1.9.05: autumnal shades (a single day in moscow)

So far, Moscow is turning out to be the kind of the place where, if I were to plot my states of mind over the course of any given day, the [x;y] graph would most likely resemble a weather forecast for New Zealand. It’s possible to experience a pretty full spectrum of emotional states here between one sleep and the next.

Take today, the first day of the reputedly fleeting Russian autumn. Here’s a timeline for you:

10am: relief and contentment

Leaving my flat, I wander down to the local supermarket to pick up some milk, taking a shortcut I haven’t used before. Without warning, I find myself on a short but rather pretty section of wooded path, where overhanging trees completely obscure the socialist tower blocks. “At last”, I think, “some beauty in Prazhskaya.”

1pm: spring in the step

I take a break between lectures at the school’s central office on Borovitskaya (about 1km from Red Square). Standing in the street having a quick cigarette, I can see the sun glinting off the elegant domed roof of a government building across the road. Behind that are cheerful blue skies and motionless fluffy clouds, almost hyperreal in their vividness and calm stillness. Suddenly I’m feeling rather chirpy - even verging on ‘blissed out’. This place can be rather grand.

4:30pm: fits of fury

A plan to meet some colleagues for coffee on Tverskaya Ulitsa (Moscow’s main road) goes disastrously wrong when I find I literally cannot cross one of the roads lying between me and the meeting place. I decide to go ‘around the block’. A comedy of errors ensues – except that, by the end of it, I’m so not laughing.

When you’re lost in Moscow (except on the Metro), everything seems to stack up against you. The streets twist and turn in disorienting ways; not a single motorist will cut you a break by acknowledging the existence of pedestrian crossings; the city maps are pathetically bad (where’s a “YOU ARE HERE” arrow when you need one?); most of the non-famous buildings kinda resemble each other to the untrained eye; and the people (much as they do in Sydney, only more so) power-walk straight at you.

By the time I reach Tverskaya Ulitsa – 40 minutes late, but in perfect time to see the other teachers exit the café where we were supposed to meet – I’m ready to let fly with a furious “screw-this-whole-damn-city-and-everybody-in-it!” outburst. Which I do.

7pm: anxious moments

Myself and four other teachers are in Kuznetsky Most, two metro stops northeast of the centre. We walk onto a rather stately open square, and myself and Louis (a very pleasant and bouncy Spanish/Mexican/Californian colleague) decide it’s time to whip out the digital cameras for some happy snaps. It’s the first time I’ve been brave enough to use my camera in the city, and what happens within ten seconds of producing it from my shoulder bag? A militia man materialises, looking decidedly pissed off, and barks “no foto!” while almost running at us. I’m thinking “oh no, he’s going to impound my camera, and me with it”. Fortunately not.

Apparently (we worked out later), one of the more anonymous buildings on the square used to be KGB headquarters. It isn’t anything sensitive now, mind you – but it used to be. Which is evidently enough to make this a no-happy-snap-zone.

To put this into its proper context, right now all of us new teachers live in fear of the militia. They’re fond of stopping anyone who looks &/or sounds like a foreigner and doing an on-the-spot document check. At the time of writing our school has our passports, because our visas have to be registered, which they’ve offered to do for us. (Apparently the process is interminable and difficult.) So each of us is armed only with a spravka - a kind of affidavit letter - and with some increasingly ragged-looking photocopies of our passports and visas.

The worst part of this, though: the documents we're carrying around with us show our visas as unregistered. That makes us quite vulnerable. Militia checks can end in a number of ways: most likely we’ll either be let off or asked to pay a fine, but a highly unpleasant experience in a Russian police station is not out of the question. So our militia man confrontation definitely qualifies as an anxious moment.

10pm: quiet awe

From Kuznetsky Most, myself and the other four teachers decide to wander towards town, on the lookout for somewhere to stop for a coffee along the way. We end up in a sort of beer tent adjacent to one wall of the Kremlin. After sitting for a couple of hours talking about what brought us to Moscow and so forth, we decide to head for our respective homes.

The area around this part of the Kremlin is also the entrance to Red Square (probably not the only one – I’m not sure). It’s floodlight at night, mostly in brilliant white tones. As we cross through this area, I find myself thoroughly in awe of my surroundings. We all do. Conversation slows as we take it all in. Then one of the other teachers (a fairly well-travelled American called James, who’s spent the last two years teaching in Poland) tells me about a hypothetical phone conversation that's been playing on a loop in his head:

Friend: “So, wha’d ya get up to last night?”
James: “Oh, you know … wandered around outside Red Square, mostly.”

The look on James’ face and his tone of voice makes the significance of this clear: he can’t quite believe he's in the position, at least theoretically, to have that conversation. I think we're all feeling a bit the same. I comment to another teacher that “I didn’t expect to be quite so overwhelmed by this place”, and she replies: “Oh? I did!” This from someone whose most recent teaching assignment was an 18-month stint working for the Peace Corps in a village in Turkmenistan.

So you get the idea, I think. The brush with Moscow's Big Red Things affected us all quite powerfully. It was awesome.

11:30pm: lost again, but almost loving it

The final mental challenge for the day: find the right metro line and get home. This can be quite tricky, even if you’re at the right station. See, on the Moscow metro, if you have a large station with, say, four lines running through it, the station will usually have four names. The one I find myself in tonight is variously called Bibliotheka Imeny Lenina, Arbatskaya, Borovitskaya and something else I can’t recall.

The reason for these multiple names is that platforms don’t line up parallel as they would in other cities. They all point in different directions and are often spread widely apart. Some stations-within-stations are connected by long perekhodi (underground walkways), while others remain completely separate, accessed via different streets. Your job is to work out which is which, and then navigate the vast subterranean complex to the right platform.

As often as not, you find yourself traipsing through hundreds of metres of perekhodi, careening up and down on escalators that reach cruise speed at around Mach 2.5, and generally covering a lot of territory without ever really being sure you’re heading in the right direction. But in the process, you come upon what must be some of the most incredible architecture ever created for the purpose of city transit.

The walls of most metro stations are constructed from gleaming grey-and-white marble. All are airy and grand (especially those in the centre of town), with arched hallways – architecturally, they’re the diametric opposite of the claustrophobic sausage tubes that wind beneath other large cities. Many stations contain notable works of sculpture, depicting themes that range from past wars through famous Russian movers’n’shakers to the idealised lifestyle of the hallowed peasant family. Others have artworks and silhouetted cityscapes painted directly onto the walls.

The illumination in these places is also a feature; I’ve been in at least one station hall that was lit by chandeliers! Most often you get some kind of ‘concept lighting’, like the flame-shaped lanterns set into the walls of Belaruskaya, spreading a subdued glow throughout its cavernous red-marble halls.

As far as I can determine - although my flatmate disagrees - these metro stations are Cold War vintage. They were built to double as air raid shelters if the need arose (hence the long, metal-plated escalator shafts like the one pictured). What proportion of Moscow’s population could be thusly accommodated in an emergency I’ve no idea, but wandering along the platforms and through the perekhodi you get the feeling it wouldn’t be an insignificant number. It makes being lost kind of entertaining.

So that was my day in Moscow. Yep, just one. And I left out the work-related parts, which offer a whole separate emotional fun park ride at this point. (It’s part roller coaster, part dodgems.)

Did I mention that today was the day I found out that my first class will be full of eight-year-olds?

Mm-hmm. Let’s not even get started on that.