tiny fun in a huge metropolis

You've no idea how much I've had to resist making puns on the word "Seoul" on this website. It surely has to be one of the world's most punnable city names, and it's been extremely difficult to avoid titles like "Seouled Out" or "A Window on The Seoul". But you'll see: I can show restraint when my heart and Seoul are in it.

Oops. Sorry.

Anyway, I guess most of you will be reading this fairly soon after yesterday's entry, so we might as well just pick up where we left off.

From memory, the Word Nerd had just taken a reasonable request to a foreign embassy and been beaten over the head with it. (I imagine a few of the people reading this have had similar experiences, and believe me, I'm Empathy Boy now!) As I mentioned, my first visit to the Embassy of Kazakhstan was on Wednesday (yesterday) and they need me back there on Friday (tomorrow), so today became my Designated Tourist Day.

Of course, my impressions of this city are pretty vague so far, but one thing I can say confidently is this: Seoul is definitely not small. If you include its various 'satellites', Greater Seoul is home to something like 22 million people; it's a vast, vast and, above all, vast city. In satellite photos you can clearly see the large, grey, Seoul-shaped splotch at altitudes from which no other Korean cities are visible at all. And so far I've had just two days to explore the giant splotch at ground level, so don't expect anything too insightful in this entry.

Having said that, I've seen a lot of stuff in a short time. I'm finding here (much as I did in Tokyo, although the two cities are very different) that every time I turn my head there are a dozen new things vying for my attention and contemplation. It's all a bit of a 24-hour sensory fun park at this stage.

Speaking of senses, the place where I'm staying is in an area called Hapjeong. It appears to be a fairly working class neighbourhood, where the streets are a happy clutter (or a dirty chaotic mess, depending on your perspective) and where smells of rotting garbage and sulphur mingle with the fragrant aromas spilling from late-night eateries. When the garbage/sulphur smells are winning, the stinkiness can be quite overpowering. At other times, though, the food smells waft in my direction and evoke pleasant memories of Korean meals I've had with students in Australia and NZ. It's a good place to walk through the streets and just watch people cooking, eating, sitting at outdoor tables and chatting to each other, shopping, cooking again (a lot of food gets cooked around here), and generally going about their everyday lives.

However, since today was my Designated Tourist Day, the first thing I did was get on the (extremely efficient and user-friendly) subway and leave Hapjeong behind, heading for the centre of town to book myself a city tour. This turned out to be quite a good idea, because – although the tour itself was only slightly more informative than a Windows help file – it was one of those 'jump on, jump off' things that passes through a gazillion places and gives you the basic layout of the city you're in.

The tour began on the main street outside Gwangwhamun subway station. This was the first time I'd been into central Seoul, and the Absolute Everywhereness of things rather dazzled me. There was a sudden sense of "Wow, I'm really at the heart of things here, in the centre of a big, important capital". The tour began on the main street outside Gwangwhamun subway station. This was the first time I'd been into central Seoul, and the Absolute Everywhereness of things rather dazzled me. There was a sudden sense of "Wow, I'm really at the heart of things here, in the centre of a big, important capital".

Highlights included Namsangol Traditional Korean Village, which had all the potential to be incredibly cheesy and embarrassing, but actually turned out to be pretty good. I think that's mostly because the buildings were all 'real' historical structures, not Plastic Paddy* re-creations. Also, the place was mercifully free of hokey craftspeople in faux national dress, operating looms and doing other terribly 'earthy' things like that.

What Namsangol did have was a pretty sizeable collection of authentic period houses, with elegant curled eaves, beautiful, dark-stained wooden furniture and ingenious use of natural light.

Short version: them was purtty =)


As I was wandering amongst all this stuff it occurred to me that, from an Australian point of view, places like Namsangol are the 'anti-Europe' in a sense. See, for Australians, the Big European Holiday always comes packaged with some 'freakiness of antiquity' moments – the ones where you find yourself leaning up against a stone wall somewhere and thinking "Wow, I can't believe this thing was built in the 8th frikkin' century!". You just don't get that in the Wide Brown Land, so the concept of something standing for over a thousand years tends to boggle the mind a little.

In Korea (and likewise in Japan) I've experienced the opposite thing. The traditional dwellings of both countries look so venerably ancient that I get a slight shock when I'm reminded that many of the ones I've seen are scarcely more than a hundred years old. It's amazing to think how completely these societies have transformed themselves between that time and this, as revealed by their architectural heritage. By comparison, the journey from Gothic to Bauhaus seems leisurely almost to the point of laziness.

From the bus stop outside Namsangol (where an army of primary school children smiled toothlessly at the funny Westerner and yelled "Haaaaaiiiiiii!!!", making me doubt my long-held conviction that Japanese people produce the world's cutest kids), I was whisked onward to N Seoul Tower.

This is basically the Sydney Tower/Skytower/Berliner Fernsehturm of Seoul. And in case you're wondering, yes I am aware that visiting a city's tallest tower is a painfully touristy thing to do. Much like, say, going to a traditional village. But this was my Designated Tourist Day, so I went.

In my defence, I didn't actually go up the tower. There were too many other things around to distract me – like the sign you can see here. Naturally I couldn't resist the idea of "a beautiful world [made] with junk", especially since there was an 8-foot-high transformery-looking thing standing next to the sign, with a motorbike frame for a spinal column. So I paid my W10,000 and went in. It was amazing. I saw, quite literally, hundreds of artworks made from garbage, ranging from hedghogs with spark plug quills to angry robot mothers with rice-cooker heads (about to boil over, of course). It was an incredible collection.

Meanwhile, outside the tower is an elevated deck designed to give visitors a view of central Seoul, and here I got my first glimpse of the Han River, which divides the city into North and South. All very good to see, but what I most enjoyed here was the ingenious (and probably illegal) way in which visitors had turned the viewing deck into an unofficial outdoor visitors' book. As you look at the wire mesh that prevents people from falling or leaping to their deaths, you see hundreds of padlocks fastened to it, all bearing messages. Of course, I can't read hangul** (yet), so I'm not sure what most of the messages say. Are they specifically addressed to friends who might visit the same spot at a later date, or general messages of goodwill to anyone who might read them? No idea, but either way I really liked the concept.

So, er ... guess what I then had to spend the next half an hour searching for?

Yep, you were at least half right.

First I had to find a padlock, but then a marker pen was also necessary (because you can't use a normal pen to write on metal). After that it was just a question of practising the hangul characters until I had them right, then finding a moment when there was no-one around who might alert the authorities. (The two cute 20-something women hanging out on the deck seemed fairly safe – especially after they asked to have their photograph taken with me.)

 

Of course, afterwards I reflected on the idea that "tiny things please tiny minds", and thought that if you were looking for a test case to prove the old saying, my Designated Tourist Day might be a good place to start. Meanwhile, the person in the room diagonally across from mine at the hostel had spent her day touring the D.M.Z., one of the most potent political symbols of our time. (I'm not allowed to go there because the Embassy of Kazakhstan has my passport.) So yeah, I felt a bit small when we compared our stories of the day. But still, I had fun. So there.

Okay, that's it for now. Time to sleep. You'll hear from me again tomorrow, but it won't be as long and winding as today's entry. No really ... I promise to be brief next time!

Take care :-)

Anthony.

 

* "Plastic Paddy": an expression I heard ages ago and liked a lot. It's apparently used to denote Irish kitsch of the type that tourists consume with great enthusiasm, but which Irish people themselves find horribly distasteful. Several years ago I invented a similar phrase to describe the Australian equivalent: "tradgy dadge". This is based on the Australian expression "ridgey didge", meaning "genuinely Australian in character". My version didn't catch on. Shame, since there's SO much dreadful kitsch down there just crying out for the right insult to adequately describe it.

