The Warlock Rewritten

On the journey home, I landed in Moscow according to (revised) plan and found my way to my hotel—appropriately, it had a model rocket out in front.  Check-in was a matter of a long waiting line ending in a clerk who didn't speak English, and who couldn't understand my halting attempts in Russian.  She did understand "Angliski," though, and sent me to the line for the English-speaking clerk—the end of the line.  Of course.

Serves me right for changing my reservation.

I went to dinner, served by a rather rude waiter (an editor of my acquaintance refers to this as "capital city syndrome").  I had to ask for help on the menu, after being told that the first two items I could translate weren't available.  He explained to me that if there was a check mark next to it, they had it in stock that day.  So that's why the menu was on paper—and mimeographed.

Next on the frustration list was trying to call home to tell them I was okay and to ask how they were.  For some reason, maybe a lack of rubles, I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me.  After three tries, I wound up yelling into the phone, figuring that if I were just loud enough, they might be able to hear me in the Midwest.  On the third try, my son answered and said, "Dad, if this is you, everything's okay here."  Relieved, I didn't call back, saving the eardrums of a large number of French citizens (I don't speak German).

However, I did have high school French, and it turned out to be useful the next morning.  As I passed the check-in line, I heard a voice raised in familiar frustration.  I saw a well-groomed gentleman speaking very loudly to the English-speaking clerk—volume due to his language, which, from phrases I picked up from my New Jersey students, I tentatively identified as Italian.  When he paused for breath, I asked if he spoke French.  He gave me a smile of surprise and said in the language of Jules Verne, "A little, yes."

"Well, this lady speaks only Russian and English," I said.  "Shall I ask her where I can find someone who speaks Italian?"

He said yes, with relief, and I asked the Russian lady, in English, where I could find someone who spoke Italian.  She pointed to a desk across the lobby.  The Italian gentleman and I thanked her and headed toward the desk in question; he asked me if I was French—and seemed surprised when I said I was American!

"But you speak French with a very good accent!"

Gotta hand it to those Italians—they know how to make a guy feel good.

After all, I had a right to.  I had just translated for an Italian, in French, then English, to a Russian clerk.  My high school French teacher would be proud of me.

I decided to tour Moscow by the tried and true method of getting lost and finding my way back to the hotel.  Got that?  I meant to get lost.  Did a very good job of it, too.  I even found my way back to the hotel.  Took a while, but I did get a nice look at the subways—really good-looking; Kruschev did a good job of designing them.  I heard some young Russians in a café celebrating the weekend, found a church that had been turned into a museum, saw Red Square (bigger than it seemed in the photographs) and the Kremlin on the other side of it, with St. Basil's thrown in for good measure—it always seems to me, in the pictures, like a confection.  Close up, it's much more realistic.  Then I went to the GUM, the Grand Universal Megazan—"The big store with everything in it."  My high school Russian teacher told us it was the first-ever department store.  Seeing it up close and personal, I thought it was much more likely to be the world's first shopping mall.

I managed to check out in time to catch my flight and, on the way back, tried to take stock of the wealth of experiences that had crowded themselves into one single week.  I think I had them sorted out by Christmas.

The one big overall impression I gained was that the ordinary Russian people are very much like us.  They're friendly, polite, and willing to help you out.

And, of course, a surprising number of them like science fiction.