Little Journey

Red Square, the most Russian of sights, is on the docket for Tuesday. While our group is anxious to go, a few express reservations learning Faith intends to use the metro to get there. It’s a ten-minute walk from hotel to station. The number of pedestrians bearing flowers swells as we approach. Outside, TV cameramen and police with dogs scan the masses; yesterday’s tragedy has bolstered today’s crowds. I’d feel like a gawker, were this not our station. Eyes welling with tears and knot rising in throat, I am shocked by the violation I feel as I enter.

Just inside the doors, a table holds bouquets in front of a placard decrying the heinous act. A small group rings the display, some praying, others crossing themselves thrice, Orthodox fashion. An elderly woman croaks a mournful song, candles flickering at her feet.

Our group flows down the elevators; no one says much. In the crush to board the train, I momentarily shed my angst, but once aboard, I survey those surrounding me, hoping their only interest is getting to their stop. I feel a private and ashamed relief when we disembark outside the Kremlin.

On my first sojourn with our new trip last November, we visited the Lenin Mausoleum. To my chagrin, questionnaires I collected post-travel heaped scorn on Moscow’s quirkiest sight, one of my favorites. Nixed for January, several travelers express interest this time. Lenin takes Mondays and Fridays off to soak in a secret-recipe chemical preservative bath, but he receives visitors today. Some in our group prefer to mill about in Red Square, feeding potato chips to the youngest children who stay behind. The rest of us desk-check our bags and pass through metal detectors, an exercise taking far longer than the minute or two we’re allowed inside the mausoleum. Having visited twice before, I am more captivated by the reactions of my comrades than by Lenin. One boy uses a laser pointer, earning a stiff rebuke from a guard beside the glass case enclosing communism’s poster child. The ceiling is denuded in places where plaster has crumbled, and I doubt such disrepair would have been countenanced in Soviet days. On exit, the adults have muted reactions, and the children appreciate the spectacle more for its macabre value than its historicity.

Red Square is sunny, and for the first time ever in Russia, I shed my gloves. After our requisite group photos in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral, we find the gate open to the church. In five trips to the motherland encompassing at least fifteen square visits, I’ve never ventured in. Guide books deem the interior of Moscow’s most iconic structure anticlimactic, and rather than rob it of its mystery, I’ve chosen to just appreciate the exterior. Passing through the gate, we circle the building, though no one asks to actually go inside. Filling my memory card with stunning close-ups of domes decked in geometric shapes, I love the walk, and vow it won’t be the last. The only pock is the dumpster behind, ill-placed beside the resplendent church.

Lunch is in GUM Mall, at a cafeteria so perkily painted I find it irresistible. The food is inexpensive and Russian, but of sufficient variety that even American palates find something pleasing. Space is scarce, but Faith works her brassy magic, asking diners at several tables if members of our party can join them. I chuckle from a distance, until she points me to the table she’s solicited for us. Two strangers sit there; one serves me a withering glare as I sidle reluctantly to the table’s far end. By the time Faith joins me, my unwelcoming companions have excused themselves. I ask her if sharing tables is socially acceptable, or desperate, within Russia. She seems amused I find it discomfiting, and assures me it’s fine style, if  given permission.

GUM offers western, clean, and free restrooms, a rare Russian trifecta; savvy travelers use such facilities when available, needed or not. Outside Red Square, a row of portable toilets, lacking sinks, cost almost seventy cents for single admission. A dignified attendant, looking Maytag bored, awaits customers, ensconced in a converted outhouse office.

All week, Vera, fifteen, has hung from Ed, a single man traveling with us just to encourage children who otherwise might have been hostless, and left behind. On our excursions, kids have a walking partner, and Vera is quick to claim him. As our week winds down, she pulls Faith aside and confides she wants Ed to adopt her and brother Sasha (Her Brother's Keeper, 1/2/10). When Faith tells her it’s impossible, since single men may not adopt from Russia, Vera’s face drops. “Can he get married?” she implores.

