Notes from Moscow Day 5.
The confusion continues. Little things like two golden arches under “Макдоналдс” give me an anchor that lets me know that not every symbol is foreign. I can’t help thinking that this might be how a stroke victim would feel if they lost their ability to read and hear cognitively, but kept all of their other faculties. I suppose that the difference is that I am sure that I could regain my connection with this Earth with study, practice and time, but a stroke victim would not be sure that is the case. If my analogy is correct, I have so much more empathy for stroke victims now.
For some reason my brain has shut down on some of my math functions. While I have no trouble doing math with a pencil and paper, or doing other math exercises that I know that I can do, I am absolutely baffled by the ruble-dollar conversion formula. I have a few thousand rubles, and everything is significant has gone onto a credit card, so I’ve had to deal with local currency in local currency. Try as I may, under the waiting watchful eye of the shopkeepers and with a line of impatient Russians behind me, this Canadian simply shuts down when it comes to understanding how much whatever I am buying is costing in Canadian dollars. I dutifully hand over the amount of rubles. It is a lot easier to hand over bills with big numbers on both sides than it is to count out change, so I have a growing pocket full of Russian coins. I also am stoic. It costs what it costs and if I want it, I pay it. I don’t have the language to negotiate and the stuff that I am buying is really non-negotiable. But it still irks me not to be able to do a simple calculation.
Moscow is a city of contrasts and contradictions. The contrasts are sometimes with each other and sometimes with my North American frame of reference. Mostly these contrasts are simply interesting, but however interesting, these contrasts add to the cacophony. I finally figure out the exchange formula. It is rather easy. 23.6 rubles is one US dollar. In seconds you will figure out a fast way to do the conversion in your head, but it has taken me three days. Call it 25 rubles per dollar. Then assume 100 rubles is 4 dollars. Go from there. It did me no good to do it more correctly or by the easiest method because I either went backwards or put the decimal in the wrong place. Again, frames of reference are confounding me. A coffee is 150 rubles, or about 6 dollars. An 11% beer, which is excellent and served from the coca cola and other street meat stands, is just 40 rubles, or what, a buck and a half for a half liter? Gasoline is about $1.00 per liter and a pack of cigarettes are over $10. The first night here, I spent 300 rubles on two coffees and felt bad that I had spent $16 on a couple of coffees. My friend didn’t understand what I meant but now I realize that the coffees were only $12 dollars, close enough to the Starbucks price points to apply the standard reasoning “This is Moscow” to put things in perspective. Besides, it doesn’t really matter. The price is what it is.
While my friend from Russia immigrated to Canada and in about a year or so learned English from North American television shows like Friends and Seinfeld, I am only here in Moscow for a short while and therefore surf endlessly through the sixteen channels looking for some signs of familiarity. Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts are now discovering plots within plots in a dubbed version of the movie Conspiracy. If I listen really carefully, I can hear the subdued English dialog and it helps. Yesterday I chanced on a show that seemed to be based on the Quebec show ‘Surprise Surprise’. It consisted of skits where stunningly attractive women would ambush men with sudden nudity and the hilarity ensued in front of a hidden camera. It contained no dialogue and may not have been a Russian show, but I saw it here first and was confounded by the inanity of it. But showed wonderful breasts, and was a half hour of distraction.
I celebrate the coffee houses that put pictures on their menus. That is what I choose. I point to it and hold up a single finger and smile and say please. I could say spacebo but I feel that would be just too fraudulent and so I smile and point. This morning I pointed to a quiche-like picture and was asked, thank God, if I wanted a chicken or fish. I don’t think I could face a Russian fish quiche with coffee first thing in the morning.
The street meat is varied and excellent. The stands are large semi-permanent wagons with a small window about 15 by 30 centimeters through which one talks and exchanges food for money. The fronts of the stands are Plexiglas and display the wares in a chaos of packaged food, fresh food, and beverage labels. There is a starch wagon (stuffed potatoes, corn and panini-type sandwiches), a pastry wagon, and a Chinese food wagon, all in a row, and all with the intense security of the tiny window which protects their goods like Fort Knox. Colourful signs tell me what they sell, and I can see pastry shrouds with meat like substances peeking out of the ends, in some cases. Overhead the panini store shows pictures of panini sandwiches laden with rich fillings. I realize I could cause serious damage to the shopgirl’s neck by pointing and asking for ‘one of those up there, please’ so I wait in line. With nobody behind me to watch my clumsiness, I point to what the last guy has ordered and say, “same please”. It works. For about three dollars, I get a big beer and a double baked potato with Russian ‘stuffings’. It is among the best street meals I’ve ever had. For all the security of the wagons, the beer is kept in coolers with large unsecured doors beside the wagons and people pay, and then serve themselves under a watchful honour system. Another contradiction, I think.
On the way back, I stop at the pastry hut and point to two of the meat filled pastries. One ends up being a sausage affair wrapped in a tortilla like dough wrapper, and the other is chicken in a bun, but done oddly. “It is what it is and This Is Moscow”, I think as I cart my treasures back to the room to write notes and channel surf for precocious and daring practical jokers with lovely breasts.
The Russian morning TV shows contain two things I understand: the exchange rate to US dollars, and the little weather symbols; sun, rain, clouds, and such that let me know whether the umbrella I carry always will be useful.
Almost six months ago my son left the umbrella in my car and when I mentioned it over the phone, he just said, “that’s all right dad, I’ll get it later.” I wonder if he’ll appreciate that his umbrella went to London where it was never rained on, back to Canada, then over to Amsterdam and on to Russia, where it was a most welcome shield against the metaphoric and wet rain on Moscow.
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