Adventures in Russia

1) Hanging out in a lilac bush for the sake of a photograph my professor wanted
2) A meeting with Stalin, Lenin, and a very bad Putin impersonator
3) An adventure in the metro
4) Asking around about Chechen terrorist attacks without realizing I was outside of the FSB (formerly KGB) headquarters
5) My suspicions about now being watched by the FSB due to my actions listed in #4
6) Apparently totally freaking out a metro employee
7) My room at MSU probably being bugged, due to numbers 3-6
8) Other good stuff

Okay! Where to begin?

Sunday night we got back to Moscow and headed directly to Moscow State University, where we will be studying until June 6. Monday morning, Sasha, one of our teachers who I spent a lot of time with last year as a student, met us at MSU and took us to school. We study at MSU's Institute of Russian Language and Culture, which is located... well.... not on campus. Getting to school requires about a 20 minute 1+ mile walk to the trolley, then a ten minute or so trolley ride, walk a block or two, turn right, and you're there! Here's a few pictures of the nicer part of the walk:



Sasha will be our teachers on Mondays and Wednesdays, and all of the other days, if I heard correctly, we'll have Luba as our teacher - another girl who works at the school. Sasha is only a few months younger than me and Luba is 26, so it's really great to have such young teachers, as they're always a ton of fun!

                                                           

                                                





Our first day went well. The theme of the day's class was getting to  know each other/introductions. So, it was pretty easy but a great review. We had two breaks - one for rest and one for lunch. During the longer break, my friends Ben and Anne and I all decided to go for a walk and get some fresh air. We discovered a park near the school that, well, seemed nice on the outside. In reality it was filled with shirtless men smoking and a pond filled with floating litter consisting of beer containers and cigarette butts.




After heading back and finishing up class for the day, our Russian teacher from the states, Dr K, picked us up and we went to Red Square. Dr. K has put me in charge of the group of students here at Moscow State, and as a test to make sure she could trust me to lead everyone around, she said I had to get us from school to the University metro stop and on to Red Square. I remember the route well from last year, but I was still pretty nervous because she was watching my every move. However, I got us there without a hitch and was very proud of myself! It had been a good year since I had done all of this, so I was surprised I remembered it all.

The metro has become easier and easier to navigate with each day. Last year, I didn't pay much attention because there was always someone else in my group who had figured out the metro and knew what train to get on and at what stop to get off. This time though it was my responsibility to know the where's and when's. It's been great though because I've learned so much about how to read the map and how everything works, so I feel completely comfortable navigating what at first glance appears to be a nightmare of a metro.

Here's a map of the Moscow metro - I'll be talking more about the metro later on in this post.



We strolled around outside of the Kremlin in Alexander Gardens and got to see the changing of the guards, which happens every hour. The guards are out guarding the eternal flame, which every city has one of. There's also a lot of different WWII monuments, a stone for each city that played a large role in the war.





Here's where Dr. K made us climb into the bushes and pose for an all girl's picture. Thankfully there were no bees.

We headed out of the gardens and onto Red Square and were given some free time to roam around and do whatever we wanted. I went into the Goom (the giant mall on Red Square) and did a little shopping. When I was finished I came outside only to find three very famous "people" near our meeting spot.



                                      







 After heading through the Arbat, which we plan to come back to as we all want to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe and get t-shirts, Luba and her friend dropped us off at the Fulbright office in Moscow, where we met the head of the Russia
 In a nutshell, Islamic extremists from Chechnya and if I remember correctly, neighboring Dagestan as well, have been carrying out terrorist attacks in Moscow with alarming frequency. There have been 10 terrorist attacks in Moscow in the past 15 years. Most, if not all of these attacks have been carried out by Islamic separatists from Chechnya, which has been fighting for independence from Russia for decades. A timeline of terrorist attacks in Russia can be found here and more information on terrorism in Russia can be found at this location.

Anyways, onto the story. I have these weird fascination with the Caucuses, particularly Chechnya, mostly in terms of the different ethnicities and groups that make up the population, particularly in the realm of genetic genealogy and the unique culture and practices. My favorite book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra takes place in Chechnya and is worth the read if you have any interest in the area. So, anyway, when I heard my teacher say Lubyanka, I wanted to try and find the memorial that I (mistakenly) believed to be located at the station, based on pictures I had seen of what I later realized to be just a makeshift (temporary) memorial set up after the bombing. I later realized the 2010 plaque I had seen at Pushkinskaya was probably a plaque (why it was at that station, I'm not sure) in memory of the victims.

So, I asked my group (there's 5 of us, including me, total, not including our professor) if they would be okay with exploring Lubyanka station for the memorial. I explained the story behind it and it piqued the interest of everyone, so we agreed to check it out. Once we reached Lubyanka and got off the train, we began looking around. Seeing nothing above ground, I asked the attendant who mans the security station at the bottom of the escalators where the Lubyanka memorial was... I received a long answer in Russian that I didn't understand plus an upwards hand gesture, and decided it was best to take the escalators up to the surface to look around. There was nothing in the above-ground area of the station, so we went outside and I found a group of 3 guys around my age, probably a little younger, standing around smoking. I went up and asked them if they knew where the memorial was and they weren't sure what I was talking about, so on my translator on my phone I typed "Memorial for Chechen terrorist attack" and they looked really surprised, but went ahead and tried googling it for me anyways with no luck. At one point, one of the boys walked away and asked a police officer if he knew, and he said it was probably back down in the metro, if I understood correctly.

Later on, I would learn that the yellowish building across the street from us was the FSB headquarters. Aka the former KGB.

What does this mean?

I was wandering around asking about a terrorist attack outside of the home of the "re-branded" KGB.

Yeah, pretty sure my dorm room is bugged now.

So, we went back down into the metro and used the underground crossing to get to the other side of the street, where another entrance to the metro was, not connected to the entrance we came out of. I asked a few people above ground if they knew about the memorial... nobody did. So, we headed back down underground and I asked an attendant if he knew. He said if we went down two levels, it would be there (the metro, though underground, has different levels). We tried doing that but found nothing. I leaned over a security barrier and one point and talked to two metro workers - one standing, one sitting behind the barrier. Later, one of the students on our trip, Jessica, told me that the metro worker sitting down was looking at me with a face of complete and total terror, as if I myself was about to blow up the metro station.

Oops.

So, what did I learn?

1. Don't shove a cellphone with a translation of "memorial for Chechen terrorist attack" into people's faces in Russia. People will think you're either a) crazy or b) a terrorist.

2. And make sure you're not outside of the KGB building when you do it, for the love of God.

End of story. More information on the 2010 metro bombings can be found here.

We made our way back to the area of the metro we needed to be in to take the red line back to our Universitet (University) stop. I decided during the ride back that I wanted to go to Red Square. Everyone was going home so I'd be going alone. We had just passed the stop for Red Square though, so I got off at the next stop and hopped a train backwards one stop. Somehow I ended up coming back up above ground around the corner from Red Square, in front of the Bolshoi Theater. Thankfully I knew where I was though and just had to walk back over to Red Square. I spent about an hour wandering around, taking photos, and doing a little shopping.