After our outing, the metro whisks us back to our station. Near the accident site, a somber throng surrounds a mushrooming floral mountain. Faith starts toward it, glances at the children, then leads us home instead. Walking to the hotel, swarms of mourners carrying bouquets stream past.

We transform the common room of our hotel into a festive birthday celebration for the kids. With all the rooms we’ve rented on three trips and more booked for June, we are popular with management. They let us hang streamers and scores of balloons; I derive a proud thrill taping balloons by framed photos of our first trip gracing the common room walls. After an English “Happy Birthday”, the kids blow out the candles on count of three. Faith humors me when I command a repeat performance for video. Afterward, we eat bird’s milk cake, a confection somewhat better than its name suggests.

After our party, we gather toys, candy, and trinkets for orphanage donations. Kids pack their new belongings, and goodbyes begin. Two adoptive families and all our group’s voluminous luggage fills much of Dima’s Nissan, allowing only the chaperone and youngest kids to ride to the train station. Dima astounds me with his packing prowess, squeezing eleven people into a van he’s wrung over 200,000 miles from. Three hosts ride the metro to the train station with eight kids and me, where we’ll meet the others for the twelve-hour trek back to the region. As Faith leaves with Dima, I wonder if she worries we’ll get lost, but we arrive before those who fought Moscow’s traffic in the Nissan.

At the train, an accommodating conductor lets me board to say my goodbyes. It’s a third class platzcar, with about fifty bunks in one mostly open space. Kids sit on beds, at tiny tables picking at leftovers we packed for them. Several hug and thank me as I bid them farewell. When I’m ushered out, the hosts are waving and snapping pictures through the windows. Fifteen- and twelve-year-old sisters Elena and Lidia see their host, and future dad, and poignantly put their hands to the window to meet his.

Back at our metro station, we stop to see the burgeoning mounds of flowers. It’s eerily silent, except for the screech of trains arriving every minute. A righteous indignation flares as I stand there, solemnly honoring the victims whose tragic deaths seem a personal loss. These souls were once countrymen of my own daughter and son, and the countrymen of so many of our Lighthouse families’ dear children, and I share the sense of betrayal and grief.

In the night, I mull the dichotomy of this evening. At one station, such sadness permeates. The lost cannot return, their lives snuffed out by hatred and wicked misunderstanding. At the other station, our temporary loss expects joyful reunion, and rebirth into families. My host families, my friends, have pain in the forecast before that happens. But at the close of our little journey, we have hope for the future, and a confidence that, however wending our paths, they’ll merge together again.

*****

Photos above

Birthday videos on our Facebook Page

Tweet

Tuesday: Photos and Videos

In Russia: Day 10

Lenin Mausoleum

Always room for one more...

Hail, hail, the gang's all here!

Happy Birthday!

Puzzling

Kremlin Bell Tower at 1:00 p.m.



"Summer" from the Four Seasons in a Moscow road underpass

Rock, Paper, Scissors Russian-style

Happy Birthday!

My name is Denis

***

See accompanying story here.

Tuesday

In Russia: Day 10

Tuesday starts slowly over eggs, sausage, toast, yogurt, and fruit. Setting out, we’re without Faith, our translator. We stop along the way to get trip photos developed; we have albums to fill for the kids. They’ll want to show their friends back at the orphanage the activities and the people they spent time with. Some of them have an inkling we’re doing more than just sightseeing, and they’ll want to show off their new mom and dad. We drop into a photo shop, and since the chaperone and I share about 100 words in common, none of which have anything to do with photography, it is a bit of an enigma if the clerk will understand how many copies we want of each print. She writes on a paper when we should return, and we eventually establish a price, which I think I understand.