** "hangul": The Korean writing system, and quite a unique and interesting one. Up until about 900 years ago Koreans used Chinese characters, but then King Sejong (one of the nation's historical luminaries) commissioned scholars to create a clear and logical alphabet for their nation. The result is both ingenious in its construction, yet very easy to learn and use. (It took me only three or four days to get up to about 60% literacy.) But just put yourself in Korean shoes for a sec: imagine if your government said to you tomorrow "Hey guys, we've got this whole new writing system worked out, and everyone has to use it from now on, so we're thinking you'd better learn it ASAP." Wouldn't that just be bizarre?

extreme weather guy

On the 16th of November 1989, two weeks after completing my final HSC (Higher School Certificate) exam, I attended my high school formal at a frightfully prestigious venue known as the Newcastle Workers' Club. This turned out to be quite a large event in my life, and the calendar date is permanently etched in my brain. At the risk of inducing catatonia, let me explain why.

First, there was the fact that the HSC was finally over, and I hadn't died while attempting to complete it. I knew there were some things about high school that I'd miss – like studying Revolutionary Theory, which was my extra history unit. But overall, I was pretty damn pleased to be alive and kicking at the end of it all. Or at least alive and smoking.

Then there was this rather bizarre twist: I can't remember how I'd managed it, but by some means or other I'd found the necessary courage to ask Dolores Biscuitwidth to The Formal (Aust'n equivalent of a "prom")with me. And stranger still, my request had drawn an unexpected reply from her – she'd said "yes".

To explain the significance of that: Dolores (not her real name, in case you hadn't guessed) was the person with whom I'd been utterly obsessed throughout my last year of high school, and who may or may not qualify as my 'first love'. So her willingness to accompany me as we graduated into the world of adulthood was a pretty mind-blowing thing at the time.

All sounding good so far, but there are definitely some less pleasant memories that accrete around this calendar date as well. Like the moment when I discovered that Dolores had disappeared during the ceremony to join her far-more-glamorous quasi-boyfriend Vernon Snackables (name changed to protect the guilty) in the salubrious downstairs bar of the Workers' Club. As far as I was able to work out, Vernon's glamour mostly derived from the fact that he was older and more 'experienced' than me, he treated Megan like a used tissue, he was a borderline sociopath and he had an exciting drug habit.

Oh no, hang on, there was something else: he was cute. Very cute, in fact. Much more so than, say, me for instance. So in one sense I did understand why I was second fiddle in the Dolores Biscuitwidth Symphony Orchestra. I was the silly, geeky friend, Vernon was the classic 'bad boy', and we were both very good at our jobs. So props to him. Still, all that perspective didn't really help me much at the time :-(

Luckily, though, as the the night wore on things improved. Imogen re-joined me at the formal, and I guess Vernon got sick of waiting for her in the bar, so he sloped off with some disreputable associates. This was good, because after the formal Dolores decided to come out with me and a group of classmates for a night on the tiles. Which leads to the fifth (and final) reason why 16 Nov '89 looms so large in the memory banks – namely, that after we'd spent the night doing all manner of silly things in the inner suburbs of Newcastle, Dolores and I fell asleep in each other's arms. Well, almost. It would be more accurate to say that we dozed for a bit on a friend's living room floor, before hastily clearing out and packing our bags to get the hell out of Newcastle once and for all. But I like the first version.

The next day, our post-high school lives commenced when we boarded the same train, bound for Sydney.

I could go on with this story, filling several pages with the strange convolutions of the following years. They're really quite ... well, strange and convoluted. And the story ends up with Dolores and I discovering just a few years ago (after a long period of not seeing each other at all) that we were living just blocks from one another in Sydney suburb of Stanmore. Me in share housing, her with partner and child.

But I won't, because none of that is actually the point.

The thing I actually set out to tell you is this: exactly one month after that night when I entered the Newcastle Workers' Club for the first and only time, the entire frikkin' building was reduced to rubble by an earthquake.

So let's review:

1. High school formal
2. Anthony & Dolores escape to Sydney
3. One month's worth of business as usual at the Worker's Club; and
4. Destruction, chaos, nature's wrath, bodies being pulled from under shattered cement blocks and identified from dental records.

I'm pretty sure that, if I was reading this, I'd now be thinking "Ah-huh ... so what exactly is your point, you silly man?". But here's what you don't know yet, and what I myself only realised this week: I, Anthony 'Word Nerd' National Namesake Cook, have finally found my purpose and function in this world. And it's as follows: I'm Extreme Weather Guy.

While you cool your skepticism let me cut to January 2006, when I was commuting every day through the outer reaches of Moscow in temperatures that frequently dipped below -20C. I wrote about this at the time and so I apologise for repeating myself. However, I just want to remind you briefly of one detail. While we all know that winter in Russia is always a pretty frigid affair, I happened to be there in the year when even the Russians themselves were freaked out about how cold things were getting. In fact – as the BBC helpfully informed me – the winter of 2005-6 was the coldest Russia had endured for 27 years. And what was different in 2006 to any other January? Simple: Extreme Weather Guy was there.

In case you're still loitering in the corridors of the unconvinced, let me tell you about what happened here tonight. At about 9pm, while I was sitting in my Herne Bay flat trying to work out how to explain the difference between will and going to when discussing future intentions, there was an earthquake. True story. And not just a little tremor, mind you, but the largest quake this town has experienced for 30 years. Large enough to close the airport. Large enough to make every dog in Auckland bark more or less in unison for about three minutes. Large enough to bring audible cries of "whoa!" to my ears from other apartments in my building. Larger than ... um, okay, I've temporarily run out of large stuff to mention, but I'm sure you've tuned into "large" theme by now, so let me tell you what else it was (aside from large):

It was cool.

To add to the fun, this happened on a day when I'd taken about 30 students from my school on an excursion to Mount Eden (one of the volcanoes in central Auckland – mentioned in a previous ramble). While we walked around the crater, I decided it was time to frighten some of my star pupils by telling them the facts about Mount Eden and its sister volcanoes. And the facts are basically these: they're all part of a massive volcanic field that sits directly beneath Auckland and is still active today.

I pointed towards Rangitoto, brooding in the harbour like a big broody harbour-dwelling thing, and told them that it wasn't there 600 years ago and that it appeared suddenly one day while the Maori were working in their fields on adjacent islands. I pointed around us to all the other cones we could see, which were numerous. And I told them the prevailing scientific belief that none of these volcanoes are likely to erupt again. Instead, scientists say, the lava, magma and other deadly goo will break through at a different location in the city, and Auckland will have a new volcano for visitors like us to marvel at. Everything I said was true.

And then, that night, we had a 4.5 earthquake.

A couple of minutes after the ground got wibbly-wobbly, I sent the following text to my Kiwi buddy Greer: "Wow ... volcanoes, glaciers, frikkin' earthquakes. I love your country!" And that's true too. Of course, it wouldn't have been quite as much fun if we'd gone a point higher on the Richter Scale and my flat had crumbled around / under / on top of me. But it didn't, and I wasn't (crushed to death, I mean). So that was okay; just another one of those things that served to enhance my authentic Kiwi Experience.

Now the dogs have shut up and I'm sitting here in the picturesque calm of Herne Bay, thinking about my obviously magnetic effect on extreme weather systems. What should I do with this newly-discovered ability, do you think? Move to Washington D.C. and rent a flat as close as possible to the White House, maybe? Hmmm ... suggestions, anyone?

