Well, today I crossed the Red Sea and entered the Promised Land. The days and weeks leading up to my departure had been hectic. I gradually had to give up goal after goal and just focus on actually making it to Russia. I finally got my “diplomatic pouch” of books, music, and educational materials for the St. Petersburg Conservatory off yesterday. It won’t arrive in St. Petersburg for several weeks. I only slept a few hours the night before departure. I had to focus on going through my remaining music and papers.
The flight was relatively uneventful. I sat next to a ravishing Russian beauty, as delightful as she is lovely, and her young daughter, going home to visit the grandmother in Moscow. I tried out a few words of Russian, but we ended up speaking English most of the trip. I slept little, and eventually caved in and watched the series of movies that appeared in escalating order of violence as the night wore on. After each movie, passengers leapt from their seats to use the restrooms and to socialize noisily, so at just the point when one might roll over and go to sleep, it was impossible.
Arriving in Moscow, I had no difficulties in customs. A policeman was shocked by the amount of luggage I had for one person (two large bags, a laptop, and a small carryon of sheet music and papers), but ultimately seemed to recognize that examining my bags would be both tiresome and pointless. There are a few advantages to looking like an agreeable vanilla pudding.
Past customs there was a taxi driver with the word “Fulbright” on a piece of cardboard. Besides Russian, as it turns out, he spoke German decently and a few words of English. So we conversed in a curious mixture of the three languages. Arriving at the hotel, I had to drag my suitcases up multiple steps. No employee of this hotel spoke—or admitted to speaking—English, and indeed, the most English that escaped their lips was the price of something.
This was particularly disconcerting because all in all I saw six or seven different employees, each of which seemed to be looking for my reservation in the monitors, typed repeated entries, and then clucked over what appeared on their screens, sharing the results with their fellows and murmuring ominously.
After visits to a second office—with more typing, looking, and murmuring—and a return to the first, I was issued a room, whereupon they asked for my credit card. I tried to explain that the Fulbright organization was paying for the room. But the word “Fulbright” evoked not the slightest spark of recognition, despite the fact that there should be numerous Fulbrighters interviewing and being inverviewed at that hotel. I tried various possible Russian pronunciations—FulBRIGHT, FulBRAYT—but still nothing. Eventually they gave me my key card and indicated that we would work payment out later. As it turned out, the Fulbright organization does not use the word "Fulbright" in Russia.
I had both lunch and dinner in the hotel café. The hostess/waitress was truly welcoming and helpful. There was wireless internet in the café for ten cents a minute, but reception was spotty and somewhat difficult to get going. I had a very exotic lunch: a tongue salad (covered in mayonnaise, most of which I ladled off) with a bowl of a beef and vegetable soup. Dinner was a thoroughly delicious piece of salmon.
Ultimately as the day ended, I had not encountered a single Moscovite who spoke a whole sentence of English, including the customs official (ok, I didn’t really try her), the taxi driver, seven hotel clerks, a porter, a convenience store clerk, a newspaper vendor, nor the hostess, waitress, or cook in the restaurant. So lesson 1: The idea that English is the universal language is a MYTH.
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