time zones, the vast distances might seem both an advantage and a drawback. My recent trip to Moscow, however, proved there is a bit more than simply time zone differences to be considered.

For some, traveling from Vladivostok to Moscow is an ordinary trip they take on a regular basis - if not weekly, then monthly. For me, it was the first long distance travel of this kind in quite a while, which made it an exiting experience.

The purpose of my trip was the interview and the test I had to take in Moscow as a semi-finalist of the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program. Apart from these scheduled events, my visit to the city held many new impressions and a few surprises for me, probably even more than I had expected.

For the white knuckle flyer that I am, the nine-hour flight turned out to be a nervous experience giving that feel of living - or, rather, flying - on the edge. The fear though was slightly softened by my mp3 player, which helped me keep everything in my brain in its right place.

Being jet-lagged, the day after my arrival I took the interview and the test, which revealed my worst rather than showing my best. Unfortunately, the tiring flight had done its dirty job, leaving me slightly exhausted and my head tremendously aching. As a result, I submerged into an amoeba-like state, when I was able to only mumble when answering the questions. Okay, I have to admit that the long distance travel was the test I did not withstand... or so it seemed.

The challenge of the interview and the test over, I enjoyed and was relieved by the next few days in Moscow, which turned out to be an extremely nice time. Still, if you are in a city ten times larger than your native one, it is simply not possible to avoid surprises.



The first unusual thing I encountered was that enormous mass of people in the subway, especially during rush hour - thousands of people, constantly moving to and fro. This is definitely not a place for non-hasty walking. Watch out and keep the pace, or you will be swallowed by the crowd. It takes a couple of rides to get used to this ‘subway level’, though almost in an instant you get into the groove and become a typical ‘subwayer’, joining the flow of the city’s residents and its numerous guests.

Another surprise was how well the roads are kept and how quickly the snow shovelers work. After a heavy snowfall one of my days there, the snow was instantly removed from stairs and pedestrian subways – very much unlike Vladivostok, where it is usually left either to be pressed by pedestrians and cars into a slippery ice cake or, if we are lucky enough, to melt when it suddenly gets warm.

Muscovites themselves ruined for me the myth of their own formal arrogance which is widely believed by many in remote Russian cities and towns. The people in the street seem to be always keen to help you and show the way. All you have to do is ask. Needless to say, you will be able to lose your way only if you are completely deaf and numb.

“No-no, you are going the wrong way. Look, it is there, in the opposite direction,” a woman showed me the way when I asked how to get to the popular Gorbushka CD and video market. For an avid music fan like me, Gorbushka was definitely one of the top places to visit in Moscow. ‘Oh, and good luck!” she said smiling benevolently.

Weird as it may sound, another thing that struck me personally was the presence of numerous Russian-made cars in the streets. As a typical Vladivostok resident accustomed to the abundance of second-hand right-wheel Japanese cars in the city, which account to from 95-98 percent of the vessels exploited, I nearly had a chuckle at the sight of Zhigulis here and there. Seemed almost like an ode to the Russian car industry.

Overall, Moscow proved to be an extremely nice city, with impressive looks and downtown architecture reflecting its history. Everywhere you encounter newly constructed building sites. During my one-day visit to the small town of Ramenskoye, about 45 kilometers south-east of Moscow, I couldn’t help being impressed by its neat looks which left me somewhat jealous after muddy Vladivostok. With around 85,000 residents, most of them working jobs in Moscow, the town has seen considerable change in the past few years, with stone-block pavements, freshly painted old houses and new ones being constructed.



However, all good things tend to finish, and I had to leave Moscow in a few days. Flying back home was much easier, probably due to the fact that we were flying mostly in the night, with the plane destined to the blue narrow strip of the dawn in the east. With such a beautiful sight out of the window, you realize that it is often not the destination that matters but the traveling itself, which gives you numerous new impressions and discloses your inner qualities which you might have never realized. My trip to Moscow proved to be no exception.