Actually, I'll tell you one thing I could do. I'm planning to return to Australia for a few months during 2007, so if there's any little corner of that country you'd like to see obliterated, please let me know. For a modest fee, I'd happily swing by your neighbourhood of choice and concentrate really hard on making the Earth around me crack, boil, freeze, violently invert itself, be submerged by molten lava, toads or flood waters, or whatever else I can think of at the time. You don't have to answer right away; have a little think about it and see what you come up with.

While you do that, I'm off to get some sleep. Bye!

saving akira

"Nice to meet you, son", said the ruddy-faced man in the baby blue cloth hat. "Hope you brought your togs with you."

"Brought my what?"

To be honest, I didn't really say that. Instead I allowed my brain 1/2 a second to sift through its expanding collection of Kiwi English, and then said "Well, truthfully, I'm not much of a swimmer". At that point in time, I was yet to realise that this is almost the Kiwi equivalent of a man in Australia saying "No thanks, I don't drink beer". I've learned a lot since then.

It seems from an outsider's p.o.v. that New Zealanders always have swimming plans lurking somewhere at the back of their minds. In any given tourist brochure you pick up, the basic sales pitch goes like this: "Come and experience the finest [blah blah thingie whatever] NZ has to offer, and enjoy a refreshing swim afterwards in our nearby [lake / mineral pool / white sandy beach / other body of water]". If the brochure advertises an activity, the first thing listed under "requirements" will be "swimwear". And if it's aimed at the local tourist market, you can guarantee the phrase "bring your togs!" will appear somewhere – always with the joyful exclamation mark. It seems there's no kind of day out into which a Kiwi* can't insert some paddling time. Quite impressive really, but a tiny bit socially awkward if you don't like swimming. And guess who doesn't :-(

So, given that I'd just revealed I was from an alien planet, I think the cloth-hatted man's response was very gracious. "Oh well, there's plenty of nice beach on Motuihe. You can always go for a wander along the coast. The ground can be a wee bit sharp, though; did you bring your jandals**?"

This conversation, btw, was taking place at the back end of a ferry headed for Motuihe, an island in the Hauraki Gulf outside Auckland. Mr. Cloth-Hat was one of the stewards of the Motuihe Conservation Project, who are re-planting the island with native NZ trees. Similar completed projects on neighbouring islands have had amazing results: on nearby Tiritiri Matangi 80% of the island has been re-planted and it's now the best place in the country to see some of NZ's most fabulous birds.

Anyway, while I was on Motuihe, in the morning I basically planted little baby manukas (a.k.a. tea trees) in root-trainer pots, which was repetitive but strangely relaxing. After lunch I went off in search of pohutukawa trees on the windward side of the island. They needed to be 'banded' – which is to say that, working with two other people, I had to put wide hessian bands around them, tied between two sticks. This is so that strong headwinds don't rip the young trees out of the ground and hurl them into the waters of the Gulf.

Mind you, at the time I was less than crystal clear about exactly what kind of tree I was meant to be protecting. The word pohutukawa flashed by me a few times without connecting firmly to anything in my brain, and it was only later that I really got the name right. Here's the conversation that finally did it:

KIWI PERSON:      "So what did you do on Motuihe?"

ME:                           "Well, in the morning I planted Manuka and in the
                                  afternoon I banded those trees that sound like a
                                  Japanese film director."

KIWI:                       "Sound like what?"

ME:                           "You know, Akira Kurosawa."

KIWI:                       "Aaaah, you mean pohutukawa".

ME:                           "Um ... yeah, that could be them."

The following weekend I saw lots more pohutukawa on Rangitoto. And a couple of things just struck me as I was typing that. First, it's one of those sentences you only get to write once in a lifetime. (I like those.) And second, I should probably explain what the Hell it means.

So, Rangitoto Island. This is basically a volcano that shot up in the middle of the Hauraki Gulf about 600 years ago, a little way outside the North Head of Auckland's harbour. Rangitoto has that classic cone shape that everyone thinks of whenever the word "volcano" comes up in conversation – it kind of squats conspicuously out there beyond the heads, doing a reasonable impression of Mt. Fuji with half the air let out. It's an open invitation to anyone who's never seen a volcano before ... and until a few weeks ago, that was me.

One of the weirdest things to contemplate vis-a-vis Rangitoto is that, at the time of its emergence, there were quite a few Maori living on the (very) nearby island of Motatapu. So picture this: you're pottering about in your tropical ocean paradise one day, carving delicious edible sculptures out of ripe summer fruits or whatever, and suddenly an enormous mountain pushes itself angrily out of the sea in front of you, vomiting ash and lava onto you, your loved ones, your drinking buddies, your crops, your fabulous fruit sculpture (which you've spent hours on) and pretty much everything else within your rapidly shrinking field of vision.

All of which begs the question: "Jeez ... how would you cope?"

So anyway, you get onto the island and you've got the whole anatomy of a volcanic eruption laid out before you, which is pretty remarkable. I mean, Motuihe was pretty, but it's more or less your standard semi-tropical island (albeit with some funky birds, whom I dutifully chased with a camera). Rangitoto, on the other hand, had some ugly, scarred areas along with some pleasant and even beautiful parts, and I found the whole jigsaw of it quite fascinating.

To start with, on the lower parts of the island there are vast amounts of loose volcanic rock called scoria lying around. These came out of the crater as magma, tumbled down the sides of the mountain and solidified to create snapshots of Rangitoto's birth pains. Some of the scoria lies in valleys that sweep dramatically down from the summit, giving it the appearance of a solid river (and the light-coloured mosses growing on top provide quite a convincing 'white-water' effect). Elsewhere it's seemingly thrown about quite randomly, making certain parts of Rangitoto look like abandoned quarries.

As you head up towards the summit, the scoria disappears and you find yourself walking through forest, surrounded by giant tree ferns and pohutukawa and other exotic greenery.

  

At this point you start to notice the soils of Rangitoto, which also came from the crater. Their colours change dramatically from one location to another, ranging from yellow through outback red to deep purple. According to the signs around the island, the soil's colour can tell you what it was originally and how early or late in the process it was released from the Earth. All of which is cool, of course ... but mainly, I just thought it was kinda pretty.

Further up still and you can look out over Motatapu – the island where those poor Maori were living when their weekend was ruined by the arrival of a scary magma-spitting mountain on their doorstep. When Rangitoto erupted, Motatapu was completely covered in ash, and even now it's almost treeless. Looking out from the lush forested slopes of Rangitoto – a volcano, don't forget – to the naked hills of Motatapu is quite bizarre; you get the sense of nature arranging things in exactly the opposite way to what you'd expect.

And then of course there's the crater. This, I have to admit, was a bit disappointing. Expecting a massive, gaping, fearsome hole, instead what I saw was ... well, it looked like a thickly-forested valley. Probably because that's exactly what it is. Even the fluffy little green birds with the striking white eyeliner who were flitting around the crater's edge didn't seem to feel overawed by it. They were just there to enjoy the pohutukawa seeds.

And that was Rangitoto.

Before I 'sign off', I want to mention something a bit odd that happened while I was wandering through the fields of scoria.

The environment of Rangitoto inspires plenty of free mental association, and as my mind wandered about I found myself once again thinking of a certain famous Japanese film director.

