First-few-week fervor hasn't fizzled out entirely. I'm still running into friends I haven't seen since last year, still doling out my standard "How was your summer?" with an earnest shot of enthusiasm. But I'll tell you, the best part is when the question gets shot back at me. Every time is the same: I'll give a smug little smile, narrow my eyes and answer in a dreamy voice, "It was really good."
I went to Moscow for four weeks this summer. The main reason I took the trip was to do an internship writing for a Moscow-based business magazine, with the side project of emerging with a new-and-improved repertoire of the Russian language. But oh, was it so much more.
To understand my experience, you have to understand my background: I immigrated with my family to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia when I was two years old. I've grown up speaking Russian at home, smothered by babushkas and borscht, but this summer's affair with Moscow was only my second time back to my native Eurasian mass of a country.
This time around, I was on my own.
Me.
An apartment to myself.
Moscow, population 10 million.
It was little-girl-in-the-big-city syndrome. ... and it couldn't have been better. Lucky for me, an American friend of mine was there at the time, and she introduced me to a procession of other Americans who would become my "crew." Exploring this booming city with my posse, I fell into a life I'd never experienced before. I don't need to expound on the high points of living in a country where "drinking age" is an oxymoron -- there was a lot more to it than that. I'm talking about coffee shops staying open until 5 a.m. to give you a little more conversation time instead of opening at 5 a.m. to fuel the overzealous workforce of America. I'm talking about apparent hot-shot interviewees who wouldn't answer a single question of mine until they'd offered me a humble cup of tea. I'm talking about learning Russian slang. I'm talking about living in a place of chaos and hating and loving it.
Throughout these adventures, I realized how little I knew about the country I'd always laid such a strong claim to. Culture shock isn't even the half of it.
Misconceptions about Russia abound. Point #1: Bears and vodka are the two items most commonly cited by foreigners when you mention Russia. Let's not kid ourselves; we have plenty of both. But Moscow? It's a cosmopolitan city. After I'd spent the first half of my summer in the doldrums of the D.C. suburbs, Moscow had me racing into culture/nightlife overload.
Major misconception #2 is the climate issue. "Isn't it cold in Russia?" Yes, some parts of Russia easily hit a nippy -40 degrees Celsius in the winter. But summers -- and Moscow summers, at that -- are gorgeous. The temperature hovered around 80 degrees the entire time I was there, with nothing near our swamp-like Virginian humidity. It was almost always sunny, and that sweet northern sun did its thing every day until 11 p.m. How could I not culture overload with such long days at my disposal?
One of my favorite things to do was ride around in the backs of cabs with my iPod and stare out the window. Incongruously enough, my soundtrack of choice was a fiercely emotional French pop song -- yet it was so heart-pinching it was the only logical complement to what I was feeling. (Culture overload was surpassed only by emotion overload.)
I couldn't get enough of looking at people. There was a pair of men, one young and one middle-aged, outfitted in matching army-green overalls which the younger man had thrown over his bare torso. There was a seemingly dazed older gentleman in a white linen shirt, sweeping by the other men with a look that suggested he was utterly confused as to how he had landed in the city. There was a husband explaining something to his wife as they marched on together, his face and arms animating his spiel in a just-so Russian way. There was a girl with thick, long hair swaggering toward a bench in front of a public library; she sat down, swung her hair behind her shoulders and unwrapped an ice cream sandwich in a moment of perfect contentment.
As I watched these people, my mind would wander.
What would my life be like if I had never left this place? One of the major shockers that came out of my conversations with Russians is the incredible prevalence of bribery in the country. The most prestigious university in Moscow, a friend told me, is populated solely by students whose families bribed their children's way into higher education. This so-seeming newsflash shouldn't have surprised me; it's no secret that Russian politics and society are still very much corrupt -- we all know the country has a long way to go. But I couldn't stop thinking that this was an issue I could have faced in my own life had things fallen into slightly different places.
Yet even more intimately than what my surroundings would have been, I had to ask, who would I be if I had stayed here? I constantly drifted to the conclusion it wasn't someone I'd want to be. Some argue with me. You would have been happy because you wouldn't have known the difference, they say. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure that's true. Even in Moscow, an extraordinary number of people I met were fascinated by my Americanness and my ability to speak native English. "If only I could speak English the way you do!" they'd say. I guess it was a compliment, but there was something sort of sad about it.
I've never been so confused about my identity. In the States, I'd always felt I had a little ethnic flavor up my sleeve, which I thought made me inherently cool. I was the Russian girl. In Moscow, I was anything but Russian. I was American. Now, back to the grind, I'm even more confused than before. No way can I say this trip straightened things out for me, that it was one giant touchy-feely mush of self-discovery. But here's what I did discover: I'm glad my parents brought me to the States. And I'm glad my parents never chopped off my link to my native-but-not-exactly-home country. Because confusing as it is, the best thing I can be is both.
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