Left, Right, Left

As I've mentioned before, this week is a short teaching week at my school. Ден Россйя (Russia Day), a relatively new holiday celebrating the day in 1990 that Russia's parliament formally declared Russia's independence from the Soviet Union.

There isn't much to say about Russia Day itself. Orginally named, and still sometimes called by Americans, "Russian Independence Day," the old name seems to beg the question: "independence from what, exactly?" Unlike the other former Soviet republics, Russia cannot really claim to have gained its independence from the Soviet Union, having been the creator and enforcer of the Soviet state in the first place. Russians themselves don't seem to know what to make of or do for the holiday. In time, I imagine it will become something like Labor Day in the United States--a holiday for the sake of a holiday.

Wednesday, the day before Russia Day, I heard through the grapevine that there would be a surprise birthday party for one of my school's other teachers that evening. Because of the holiday, I had no reason not to go, though I had yet to meet this particular teacher, and though I knew this would be a typical twentysomething party focused on drinking, drinking, and more drinking.

The party was to take place at the birthday boy's apartment, located a 10-minute walk from the very southern end of one Metro line. I went down there with a whole group of my school's teachers as I didn't want to get lost, arriving around 11:00 PM. The party itself was not particularly exciting, and as I felt suffocated in the small apartment and barely able to breathe for all the smoking, I eventually asked two of the other attendees to help me get a taxi home, the Metro having shut down for the night and my Russian not yet being up to the task of enabling me to handle this myself.

Until then, I had yet to take a taxi in Russia. Muscovite taxis differ signifcantly from their New York counterparts. There are "official" yellow taxis in Moscow, but not nearly enough of them, and they do not dominate the streets the way New York cabs do. It is quite common for drivers of inconspicuous Ladas and Toyotas to stop and pick up fares on the streets, a la gypsy cabs back home. When using such a cab, one arranges a price with the driver before getting in.

The good Samaritans who helped me get a cab was a nice German man who is in Moscow working for a bank, and his girlfriend, a genial Englishwoman who writes for an English-language newspaper. Since it turned out we were all headed in the same direction, we agreed to go in one cab and split the cost of the ride. The German fellow haggled with the driver, and a price of 500 rubles (about $20) was finally agreed upon. I got into the front seat, my fellow travellers into the back.

A short discussion ensued about my Russian abilities. I made clear that, while I am trying to learn Russian and look forward to lessons once my schedule settles, I know little at the moment. But I also made clear that I could give basic directions--"right, left, right" to the driver, an important point since my fellow travellers needed to be dropped off first.

In time, my fellow travellers reached their destination. As they had given the driver the general vicinity of where I lived, he got me to the nearest Metro station, and I gave him "left, right, left" from there. Luckily, we were headed in the right direction; I would have been at a loss as to how to tell him to turn around. My "right, left, right" came out garbled, but he understood me reasonably well. I soon found myself home, safe and sound, at 2:30 in the morning.

This is a far cry from my experience taking cabs in Taiwan. There, I generally took a cab when I returned home from Taipei late, after the busses had stopped running for the night. As I spoke not a word of Chinese, I was forced to give the driver a business card with my school's address on it (the school being only two blocks from my apartment). I guess there was more than one street with the same name in Taoyuan, because the drivers invariably got lost trying to find it; I don't think they were playing a game of "gyp the American", because they always got lost in exactly the same way and attempted to drop me off at exactly the same wrong address. So it's a relief to be able to give basic instructions to a Russian cabbie.