To explain the oddness of this, I have to tell you that I'm not a massive Kurosawa fan. I haven't even seen Seven Samurai or Yojimbo (his most famous works, the second of which was re-made as one of my all-time favourite films, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). However, late one night about six months ago, Australia's multicultural TV network SBS showed a film called The Dreams of Akira Kurosawa.

As far as I could understand, there were two main characters in the film: Kurosawa himself, and some other guy that was walking around listening to him deliver monologues. It seemed like a kind of Dante/Virgil pairing, with Kurosawa leading his friend through various hellish landscapes and explaining the nightmares that he associated with them.

I couldn't work out whether, in the rubric of the story, these were meant to be actual landscapes or just regions of Kurosawa's mind. But they were filmed in an interesting way. The film makers had obviously gone to real locations and shot them, but it often appeared as though they'd filmed the actors separately on a green screen, to show that they weren't actually walking on the landscapes but rather floating slightly above them. And the scoria fields I saw around me on Rangitoto looked a lot like some of the locations in that film.

More than that: there's something not-quite-real about the idea of hiking around a volcano which heaved itself out of the ocean just a few geological blinks-of-an-eye before you got there. It really does give you the sensation of being a little physically detached. There are moments when you feel as though you might not really be there – perhaps you're walking in front of a green screen and the background images are being matched into the picture as you go. Much like The Dreams of Akira Kurosawa.

To finish off with yet another irrelevant sidebar ('cause, for those of you who didn't know, my super hero name is "Captain Tangent"): a couple of people have asked me whether I'm struggling with Maori place names. The answer is definitely "yes". Even the word Maori itself is tricky to pronounce, and I was a little surprised to learn just how wrongly I'd been saying it before I got here. But speaking of things Japanese (or at least of one Japanese guy), someone here told me a very interesting thing: a few Japanese immigrants and students who come to NZ decide to try learning the Maori language, and they apparently find it quite easy to pick up. Isn't that interesting?

Okay, so maybe not hugely interesting. Unless you're a Word Nerd, of course. But I have been thinking about it as various Maori place names flash by me on road signs etc., and as I hear and read Japanese around the place. (I learned to read and write Katakana and Hiragana last year, so now I'm an avid reader of Japanese signs, even though I usually don't understand what the words mean.) And from a phonetic point of view, I think the Japanese-finding-Maori-quite-easy phenomenon kinda makes sense. Check it out:

Japanese:   "Hajimemashite. Watashino namaewa Antoni desu."

                       ("Nice to meet you. My name's Anthony.")

Maori:         "Kia Ora, Antoni. Pohutukawa?"

                        ("Welcome, Anthony. Christmas tree?")

Now, don't they seem to you like they could almost be the same language?

Okay, enough of this silliness. I'd better go. Stay tuned for news of my road trip to the volcanic Central North Island, wherein stinky sulphurous fun was had by all :-)

Take care and stay well. Bye!

(* Just btw, New Zealanders do actually call themselves "Kiwis". If you think you're scoring points by equating a New Zealander to a flightless bird {which I think a lot of Australians do} ... well, you're not. Sorry.)

(**"Flip-flops" if you're English or American, "Thongs" if you're Australian, and probably a different preposterous name if you're from any other part of the English-speaking world.)

the heart of the experience ...

When I first opened Ranting Manor last year, I wrote on the home page that it would "record my experiences as a traveller and teacher of English". But I realised last week that, in actual fact, I've barely mentioned the teaching part at all.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First and foremost, I don't want to bore you! I mean, the occasional classroom anecdote is okay (I think), but I'm sure the vast majority of people reading this can live without a detailed breakdown of what it's like to teach English as a foreign language. And secondly, thinking back to when I was doing my training, I saw teaching partly as a vehicle. Which is to say that, while I thought it could potentially be a very suitable job for me, the #1 reason to be in a place like Moscow would not be to teach there but ... well, simply to be there.

That's why most of my rambling has centred on places I've visited and things I've seen while not explaining the present perfect, nit-picking phrasal verbs ("No, Tatiana, the opposite of 'put on your coat' isn't 'put off your coat' ... though it probably should be") or trying to help students distinguish between defining and non-defining relative clauses.

And now you're thinking "Oh ^deer^, he's about to launch into a whole bunch of wacky classroom tales." Well, sort of. What I want to do, now that my time in Moscow is just about over, is tell you what I think has been the heart of the experience for me.

It does, however, involve some teaching-related babble. Sorry 'bout that.

First, some context: the last few weeks have been mainly about saying "goodbye" to students I've met and taught here. Some of these farewells, it must be said, have been nothing short of sweet relief. I actually celebrated with a bottle of shampanskoye the day I was freed from the greasy clutches of my "Loser Class". This was a group of 10-13 year olds, most of whom had absolutely zero interest in studying English, but whose Novy Russkiy parents were pushing them to learn – presumably so that, in a few years' time, they can go to the English-speaking world and annoy native speakers in their own language. I could've strangled several members of this class, quite cheerfully and without the slightest damage to my conscience. The knowledge that I'll never have to see them again ... well, let's just say that knowledge can be a beautiful thing.

But then you had the other end of the spectrum: students whose company I've really enjoyed and who, in some cases, have proven rather difficult to leave.

Wednesday night's final lesson was a case in point. I had to farewell the last of my long-term adult classes, a very pleasant group of people who've been with me since I started in September. I really hadn't been looking forward to the day when I had to say goodbye to these guys, especially my favourite among them, an extraordinarily bright and conscientious young student called Masha Tretjakova.

Masha is one of those people who always manages to lift your mood, and her dedication to her studies is quite inspiring. But lessons must go on, so we opened our course books as per usual and explored prepositions of movement, until 9pm rolled around and it was time for goodbyes and best wishes. After the lesson, Masha decided to stay back and talk for a little longer. She gave me a gift, I gave her a gift, we chatted for a bit ... and then she started crying! I didn't really know what to do. But it was very gratifying to know I wasn't the only one who felt they'd gained a lot from teaching that class.

However, having said all that about the talented Ms. Tretjakova, I have to tell you that the real kicker for me happened three weeks ago. See, when I think about my personal Moscow highlights, there's one that stands out a mile; more than the amazing sights; more than the long-overdue break from Outer Anglo-world; more, in fact, than any aspect of the gradual Russian Revelation I've been caught up in for the last ten months.

When I tell you what (or rather who) I'm talking about, you have to promise not to laugh, okay? Right then, here it is: the best thing about Moscow – and if this seems unlikely, I can hardly believe it myself – the BEST thing has been meeting a group of 14-16 year olds who some of you will know from my emails as "Teens1". That was the name I gave them at the start of my contract, only because I had two teen classes on my timetable and I needed a simple way of distinguishing between them. It's pretty wildly inadequate and silly, but it stuck anyway.

Seeing Teens1 was the thing I most looked forward to every week as I plodded through other, less pleasant parts of my timetable, or as I coped with the various tribulations of life as a foreigner in Moscow. We did lock horns in a few early lessons, but with the inevitable teething problems sorted, teaching them became an absolute joy. More than once, they were my one and only reason to stay here when everything else was telling me to leave. And hey, look at that ... here I am, still sharing one of the world's great metropoli with ten-ish million people and an inestimable number of feral dogs. So obviously it was reason enough.

The irony here is that, at the start of my contract, I was warned at great length about the perils of teaching teenagers. "You give 'em the smallest chance or make the tiniest mistake, and they'll eat you alive", was one such warning I remember. Another was "Don't ever think that you can be their friend; they already have friends, and you're not one of them."

