Phobia-Iraq-Love Trilogy Tale

42. Five Days to Love - Day Five (Part 1)

10:10:2002 The day my life changed forever. (Part 1)

I awoke to the feeling of great excitement. This was a day that could be filled with wonderful surprises and I was eager to embrace whatever lay before me.

Shortly after breakfast I collected my things and made my way under the expansive and busy Kutuzovsky Prospect and then on towards the Kievskya metro station.

I found the ticketing system to be non-complex and I soon had a single fare ticket costing 7 roubles in my hand so I boarded the escalator for the ride down to the platform.

By this stage in my life I had ridden on many of the world's rapid transport systems without incident and I was eagerly anticipating my experience on this particular one. I had heard many stories of grandiose stations with museum like qualities, immaculately clean platforms and a system that prided itself on engineering excellence and marked efficiency. But as I descended gracefully down the escalator there were a still a few simple facts that I was blissfully unaware.

First was that the Moscow Metro is one of the busiest and most extensive in the world. It carries 7million passengers per day (although I have seen the figure 9.5 million quoted on occasion). Two thousand identical trains, each with six carriages, scream through the tunnels at breakneck speed delivering this extraordinary number of passengers to their respective destinations - at intervals as low as 50 seconds (peak periods). It is certainly not a place for the faint hearted and I have spoken since with expats who have taken up to two weeks to obtain the courage to ride this system.

The other critical fact which had never come my way was that not a word of English could be found anywhere on the entire system, and I, of course, had not the slightest knowledge of any of the characters in the Russian alphabet.

It was therefore of no surprise that within minutes of boarding my first train I was completely confused and overwhelmed. The sheer number of people boarding and exiting the train at each stop left me reeling and I quickly realised the English translation of each station name on my map made no comparison to the station names on the wall of each station. Trying to control the rising panic I attempted to station count but with the passenger number swelling exponentially with each stop I quickly failed at that idea. The train screamed on through the tunnel and I resigned myself to the fact that I was completely lost.

Suddenly I noticed the passenger numbers beginning to ebb so I presumed the train had passed under the central district of Moscow and was heading back out into the suburbs on the other side. This observation gave me some comfort as it was in this area of Moscow where I needed to go. The train finally broke the surface and emerged into the weak autumn sunshine. I decided to use this opportunity to disembark and regain my orientation. Once off the train I began to relax and discovered to my immense surprise that underneath the English translation on my metro map was the Russian equivalent in small text. I compared the characters for each station on the line I was riding with the characters on the wall beside where I was standing. With tremendous excitement and relief I found a name that matched and I finally knew my location. I had overshot my stop by just two stations so I quickly moved to the opposite platform and promptly caught the next returning train.

Surfacing at my stop I encountered yet another obstacle. The station had several exits which straddled a busy road and the sidewalks were heavily trafficked with pedestrians. I had not even a hint as to Sergei's appearance. Without a mobile phone I had no way of communicating with him. Fortunately a cultural quirk came to my aid as Sergei, recognising me instantly from quite a distance as a "foreigner", appeared from across the road to collect me.

After a vigorous handshake and a brief exchange of pleasantries he assured me his office was nearby and we quickly made off in direction which he had been pointing.