The Tsar's Thumb

I had a truly amazing time in St. Petersburg. More on that (possibly with photos) in a later post. But first, an anecdote. And then, an anecdote following that anecdote.

For more than a century and a half in Russia, a curious fact existed concerning the railroad line linking Moscow and St. Petersburg. The line linking the two cities was completely straight except for a tiny stretch near St. Petersburg, where it curved and then became straight again. A legend emerged to explain this curve, which ran as follows:

When the engineers came to the tsar to discuss the creation of the rail link between Russia's former and current capitals, a line was drawn on the map, but during the drawing of the line, the tsar had his thumb on the map, causing a small curve in the line. When the engineers later had to build the line, they were unsure whether to point out this error to the tsar, or not. And so the line was built with the curve where the tsar's thumb had been.

Judging by the experience I had today, trying to find my passport after losing it on my return journey home, I suspect that the competence of people working for the Russian railroad system has not improved much since tsarist times. After several hours, I was, fortunately, able to find my passport--to my great relief, since losing my passport and visa would have necessitated a trip home, a new passport application, a new Letter of Invitation from my school, and a new application at the Russian embassy. Probably all on my nickel. I consider retrieving my passport to be a small miracle, perhaps even a sign that, for some reason, God wants me in Russia for the time being. But before I turn to theology, the story of how I lost my passport, my mind, and my innocence where Russian bureaucracy is concerned, all in one day.

My train from St. Petersburg arrived at Leningrad Station about 6:00 in the morning. Dawn had not yet completely broken in Moscow, and I was forced to dress hurriedly--I knew this because, on my arrival in St. Petersburg three days previous, the provodnitsa had scolded me for not getting off the train quickly enough--and in dim light. It was absolutely essential that I change shirts, however, because I needed to go straight from the train station to my first class, and the shirt I was wearing had gotten a stain on it the night before.

During the night, I had kept my passport in my shirt pocket. In the act of changing shirts, I removed my passprt and placed it on my train compartment's table--and apparently, never picked it up again. So I discovered an hour later when, sitting in Leningrad Station, I put something else in my pocket and realized my passport was not there.

In a tizzy, I ransacked my bag to see if by chance I had left the passport in the dirty shirt from the day before. No such luck; I knew I had left it on the train.

Near panic at this point, I went in search of the information desk. I soon discovered there is no information desk as such in Leningrad Station--there is a sign marked "information", but it leads only to a display of train arrivals and departures--but I did find a window marked "administrator". The administrator on duty sent me to a second office which she said would be able to tell me how to retrieve my passport. The second office send me to a third office, where a lady behind a desk shouted at me a mile a minute in Russian, before realizing that trying to communicate with me was hopeless and found a colleague who spoke halting English.

Her colleague told me that there is no lost and found department as such in Moscow, or at least, not one that serves the train I had taken. I was told I had two choices. I could go and try to find the train I had arrived on in a train yard, or I could come back at night, when the train was next to leave for St. Petersburg, and try to get a hold of someone then who could locate my passport.

Without hesitation, I chose to go off in search of my passport then. I was told my train was now in a place call Kyookovo, which could be reached by an elektrishka (the Russian equivalent of a commuter rail line). After finding a phone and placing a call to my school to cancel my morning class, I bought a ticket for the elektrishka and set off for Kyookovo.

I reached Kyookovo over an hour later and explained my situation in halting Russian to a rail worker there. He contacted someone via walkie-talkie and then took me off in search of my train. It turned out, however, that my train was not in Kyookovo; the woman at the third counter in Leningrad Station had give me the details for train number 63, not my train, which was number sixty-five. No doubt she was looking at the wrong line on a computer system of some kind. The rail worker called someone on his mobile phone and was able to establish that my train was at the next stop on the line, going toward Moscow. He told me to go the Kyookovo's first platform and wait for the next train, which was to arrive five minutes later.

After twenty-five minutes on the platform, and seeing three trains pass by on the middle of the station's three platforms, I began to suspect I had been directed to the wrong place. My suspicion was confirmed when I heard a station announcement that a Moscow-bound train would be leaving from that middle platform in twelve minutes. I went to the ticket window and inquired where the next train going to my destination would leave from, and was told to go to the middle platform. So I had clearly been given the wrong platform.

Once the Moscow-bound elektrishka arrived--half an hour later--I took it where I had been directed. My faith in directions was wearing thin at this point, and I resolved that, if it turned out I had been misdirected yet again, to give up the search and return to Moscow.

Luck, however, at last intervened. The woman behind the ticket window at this station told me to go out of the station, turn right, and then keep walking straight. Eventually I would see a place where trains were kept between runs. I did so and found a train that looked like my train. I told a railroad worker my tale of woe. He took me, in turn, to a train he said was number 65, just in from St. Petersburg. He knocked on the door of the first compartment, and a cleaning woman opened it.

I told my story once more to the cleaning woman, who asked me for the number of my compartment and berth. These I gave to her. She said the providnitsa for my car was asleep, but that she would do what she could to get my passport back for me and directed me to walk until I found the car I had taken on my return journey from St. Petersburg. I was to wait there while she scoured the train.

About fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the appointed car, and after about twenty, the door to the car swung open, to reveal the cleaning woman. In her hands was, by some miracle, my passport. I thanked her profusely--or at least as profusely as my limited Russian made possible--and headed back to where I could take the elektrishka back into Moscow.

Intellectually, I know I ought to be very grateful to have retrieved my passport, despite all the problems and misidrectins I encountered. And on one level, I am. But I am also stunned that, in the course of looking for it, I was misdirected not once, but five times, and I am very much aware that these misdirections might well have prevented my getting the passport back in the end.

I was also astounded to find out there was no railroad lost-and-found department serving a place as large and important as Moscow. Another teacher at my school has noted in Russians a general lack of foresight, and my discovery that Leningrad Station had no lost-and-found pretty much confirmed what he told me. It is foreseeable that people will lose things--even valuable and important things--on trains. It completely flabbergasted me to realize there was nowhere I could go and fill out a form to declare I had lost something and have someone contact me in case it was found--that my only recourse was to hope I could find the actual train I had come in on.

The tsars themselves may be gone, but the kind of thinking that created a railroad bend out of the tsar's thumb seems to thrive in Russia.