I've worked with some very capable teachers here and been given truckloads of solid professional advice. Fortunately, though, all of this "teens are incredibly scary" stuff turned out to be rubbish ... or at least a gross over-generalisation.

This was perhaps best demonstrated at New Year, which comes a week before Christmas in the Russian calendar. Whereas in Australia the big gift-exchange is done on Christmas Day, Russian people do it at New Year. I got a smattering of presents from students in various classes, but when it came time to see Teens1, fully half of them had gone out and bought me stuff. It was almost embarrassing (especially as I hadn't realised, and therefore had nothing to give in return), but also very cool. I got a couple of cards as well, including one from Sasha (more about her in a sec) which had a long passage of Russian text on the inside. Sasha had translated the text as follows: "That means, best regards from your crazy Russian friends and Happy New Year!"

I've never been a big one for greeting cards to be honest, but that card was an exception. I was tempted to photocopy it and stick it on the wall in our central school, near the senior teacher who had made a lot of the "teens will never be your friends" comments. But he disappeared to Siberia before I had the chance*.

I've actually got a little collection of cards from Teens1 now. My favourite came from Dasha, who was clearly the 'heart of the group' – the one who most often reminded me that learning is never a cold, impersonal experience if you enter into it whole-heartedly. Though she never meant to, Dasha could make me feel guilty for days afterwards whenever I delivered a mediocre lesson to Teens1 (and early on, there were quite a few of those!). But she could just as easily (and often did) send me off on a high when things went right in the classroom. Dasha continually surprised me by doing things like, for example, asking when my birthday was just a few weeks after we'd met, and then actually remembering five months later and making a gift for me.

That was textbook Dasha; it's difficult to imagine meeting a kinder, more thoughtful person.

Anyway, her card contained quite a lot of text, as is the way of things here. It read, in part: "This greeting card is for parents, but I chose it because I think that the teachers are the second parents. Thank you for everything, and I wish you good luck and the realisation of your dreams". Then later, translating the Russian greeting: "The best of all the presents ... here it is written that it is a parent's love. Teacher's love too, I think."

So once again, what was that about teenagers not wanting you to be their friend?

Of course, not everyone in the class was quite as expressive as this. Dasha was the youngest and, it seems, hadn't yet acquired the veneer of cool detachment that teens generally like to project into the world. So she tended to be a bit more forthright in her comments and reactions (though thankfully not to quite the same degree as some of my tiny studentini, who would do things like run up and hug me when I gave them their test results!).

So anyway, as I mentioned earlier, the joy of teaching this group is all in the past now. On May 31st we had our final scheduled 135-minute slot together. I'd been anticipating this for a while, of course, so I'd prepared a real "throw the course book out the window and let's have some fun" type of lesson, to try and make sure we ended on a high. I think it went quite well. But still, inevitably there came the "goodbye" moment.

As 7pm (the end of their lesson) approached, gifts and words were exchanged, and I told my beloved teens a few things I thought they deserved to hear –  like, for example, that they're "a tiny bit famous", which they are among the Moscow teaching fraternity. ("Oh, so you're teaching in Butovo? You must have that teen class. I hear they're an exceptional group.") They seemed a little blown away by that; there were some slightly awed looks exchanged around the room, which were rather wonderful to watch.

I wish we could've hung out for a while and talked, but I had to kick the students out right on seven because I had another class starting almost straight away. So when the time came I just said "Thank you so much everyone, and goodbye". The reaction was kind of amazing; I was clearly asking them to leave, and they knew it, but they just ... well, no-one moved, basically. We all just sat there frozen, going "Hmmm, what now?" It came eerily close to being that "Captain, My Captain" moment – the one you're trained to think will never happen in real life.

I've never had a job this good before.

Eventually the students filed out, and I asked Sasha and Dasha to hang back for a minute. We chatted for a little while, and I managed to let myself stop thinking and just enjoy their company ... and then suddenly they were gone, and I was in the midst of my next lesson. Trying really hard to focus attention on my adult beginners, and their reading about Henry from Cambridge who works in a post office and goes to the cinema on weekends.

And that was that. Or at least I thought so.

Two days later I mooched on down to Butovo School to meet my new short-term class of six-year-old psychopaths, feeling a little sorry for myself because that afternoon I would normally have had a lesson with Teens1. But when I got to the teacher's room Maria from Teens1 was there, waiting to speak to me. She told me that her and some of the other students had decided to organise a day out for us, and asked if I'd be available on Sunday.

Guess what my answer was. (Clue: if you're guessing "no", you haven't been paying very close attention.)

So off we trekked that Sunday into the centre of Moscow. The teens led me through Alexandrovskiy Sad – the garden of Tsar Alexander – explaining the historical &/or literary significance of every single thing we saw amongst its fountains and outdoor porticos. (I threw a coin into one of the fountains there, which apparently means I'm destined to return to Moscow some day). Then it was on to Red Square – my fourth time there, and it still gives me goose-bumps – followed by the glitzy Okhotny Ryad shopping centre and the main drag of Tverskaya Ulitsa. I'd seen most of this stuff before, but not with the expert commentary. The students really brought it all to life, making me feel something for places which had previously seemed like nothing more than random clusters of architecture.

One place I hadn't seen, mind you, was the inside of the McDonalds on Tverskaya. The teens had apparently planned to take me to a traditional Russian restaurant that day, but their plan fell through because none of them actually knew how to get there from Red Square. Plus, it was the hottest day of the year so far – pushing 30 degrees – and therefore possibly not the best weather for traditional Russian fare. After conferring for a while, they decided instead to take me where they go at the end of a fun day strolling around the city. So having begun beneath the elegant deco chandeliers of Chertanovskaya metro station, we ended our outing beneath the Golden Arches. Bit of a change of scene for me, I must say; the last two McDonalds restaurants I recall visiting were in Tokyo and Stockholm respectively, and in both cases I was purely there for the clean toilets. But I didn't mind at all. I realised that I was getting a genuine cultural experience here – a day in the life of my students. And I'm glad we didn't end up in some 'proper' restaurant where the students felt less comfortable, just because they thought I might prefer it.

To be honest, that was probably my best day in Moscow.

Since then I've seen a couple of the teens around the traps at Butovo. I saw Polina, for example, on the night she graduated from high school. (The classrooms where I taught English are rented from her school, so we were both in the same building at the same time for different reasons.) That was quite a bonus, to see one of my guys all dressed to the nines and rite-of-passagy. But a bit sad, too.

In some ways, my daily Moscow routine seemed a whole lot pointier when I had Teens1 to look forward to each week ("pointy" being the opposite of "pointless" if you base your knowledge of English on Buffy the Vampire Slayer – and I can't think of a good reason not to). Luckily, though, life here tends to have a fair amount of forward momentum; you continually get dragged along by what's happening in the present moment. That's sometimes a good thing (e.g. last Saturday when I went out to find a gym and ended up stumbling upon a beautiful 'nature corridor' I hadn't seen before) and sometimes not so good (e.g. my ongoing struggle to keep clean after the council turned off our hot water on June 2nd. We had to wait 19 days for the water to come back on.) But either way, the pace of life here tends to make 'dwelling on the past' an unaffordable luxury.

In terms of how I plan to follow up my Russian teaching experience ... well, I'll let you know when I know. In the meantime, if anyone's got a spare AUD$300 lying around, wire it to me tomorrow and I'll buy you a bottle of Kalashnikov vodka in the shape of an AK-47. It's cut-glass, it's life-sized, and it's one of the funnier / more disturbing things I've seen on sale in Russia. And believe me, everything is on sale here. Defenders of pure capitalism really ought to come and see how it mutates when let loose in the wild ... and maybe take a drive on Moscow's motorways, where Novy Russkiy trophy wives careen around in their beamers, holding driver's licences that their husbands bought for them when they bought the car. That's right; in the New Russia, there's no need to sit those bothersome driving tests if you've got the requisite purchasing power; you simply buy your way onto the road. It's a beautiful thing, don't you think?

