Angels in the Underground: Travels to Moscow

The Moscow Skyline over the Moskva River

Moscow’s Famous Subways

Moscow is famous for its subways. People come from all over the world just to ride them. Or so most of the Russians I met told me. It is true that Moscow has by far the best subterranean public transportation architecture I have ever seen. Marble floors. Frescos. Mosaics. Sculptures. And absolutely no graffiti. The Russians do not want anything to detract from the aesthetic beauty of their subway. And that includes any useful distractions such as, for example, signs telling you the name of the terminal you are in.

In most subway systems I have been in throughout the world, signs with the name of the station occur about every 20 meters or so for the length of the platform. Not in Moscow. The name of the station is written once or maybe twice on the wall of the station on the opposite side of the tracks from the waiting area. This may make for a pleasing atmosphere while you are privileged to stand in such a grand environment to wait for your train, but when you are riding the train and want to know trivial information such as where the hell you are, it is my personal opinion that it is better to have at least a few signs hanging where you can see them from inside the train.

The upside to this practice, however, is it gives you great incentive to learn to quickly read the Cyrillic alphabet. Chances are, the name of the station you are passing through will either go racing by you on the wall before you have stopped, or racing by as the train speeds out of the station. A few times I was lucky enough to happen to be in the car that stopped right in front of this vital piece of information, but not often. If you can’t read Cyrillic at forty kilometers per hour before you come to Russia, you will be able to by the time you leave.

Or you can do what I often did and figure out the number of stops you are riding and count them off on your fingers as you go. This worked quite well for me and only brought a minimum of strange looks from the Muscovites.

Crossing Streets in Moscow

But the confusion does not end with the subway ride. The first morning I was in Russia I thrashed my way through the subway in an attempt to get to Red Square. Walking up the stairs to street level again, I caught glimpses of the square across the street from where I was. The colorful onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the emblem of Moscow, teased me, showing glimpses of red here and there through the buildings around the subway station. I grew excited as I realized that there was only one thing standing between me and one of the most impressive expanses of urban scenery in the world: an enormous street.

No problem though, I have crossed thousands of streets in my life. I looked around for a crosswalk. No crosswalk. I looked for a stoplight. No stoplight. How could there be no stop lights? A steady flow of traffic raced through the city without a pause. It was as if Fifth Avenue in New York had become a freeway with no way across it.

Fortunately for me, I am an extremely talented jaywalker so I just waited for a little lull in the traffic and set out.

St. Basil's Cathedral

I hadn't taken more than three steps out from the curb when I heard the shrill blow of a whistle. On the other side of the road was a traffic cop blowing his whistle at me and waving me back. Failure.

I walked up the street. I walked down the street. There were people on the other side, so I knew there had to be some way to get there. I went back down into the subway to see if I could find a way out on the other side. I couldn't. I sat down and rested for a little while.

In my consternation I must have been putting on quite a show for the locals because eventually, an older man walked up to me, and saying nothing, he pointed to a staircase descending beneath the street about three blocks away. He made it clear to me in gestures that even a slightly intellectually challenged foreigner could understand, that if I went down those stairs I would find my way across the street. I thanked him profusely and ran off. Indeed the stairs led to an underground passage. At long last I had found the conduit. I could now cross the street. What a feeling of freedom!

Buying a Train Ticket in Moscow

For two days I bounced around Moscow. I gaped at Red Square. I toured the Kremlin. I studied the pallid figure that may or may not be the actual corpse of Lenin. I went to the Bolshoi Theater. I visited museums. I showed my passport and visa to every machine-gun toting cop in the city. Some of what I saw was wonderful. Some was frightening. Some was sad. But after two days I was ready for a little change of scenery.

My intent was to ride the night train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, spend two days in St. Pete’s, then take the night train back to Moscow to catch a flight on to Nepal.

I think in the Soviet days there was something along the lines of a Department of Creating Incomprehensible Bureaucracy. These people developed the system for selling train tickets to foreigners that is still in existence. It works a little something like this: first you go to person A and get documents 431 and 678. You then fill out the top third of document 431 and deliver it to person B between the hours of 8:09 and 10:13. You then fill out the bottom third of document 687 and take it to person C who will put a little stamp on the bottom after getting a passport photo, blood test, and three letters of reference from you. You must then fold document 687 into a perfect origami likeness of Catherine the Great and show it to person D who will then flip a coin to decide if you will be allowed to get on the train or not. Small mistakes you might make in this process will subject you to the snickering and mocking of the agents you are dealing with. Large mistakes subject you to having to start all over again.

