A Day in the Life of a Foreigner in Moscow

On February 1^st, I woke up in a hostel on “Starii Arbat” and was surprised to discover that the sun was shining in my eyes. After three long days of sitting in a chair at the Fulbright midyear conference, my body reacted to the sun with one thought: ice-skating. I sent out the word to the Fulbrighters still in town and at 2:00 pm I met Dan, Lauren, and Julia to go ice skating in Gorkii Park. I had heard that it was a huge skating area; what I didn’t know was that they flood all the paths in the gigantic park. You can literally skate/stroll through the entire park. It was sooooo cool. We rented skates and went exploring through the park, which was so large that we barely made it through the entire park in the hour we were there. What’s more, there was a blue sky and happy, smiling Russians on skates: some played hockey, some were on dates, and some were just gossiping in the park with their friends. There are still, of course, kiosks in the park, so you can buy—well—whatever you want while you skate. We determined that what we wanted was beer and we spent the last 15 minutes skating with Nevskoe Pivo in hand.

After skating, Dan, Julia, and I rolled over to another metro stop to meet Liza [another community service Fulbrighter] for a belated birthday celebration. We went to a café that Julia had found earlier that week—it was underground and only had room for about 10 tables. All the food that you could order was sitting out in dishes on the bar—you could point out what you wanted and the woman at the bar would dish you up a portion and then throw it in the microwave for a few minutes. They also had Baltika 8 [my favorite beer in Russia] on tap, which I have never found anywhere else. We sat and talked loudly, scaring off what seemed to be the café’s main customers: old men eating chocolate and drinking cognac. They were so inspiring that we decided to do the same and thus we sat for another hour, sipping cognac and eating miniature chocolate bars, until we realized that we were late for our next event, meeting Liza’s friend Misha at his art gallery. Off we rushed again.

While walking to the gallery, Misha informed us that he needed to impress someone at the opening with his language skills and therefore we should speak only English with him there. After he introduced us 4 times not as Betsy, Liza, Dan, and Julia but merely as his “American friends,” we understood that we were invited primarily to be pimped out as Americans. A common occurrence in Russia? Certainly. But this time we decided to give Misha a run for his money. Standing in the middle of a room filled with grotesque art and with plastic cups of wine in hand, the four of us somehow ended up in an hour and a half discussion/argument/fight about abortion. We succeeded in offending each other at various moments and in almost shouting every few minutes. In the process, we shocked all the Russians around us, who were unacquainted with the typical American style of political discourse. Misha several times tried to change the topic unsuccessfully—in short, I don’t think we’ll be invited back as token Americans again.

Not ready to end the night yet, we continued onto an underground bar called “Agi”. It had a bookstore and a cobblestone floor and dimly lit tables. A “retro-dance band” was playing, complete with a piano, fiddle, bass, and a woman with Marilyn Monroe blonde hair and red lipstick playing on the accordion in the center of the stage. The music made me feel like I should be dancing on the streets of Paris or Chicago in the spring. While Dan danced with Liza, I ordered up the birthday margaritas. We sat for an hour, sipping our drinks and listening to the music, calm after the storm at the art gallery. We went home on the last metro car and when I got to my stop, I rode the 7-story escalator completely alone for the first time, making the day seem entirely surreal. For me, it belonged in a Hemingway novel but somehow ended up in my life. Moscow has overpriced hotels and crabby, crooked taxi drivers, but it also has skating parks, grungy cafes, and now a few pages of my journal.