Makes me wonder why I suddenly feel so sad about leaving ...



(Footnote, May 2010: in case you're interested, I'm still in touch with Sasha and Dasha, and they're all grown up now! Sasha is living in Vermont, USA, and Dasha is planning to marry her Beau some time in the future. Can't wait for the wedding )))


(*For people reading this in Kazakhstan: the person I'm referring to here is Daryl Koetzer. For others: I spoke to this guy two years later on the phone. He interviewed me for my job in Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, by the time I turned up in Almaty, he'd once again slipped away. But people like this have a habit of turning up again and again in the former Soviet world. I'm still hoping that I'll bump into Daryl one of these days. During the job interview he lied outrageously about life in Almaty, and so I have a lot to confront him about. But mostly, I want to show him the photos of me and a few of my favourite humans ... the ones he told me would "eat me alive". Clearly, the man has issues.)

hospital stories (part two)

Now, where was I? Oh yes: student's car, passenger side, biting the skin off my knuckles and gasping in pain / giggling in shock as we headed for the klinika. Ah, such golden memories!

Before I launch into my little hospital tale, though, I should probably do two things: first, I ought to caution you that I've been asked to include some injured-ankle photos, so be warned that puffy foot shots are approaching. And second, I think this will all make more sense if I give you some context relating to the health care system in this country. So to that end, here's a sampling of what ex-pats, travellers and others will tell you about Russian hospitals and Russian health care generally:

"If you're in need of a doctor you are in trouble. They [hospitals] are short on supplies. Their doctors are not as knowledgeable as Western doctors or as well trained ... You can purchase medicine on just about every street corner, Metro Station, etc., but some are not controlled by the Government and most are outdated or will simply make you sicker. Medicines that are no longer in use in the Western world are sent to Russia ... Medical insurance may be of not much use at the time you need it."
- Russian Women's Guide.

"Russian hospitals often reuse needles, and screening of blood supplies is inadequate. Americans resident in the Urals and Western Siberia regions may wish to maintain a private blood supply, stock extra needles, or, in the case of emergency, insist on intravenous fluids over whole blood transfusions until they can reach the West".
- U.S. Consulate General, Yekaterinburg.

Open heart surgery is routinely performed without heart bypass machines; there is so little blood that non-emergency operations are constantly postponed and, even so, doctors and nurses often have to give their own blood to patients; and painkillers are in such short supply that Russian hospitals echo with the sound of screaming patients."
- Hugh Gusterson, Unitarian Universalist Church, Livermore USA

"Russian doctors don't waste a lot of time and money on preliminary tests - they go straight to the autopsy."
- Yakov Smirnoff, Russian ex-pat comedian.

I could go on (and on), but I'm sure you've got the general idea. Mm-hmm ... not nice.

Some other themes that commonly surface in patients' accounts include being refused treatment because they've committed the mortal sin of being a foreigner, developing rashes from hospital bed sheets (usually followed by the nurses telling the patient they should've brought their own sheets if they didn't want a rash), endless waits for emergency procedures (of course) and rampant staph infection.

So ... having been a good little traveller and read up about all this stuff before coming to Russia, I'm sure you can appreciate why I was feeling just a tad nervous as Giorgy, Denis and I drove up to the klinika on the night of my little 'accident'.

Anf how was my experience at the pointy end of the Russian health care system? Well, to be honest, it wasn't nearly as horrifying as it could've been. That was 99% due to the fact that my local school organiser Giorgy (who's high on the list of My Favourite Muscovites) and my student Denis (the guy who had offered me the lift home) came with me to the klinika. Believe me, that's the best possible thing that could've happened. Apart from having not fallen over in the first place, obviously.

A few months ago my friend Astrid (also an M.F.M.) took a spill while she was walking in town by herself. With no friends around to help her, Astrid lay on the ground screaming for about five minutes (on a main pedestrian thoroughfare) before anyone stopped to lend a hand. So if I'd sprained my ankle this badly while I was just schlepping around Moscow – as opposed to right outside my school – well, there's no other way to say it: I would've been utterly screwed. I couldn't walk. I had no idea where a hospital was. And I got the impression that the one we went to wasn't actually the closest, but was selected by Giorgy and Denis because it was the best one open. I heard Giorgy say "Och'n kharoshaya klinika" (very good clinic) at some point in their conversation. Which means that, by virtue of their local knowledge, I probably avoided having a far ickier experience than the one I had. So I'm thinking that, as small mercies go, that was quite a McHuge one!

Anyway ... when we arrived it was immediately obvious why ex-pats are so scared of Russian hospitals. It wasn't that it was horrifyingly primitive or anything – just kinda dysfunctional and very unsympathetic to non-Russian folk. But again, I was okay because I had two native speakers there to help me.

Here's how it went: to start with, casualty seemed to be closed, so we had to go around to some dodgy back entrance of the hospital. There some guy gave us a wheelchair, but only at the top of the staircase. And Giorgy had to go inside to explain why we needed it. Koroche: there's no way I could've entered the place if I'd been there by myself.

So then I got wheeled in – looking like a person who was plainly in some serious agony, I'd imagine – and the doctor was called. He arrived ... eventually. And amusingly enough, his first question was not about my ankle at all, but about my documents. And his second question. And his third. And his fourth ... and so on and so on, while I sat there wincing in pain and Guardian Angel Giorgy handled the interrogation.

Then the doctor told Giorgy there are only one or two hospitals in Moscow that treat foreigners, and that we'd have to go there. (I understood this only afterwards, in translation.) Giorgy's reaction was along the lines of "What the *bleep* are you telling me, you moron? This person is seriously injured!"

The next thing that happened – and here again, I was too absorbed in the whole "oh my gods, this is killing me!" experience to notice at the time, so I had to be filled in afterwards on this – was that money changed hands. Yes, you read that correctly: Giorgy had to bribe a frikkin' doctor to treat something which, at the time, looked like a possible fracture.

I must admit it was amazingly effective, though. I mean, once the bribe was paid, suddenly everything changed. We went from implacably slow Russian bureacracy speed (marginally slower than forest re-growth) to fast forward. It was straight up to X-ray, straight onto the machine, immediate diagnosis, immediate prescription, and home via the chemist's. Once again, if I'd been on my own I wouldn't have realised that the doctor was merely waiting for me to apply a lubricating smear of roubles to the situation before proceeding. I have a knack of missing these things; there have been plenty of occasions when I've struggled to get something done, only to see a Russian person accomplish the same thing easily by knowing exactly when to start passing notes under the table.

Um, and then what? Oh yeah. On the way home I spoke on the phone with Giorgy's daughter Yulia, who speaks some English. She told me about a lot of the details I'd missed at the hospital, and translated the diagnosis. Then student Denis brought me into my building and up the stairs, and I sat on my bed going "ow" and waiting for the pain killers to kick in. Once they did, I must say I felt rather chirpy! It seems that, like the Germans (who sell some truly awesome over-the-counter pain killers), Russians evidently don't mess around with those sort-of-vaguely-effective-but-all-very-tightly-controlled-by-industry-regulators-and-therefore-not-really-helpful drugs you get in Australia. (Sorry, Jonathan.) I guess they can't afford to, drinking as much beer as they do in a country full of treacherous, icy footpaths. But whatever the reason, popping a few of the little green pills certainly made me feel a whole lot less like amputating my leg just to be rid of the damn thing :-)

I had a week-and-a-half off work, during which time spring decided to pounce, quickly melting all the patches of ice that had been lying around waiting for people like me to slip on them. Which means that if I'd gone one more week without losing my balance, I would've been fine. Grrrr! Still, it was good to miss some of the thaw, and kinda fun to emerge after ten days as though from a chrysalis, stepping out into a completely changed environment.