But against all odds, I managed to get this entire process completed in about two frantic and frustrating hours. The train was to leave at about 10pm, so after I had dinner I decided to just go and wait at the train station. My guidebook told me that the trains to St. Pete’s all left from Bellaruska Station. So I went down into the subway and opened up my map so I could count how many stops were between me and Bellaruska. And that is when I met my angel.

Boris the Angel

“Excuse me,” my angel said in a heavy but very understandable Russian accent, “Maybe if you speak English I can help you find something.”

My angel’s name would turn out to be Boris. Boris was probably in his late thirties. He had the typical Russian garb on: various shades of gray. His hair was a little disheveled and he was a bit scruffy about the jaw. But the very first thing I noticed about Boris was that he must have been almost entirely blind. He was wearing a pair of eyeglasses that were at least a centimeter thick. He also looked as though he had been in a serious fight in the not-too-distant past. Both of his eyes had been blackened and he had a long, ragged gash arcing across his forehead.

I told him I was looking for the train to Bellaruska Station, and he told me I was in the right place. I then happened to mention that I was headed to St. Petersburg. “Then why do you want to go to Bellaruska?” he asked.

I told him my guidebook told me that was the station that I needed to go to in order to get my train. In not so many words he told me that the guide was full of crap. He offered to take me to the proper station.

To Trust, or Not To Trust

Decision time. Just as when I had first ridden into the city in Victor’s cab, stories about the terrible crime in post-Soviet Russia flowed unbidden to my imagination. Was this some kind of trick to get me alone and then rob me? Maybe. But far from being the intimidating presence that Victor was, Boris was small, slightly sickly, and above all else blind. While I was deliberating, he had my guidebook about two inches from his face, squinting so hard to read it that watching him was enough to make my cheek muscles cramp with empathy. I figured even if he had a gun, he wouldn’t be able to hit me, so I accepted his offer to guide me to the proper station.

And just like that, Boris became my guide. And my angel.

Boris’s Story

Boris had been born in Dushanbe when Tajikistan had still been part of the Soviet Union. He had been married and had a son. When his son was one year old, Boris was exiled from the Soviet Union for reasons that he did not seem in a hurry to explain to me, and I didn’t push him. He had been granted temporary asylum in Austria where he stayed for six months and then permanent asylum in the United States. He had lived and worked in Washington D.C. for six years, after which his exile was lifted and he was allowed to return home.

Boris, I am sure, was not one of those Russians who cheers when his plane touches down in the country. He would have liked to remain in the United States, but his family had not accompanied him and he missed them very much. He returned to his native home of Tajikistan which had been thrown into a Hobbesian nightmare of infighting between local warlords after the Soviet withdrawal. There Boris had served as a relief worker.

Boris had stories that would curl your toes of the things he had seen in Tajikistan. He spun tales for me of kidnappings, explosions, and street fights that were hard to believe. Indeed, I probably would have been very skeptical of such stories had he not shown me hideous scars to back up his claims.

Boris had been kidnapped and held hostage twice by different warlords. The last time, he had been released after being hit in the back of the head by a piece of shrapnel. He showed me the scar while trying to convey to me the extreme pain that he had suffered which was only dimmed by a sea of vodka. The pain was gone now, but the wound to his head had damaged his vision, leaving him nearly blind.

Recently the building in which his offices were set up was bombed. In the blast he had been thrown and broken his nose, which had resulted in the two black eyes that I had observed. With his headquarters destroyed, Boris’ relief efforts were put to an end, and he returned to Moscow with two Tajik families that he managed to bring out of the battle zone.

Goodbye to Boris

Boris sat with me in a little pizza shop next to the train station. He stayed with me for hours, telling me about Tajikistan, Russia, America, and hope. And he didn’t just share stories—he saved me.

When I tried to board the train, the conductor refused to let me on. It turned out that I had missed a crucial step in the ticket acquisition process. Boris grabbed my arm and ran with me to the ticket window. He shoved his way through the line, yelled at the agent, and got me the necessary paperwork just in time. I would have never even known what the problem was, much less how to resolve it had I been on my own.

As we said farewell, Boris asked for a little money to help the families he had brought back from Tajikistan. I gladly gave it to him. Whether or not there was really such a family, Boris had earned it.

Because of Boris, I left Russia with memories of kindness, perseverance, and hope. And because of Boris, I can now check "have pizza with an angel" off my bucket list.

Because travel is the best way to make new friends.