We hustle to Red Square for one of Moscow’s quirkiest sights: the Lenin Mausoleum, a cubic pyramid safeguarding either the well-preserved body of Vladimir Lenin, or a good wax effigy, depending on whom you believe. Regardless of my distaste for communism and its poster child, I believe this is one of Moscow’s must-see sights; it’s not every day you see the well-preserved body of a long-deceased world leader. The mausoleum’s hours would make a banker blush; the rest of the time, the corpse stews in preservatives, and occasionally, undergoes a change of clothes. In spite of the care, rumors an ear once fell off circulate. Lenin hoped to be buried; eighty-five years posthumously in a post-Communist Russia, his wish may be granted. Communist Party demonstrators armed with bullhorns, placards, and vintage Soviet Union flags are frequent and fervent protestors outside Red Square, taking umbrage with plans floating to bury the mortal remains of their hero. I find the modern-looking pyramid architecturally dissonant in Red Square, though its design provided seating for Soviet officials atop the mausoleum, watching military parades on important Communist holidays. During the height of the Cold War, American foreign policy workers studied annual Revolution Day photos of the pyramid to determine who was on the rise in the Party by their proximity to Josef Stalin.

In my youth, years before the fall of the Iron Curtain, I read Lenin’s remains were publicly displayed. A history buff even as a child, I added the Lenin Mausoleum to my sightseeing wish list, never believing I would check it off. Twenty years hence, on my first morning in Russia, I visited the mausoleum, and if the sight itself was underwhelming, the fulfillment of a childhood dream was not.

Waiting in a line I feared interminable, filing through metal detectors, checking bags, and under advisement that absolute silence was enforced, we traipsed through an otherwise closed-off Red Square to the pyramid. It was dark inside; a large hammer and sickle, especially creepy in this context, welcomed us. Descending black marble steps in near-darkness, I wondered who you’d sue if you broke your neck. At the bottom, around a corner, there he laid, Lenin, waxy and encased in glass, wearing red tie and subtle smirk. As I paused to see how well the ears were attached, excusing my macabre interest as historical exercise, a humorless guard snapped his fingers and pointed the way out. Up more lightless steps, out the door, my youthful desire bore fruit, absent fanfare, in under a minute.

Exiting the mausoleum, the obligatory walk along the Kremlin walls passes the graves of many a Communist luminary, including Stalin himself. For a time, Stalin kept Lenin company, though today, he reposes outside the mausoleum under a bust labeled “СТАЛИН.” We marveled at the number of red carnations left there by fawning, and historically ignorant, admirers; usually, the Stalin grave has more flowers than do other premiers. His reputation has undergone a bit of a restoration of late, as those who remember first-hand his purges and gulags pass from the scene.

Today, in Lenin the kids see the face of the darker side of their country’s history. Those who are interested appreciate the spectacle; those who aren’t dislike the same. None connect the man to his deeds, and what he did to their country and countrymen.

We cross the square to eat pizza in GUM, then rush to make our tour time at the Armory, a treasure trove of Russian artifacts in the Kremlin. Fabulously ostentatious carriages, Ivan the Terrible’s ivory throne, Catherine the Great’s embroidered gowns, and priceless objets d’art shine in my favorite Moscow museum. It’s an expensive ticket, but worth it. It thrilled me to see my own kids’ pride to be Russian, as they saw the grandeur of the exhibits. Unfortunately, my companions today, both adult and child, are less moved. I am dismayed both by their relief as we depart, and their request to return to the hotel rather than use the Kremlin tickets I already hold in hand. But with seventeen votes for the hotel, one for the Kremlin, I acquiesce. On our way out, we pass a lone violinist in a road underpass, playing Vivaldi’s “Summer,” from the Four Seasons. His gloveless hands red, I shiver vicariously, wondering at the irony of his musical selection. Standing there as long as I do, etiquette demands I drop a few rubles in his open case.

On our way back to the hotel, we pick up our pictures. The quality is sub-optimal, but the order is correct, and far less costly than I thought we’d agreed to. In the hotel common area, we serve cake to the kids and sing “Happy Birthday” in Russian. It’s nobody’s birthday, but we want them to know we love them, and it’s too good an opportunity to pass up.

As I clean up the dishes, an Egyptian man staying in the hotel approaches us. “You Americans are fathers of the world,” he praises. “You even care for children of other countries.”

We’re a long way from home, but apparently exuding compassion. I appreciate the affirmation, but hope more than anything that his words are prophetic.

***

See photos and videos here.