I have to say that, while this whole ankle business was rather unpleasant, it's been such an essential chapter in my Big Scary Russian Experience that a part of me is oddly pleased that it happened. (Or at least I will be pleased once I'm sure there's no permanent injury.) I mean, apart from getting my first ever ride in a wheelchair, I've now seen the inside of a Russian hopital – an environment spoken of with fear and trepidation by most ex-pats, as I mentioned earlier. So in a sense, being able to eyeball the klinika while remaining relatively safe (due to the presence of my two Guardians) was like sneaking a vicarious peek into a dark corner of Russian life seldom seen by 'Westerners'. Quite a privilege, in a weird sort of way.

Also, there were just so many humorous &/or surreal moments along the way, I really wish I could've filmed it all somehow. Like for example, you know I'm flatting with an English lad called Craig now? Okay, maybe you didn't. He's basically an okay guy (and he was very helpful in the days immediately following my injury), but he does eat like an English bachelor – meaning that overcooked, deep-fried chips and oven-blasted cuts of crumbed flesh have been the norm since my fellow-foodie Reinhard vacated Moscow and Craig moved in. So when Denis and I got to the flat, Craig had just cooked dinner and the usual charred-corpse-and-burned-oil smell was hanging in the air. Denis is an elementary student with not many verbs at his disposal, so when he tried to say "I think your flatmate's dinner might be burning" it came out as "maybe ... hmmm ... maybe your food, he's dead."

I thought "Oh stop it, Denis; I'm trying to balance on one leg here!"

Six days after I went for my unscheduled slide in the car park, I got a visit from the school doctor (who was billed as a fluent English speaker - yeah, right!). She was lucky she didn't come earlier since, as it happened, that was the first day I'd been able to have a shower. That's right: five days, no bathing. We've got one of those showers that's inside a bathtub, see, and there was simply no way I could get into the tub. Thus I was probably not the most pleasant person to be around during that period.

Anyway, the doctor came on day six, just after I'd torn myself away from the bathroom, where I'd spent a very long time standing under the shower going "Oooohhh, yeeahhh!". She poked and prodded and supplemented my growing stock of prescription goodies ... and then, with a conspiratorial smile, she produced from her bag something that she obviously considered to be slightly miraculous. "This", she said, "it is special Russian medicine", and flashed a tiny jar of something called "yod" at me.

Next she pulled out a swab of cotton, opened the yod and began applying it to the area around my ankle. It didn't take me long to realise that the stuff I was being swabbed with was in fact iodine, so I asked the doctor "Was this really invented in Russia?" She nodded with the same air of wistful pride that you see in the eyes and postures of Russian people when they talk about Yuri Gagarin or Mikhail Lomonosov.*

I've seen this kind of thing before – Russians believing they invented things that are clearly not Russian in origin. I don't quite know where it comes from, but it strikes me as something you might also come across in certain parts of North America. My guess is that it derives from a combination of ignorance about what goes on outside one's own borders, and that silly überpatriotism that leads a person to believe anything truly great must have been invented by somebody from their own country.

This is just one of many similarities I've noticed between the Russians I've met (or at least quite a few of them –  certainly not all) and the Americans (ditto). But let's not even go down that path. Suffice to say I've learned that it's pointless, for example, to confront an overly self-assured white Muscovite with all the evidence pointing to the invention of Mayonnaise by the French. You can bleat on about Duke Richelieu's capture of Port Mayon in Minorca, and the great victory feast subsequently prepared by his chef (featuring a new kind of egg-based white sauce, created specially for the occasion). You can draw attention to the obviously French character of the word "mayonnaise" – variously thought to relate to the Old French word moyeu, meaning "egg yolk", or to the verb manier, to stir. You can, in fact, do what you like; it won't make a single bit of difference. Russians are frighteningly obsessed with mayonnaise, so your self-assured Muscovite will just re-iterate the obvious: that anything so delicious simply must be Russkaya kukhnya. Same kind of deal with iodine, presumably.

Oh yeah, and the internet? Well, that was invented by Al Gore of course. But he probably stole the idea from a Russian ;-)

So anyway, yesterday was a month to the day since this particular chapter of my Russian Adventure began. Spring is going full-tilt now, taking temperatures up as high as 15 degrees. The snow is a distant memory, and greenery is re-establishing itself. Which, I might add, is not entirely peachy. It may seem like an odd thing to say, but looking back on the Russian winter is a little bit sad and anti-climactic. For one thing, it feels as though one of my main reasons for coming here is well and truly in the past. But also, when the snow melted away it revealed what lay underneath: mountains of discarded chip packets, chocolate wrappers and beer cans, tossed into parks and roadside fields by a people who like to claim a special relationship with nature. Presumably this is how some of them express their love for Mother Earth – by sharing with her their favourite kinds of junk food and alcohol.

Winter's recession hasn't stopped the corpses from piling up, either. I saw my fourth dead guy last night. At least, he looked dead. You can never quite be sure, and you don't really want to go up and ask. "Er, excuse me sir ...".

I obviously didn't expect Moscow to be an easy place to live. What I had hoped for was maybe some kind of atmosphere here, or a cultural experience that would make the unpleasant side of the city worthwhile. I've found this in the classroom on occasion, but outside of that I've been a little disappointed, to be honest.

In the Western media you always hear that Russia is a harsh place because of its poverty and inhospitable climate, or that the 'hangover of communism' is to blame for its problems. Well, here's my experience: those things may be true to an extent (though the last one is vastly overstated), but they're not the explanatory be-all-and-end-all. I mean, for poverty and destructive politics Moscow is no worse off than Washington, and as far as climate goes ... well, hey, I come from Australia, so what can I say? Hard to beat an Australian summer for sheer meteorological awfulness.

Here's what saddens me, though: at times, it seems to the outsider that a lot of Moscow's unpleasant side comes from the much-glorified Russkie lyudi themselves. Not all of them, obviously, but enough to make daily life more of a trial than it needs to be. So, while Moscow definitely has a 'specialness', a uniqueness and a specific kind of mystery you won't find anywhere else, it isn't enough to offset the difficulties of settling here as a foreigner. Unless you're into nightclubs, that is – there are plenty of those, and they're reputed to be pretty wild. I didn't come for the clubs, though. Nor did I come to hang out with other ex-pats in ex-pat bars. So maybe I came for the wrong reasons. Or maybe not.

All things considered, I've learned a lot from being here and it's an experience I wouldn't 'give back' for anything (if the laws of physics allowed you to do that sort of thing). But frankly, spring's arrival has signalled that my time in this vast metropolis is nearly over, and I'm quite comfortable with that.

Got one or two more Moscow stories to tell first, though. I hope you'll be back to read those when they surface. Bye!

