Moscow Orientation – Day 13 – All about Travel

I made arrangements for one trip today and got ready to set out on another.

My first stop was a travel agent in my neighborhood. The security guard in the lobby eyed me suspiciously when I walked in. He turned down his television set and asked me where I was going.
“I’m going to the travel agency,” I answered.
“Do you need tickets?”
“Yes.” I said.
“Railroad or Airline?” he asked.
“Airline” I answered.
“To where?” he queried.
“The US,” I said.
“Upstairs to the left,” he directed.
All this was odd, since the travel agent is only upstairs to the left. No other choice. And since only one person was working on this Saturday, there was no other choice than to talk to the one person handling all ticket requests. Still, procedure is procedure and I had to go through this screening.

Anyway, I secured tickets and left. My next stop was a huge, open air market to get a heavy fall/winter coat long enough to wear over my suits. And warm enough to get me through some undoubtedly nasty weather.

The Izmailovsky market is a vast space crammed with stalls selling every imaginable good – and plenty of unimaginable goods as well. For all the nice new retail stores in Moscow, this is still the kind of place where the majority of muscovites do their shopping.

I found a nice leather coat, and had a nice experience buying it. The vendor was extremely courteous, solicitous, polite, and shared advice and opinions. In short, a pleasant retail experience is a rarity in Russia. Normally, one has to flag down a salesperson who will frown and be generally uncommunicative during the entire transaction. But not in the bazaar, populated as it is by central Asians and “Caucasians” – people from the Caucasus countries like Georgia and Armenia.

Unfortunately, they have a terrible reputation for both organized crime and unorganized one-on-one swindling. Russians call them “blacks” and uniformly distrust them. But if the “blacks” can instill even a little bit of a consumer culture here, than whatever their transgressions cost will be a small price to pay in the long run.

The fellowship group collected at the office and went to Kazansky Station for the train to Cheboksary, the capital city of the Chuvash Republic. We had nice accommodations, and I shared a sleeper compartment with Jim. Well, not much since the group all crammed into two compartments. Luckily I was not in the one with all the vodka – just a few beers and snacks instead.

The train was as hot as a sauna, and at one stop I got out for some air. There’s a crystal factory nearby and the platform was crowded with people selling all manner of crystal goods. They ranged from small trinkets to huge chandeliers carried on poles overhead.

One colleague was standing somewhat cluelessly in the midst of tinkling crowd of chandeliers. People were freely going through his pockets until we stopped them and ushered him back onto the train. That’s when I realized the full extent of what was going on in the compartment with all the vodka; he neither knew nor cared that he was being pickpocketed.

It was a 12 hour train trip, so there was plenty of time for chatting and sleeping. I did plenty of both.