* A pioneering Russian scientist, credited with discovering a lot of things that were later credited to Western minds. (Then again, with the Russian predilection for claiming foreign inventions as their own, who can tell?) Also an author and seemingly a bit of a national hero.

stories from the city, stories from the ... er, hospital

(part one)

And so here I am, back in Moscow. Okay, so it hasn't turned out to be my favourite city in the world, but it is a huge city, full of sights and sounds and parks and museums and galleries and libraries and so on. And on that last point, we all know that huge cities don't just have libraries; they are libraries. Someone famous undoubtedly once pointed out that every city is a living collection of stories – the stories of the people who live there now, of those who have in the past, and of events within its perimeters. In that respect, Moscow is truly a great city; it seems to breed stories as efficiently as sewers do rats.

Within days of being back, Moscow's unfolding narrative had started pressing on my cranial walls once more. It started on the day that Maya left. As it happened, I ran into a fellow teacher at the airport that day – a Scottish woman called Sarah – who told me about something quite incredible she'd seen just a few hours earlier. Approaching the bottom of an 'up' escalator in a Metro station, Sarah had noticed an opened but nearly-full beer bottle sitting on the ground near the end of the 'down' escalator. Then, before she knew it, a middle-aged woman dressed head-to-toe in a priceless fur coat and matching hat had swept off the escalator, leaned down, picked up the beer bottle, drunk its contents in a single motion, replaced it on the ground and kept walking.

And so, you might ask: what's her story?

On the way back from the airport to Rechnoy Vakzal (the station at the top of the Metro line), I found myself asking a similar question about a dirt-encrusted gentleman of Asian/Siberian appearance who sat next to me on the bus. Having boarded a few moments after me and paid his fare, he lurched about for a minute or so and then fell fast asleep on my shoulder. Which is normal enough I s'pose – it's happened to me on Sydney trains, and it isn't uncommon on the Metro. But when we arrived 30 minutes later at Rechnoy, this guy was still fast asleep ... and I couldn't wake him! He was out cold. I literally had to lift him from my shoulder and lay him down on the back seat before I could get out of the bus. He was breathing, but something definitely wasn't right there.

Then, when I finally got home that day, I was talking to my flatmate Craig about what I'd missed while I'd been away from Moscow. It was mostly the kind of news you'd expect – things that had happened at school, reports of more extreme weather and so on. But he also pointed me to another thread in The Moscow Tales which had me kind of amazed.

To summarise: one of the Top 30 "domestic lenders" in Russia is an Austrian-owned organisation called Impexbank. They have a vault on a city street called Ulitsa Berzarina – something like a huge storehouse to which couriers deliver hundreds of millions of roubles each day for counting, packing and delivery to bank branches.

Naturally, Impexbank performs regular 'sweeps' of the area around its vault. They do this using hi-tech, seismically sensitive equipment, similar to that which the U.S. military claim to have used when they were putting everything they had (or not) into smoking Osama out of his cosy little Afghani cave complex a few years back. During one of these seismic sweeps in February, bank officials discovered a hollow chamber in the ground beneath the vault.

Like many areas of town, the streets around Ulitsa Berzarina are full of free-standing lock-up garages. And as it turned out, the chamber found by Impexbank security was the final segment of a 50-metre tunnel that originated inside one of these garages, wound its way beneath the main road, and ended up directly under the bank's premises.

The tunnel was no mere rabbit-hole, either; it was lined by wooden planks, and electricity had been installed inside. Whoever was in charge of building it had put in a supreme effort to make this a workable subterranean passageway. The bank watched it for three days to try and discover the identity of the criminal mastermind(s) behind this ambitious project, but no-one turned up. Which leaves quite a lot unanswered, really – like, for example, having got this far, how did the diggers plan to get through the cement foundation of the building? And having accomplished that, what was their plan then? The completed tunnel would've brought them up in a changing room for security guards; did they know this? Were they planning to hide in the changing room lockers, leap out and surprise the guards in their underwear? On this and other issues, facts remain unavailable.

Possibly the best part of all, though: once the tunnel's builders have been identified by police, lawyers will have quite a struggle trying to find something in the Russian Criminal Code to charge them with. Tunnel-building isn't defined anywhere in the code as an illegal activity, and since the builders never actually connected their underground passage to the bank, charging them with an attempted bank robbery will be difficult. A 'crime expert' from Moscow University pointed out to the local press last week that anyone caught constructing such a passageway could easily say they were simply interested in tunnel-building for its own sake. They could feign ignorance about the bank vault, and this might be difficult to disprove in court. Funnily enough, the vault isn't terribly well-signposted; there are no neon signs saying "Impexbank City Vault: Millions of Roubles Delivered Daily" or anything like that. So maybe the accused will argue that it was all a coincidence. Unless the police investigation turns up a map with a big circle drawn on it, an arrow pointing to the circle and the words "BANK VAULT" next to said arrow, this 'crime expert' thinks our diggers might conceivably walk away uncharged. I'm finding it hard not to love that :-)

You might've noticed, though, that all of these stories are quite fragmentary – no tying together of threads, no satisfying denouements and happily/crappily-ever-afters. And this is the inevitable drawback, I s'pose, of participating in the unfolding tale of a great city. You rarely find out how the other sub-plots end, and you're left with a bunch of unrelated hairy scary tales that remain incomplete.

But since I don't like to disappoint, here's a tale whose ending you will find out about – and it's one of my own.

Last Wednesday as I was coming out of class, some of my students were standing around outside the school chatting. One of them – a very amiable guy called Denis – was heading into Moscow for some benzin, so he offered to give me a lift as far as Metro Prazhskaya. After doing my usual "guy from a country where they drive on the wrong side of the road" trick (where I head for the driver's side of the car instead of the passengers' side), I turned and went around the car, explaining to my giggling students why I'd made the error.

Any fellow English teachers reading this will know that talking to elementary students outside of the classroom can be an engrossing experience. As you spend more time with them, you become very aware of how native speakers incorporate sophisticated language into even the simplest conversations. You start to notice yourself doing it, and so you invent ways to 'grade' your language by avoiding, for example, tenses you know your students haven't studied yet, or conditionals (try not saying "if" or "when" or "unless" for half an hour), or the weird phrasal verbs that litter the English language and have to be learned one at a time.

This is quite an interesting mental exercise, and you do get better at it, but it takes a lot of brain power to maintain that awareness of every word and every grammatical structure you use in casual conversation.

So anyway, on this occasion I was so wrapped up in explaining my silly "wrong side of the car" mistake that I completely forgot about the treacherous conditions of that day. Which was a deeply stupid thing to forget, as it turned out. See, the upshot was this: there had been some rain, but it hadn't melted all the ice ... just made it extremely slippery. So, as I was heading towards the passenger door, rambling about how Australians drive on the left side of the road, I fell down flat on a patch of rain-slicked ice in the school car park.

Now, if the embarrassment of this situation was the only problem, it'd be okay. I mean, I've been spotted plenty of times being clumsy in public, so I'm more or less used to dealing with that. But no such luck this time; as I was falling, I felt my ankle twist violently one way and then snap back in the opposite direction. My immediate response was to get off the ice, pick myself up and try walking, just to assess the damage. And that's when I realised that I couldn't use my left leg at all. I think it was actually during the split second I spent falling forward into the arms of my student Sergei that it first started to dawn on me how serious this was.

The students phoned my local school organiser Giorgy, who was fortunately still upstairs in his office. Giorgy came outside, cast an eye over the situation and conferred briefly with my students. He then got into the back seat of Denis' car. As Denis turned the key in his ignition, I heard the word klinika pass between him and Giorgy in conversation. Unfortunately that left me in very little doubt as to what would happen next. I was clearly about to get my first look at the inside a Russian hospital.

... to be continued ...