Russia: An Introvert’s Paradise

Being an introverted American in Russia is great because no one really wants to talk to you.

My trip to Russia in February of 2018 started the way all my trips start. With tons of research, planning and maybe too much thought put into packing.

What follows below is a picture of all the items I took with me, with convenient red no-no’s over the things I didn’t use (5 things). I can accept one or two, but this was too many.

The reason some of these things didn’t get used is that the giant coat with the fur trimmed hood (center right) was TOO MUCH COAT!!

I bought it a few weeks before the trip when I saw that temperatures in Irkutsk and Krasnoyatsk were in the -30 to -40 range. (C or F, you ask? It doesn’t matter. That is sudden death cold either way).

But when I did get there the temp has warmed to -5 F (-20 C).

So this coat was Overkill. Especially in Moscow where it was +20 F (-6 C), and I had the hood off and coat unzipped wide open like a madman.

Sorry for the Potato quality images of the Kremlin. Imagine this but crisp and vibrant. Moscow in winter is probably better than any other time because of all the holiday decorations.

I spent a few days in Moscow before I headed off to Siberia for the dogsledding trip, and let me tell you, Moscow is amazing.

Now, if you’re like me and grew up in the 80′s, your idea of Russia is probably a drab, blocky, communist dump. But it’s absolutely gorgeous, so I spent a lot of time just walking around, hitting Red Square, the Kremlin, Moscow State University, Gorky Park, and the UNESCO listed Church of the Ascension.

Church of the Ascension, Moscow. Built in 1532 to commemorate the birth of who would later become Ivan the Terrible.

I wasn’t as adventurous for food in Moscow as I should have been. Fortunately there are quite a few cafeteria style restaurants that were much less socially precarious than a traditional restaurant where you have to talk to a waiter. The old Soviet throwback cafeterias were a special lil treat.

After my time Moscow, I headed back to the Airport to catch a red eye to Irkutsk, a 5 hour flight.

Irkutsk is full of old wooden buildings. I am not sure how anyone could stay warm in there in the -5 F degree weather.

In Irkutsk, I had my biggest issues and awkward moments of the trip.

1. I ventured to a real restaurant, where the staff didn’t speak English and neither did the menu.  I recognized Borsht, so I ordered that as a starter. Then I just pointed to something on the Menu in the Entree section. What arrived was another bowl of soup. I mean, it was basically a goat leg boiled in broth, but yeah, I had two soups for a meal.
2. I could not get my ATM card to work anywhere. I tried at least 15 ATMs. Fortunately the Sled Dog trip would accept PayPal. But it was a tense few hours there where I thought I had traveled 13 time zones just to fail because of US sanctions against Russia.

Sled dogs are super friendly.

At the helm of the sled on the frozen Lake Baikal. These 8 dogs carried 3 people and some bags.

The dog sledding trip was just about the best I could have hoped for. It wasn’t too cold (only -5F), and for my first time, only 4-5 hours on sled per day was just about right. There were 2 other americans and A kiwi on the trip, and all of us enjoyed the overnight in the cabin complete with traditional Russian Banya experience.

A Russian banya works like this: you strip naked and enter a warm, wet antechamber. Here there are shallow pans and ladles on the wall, some felt hats, a barrel of cold water and a spigot coming from the furnace with scalding hot water. Not knowing what to do, one of the more traveled of your companions assumes it’s like a Japanese bath where you are to rinse off before entering the sauna room.

Hearing the spashing water, an old Russian man comes in fully clothed and frantically tries to explain to you what to do.

After a few tense moments, you learn this: get some hot water from the spigot into the pan, add a ladle of cold water. Put on a felt hat and take your warm water into the sauna room. There is a rock embedded in the furnace. Throw tiny amounts of water with the ladle on it until you are about to die. Return to the antechamber and cool off with cold or warm water from the barrel and spigot. Repeat until dead.

The next morning it was back to Irkutsk for another uneventful night before I caught the Trans-Siberian to Krasnoyarsk.

Now boarding on platform 4, Train #1 from Vladivostok to Moscow, but I was only doing 8 hours from Irkutsk to Krasnoyarsk.

I took a pretty big gamble for my Trans-Siberian mini-adventure and booked a 3rd class sleeper. If you don’t know what that is, it is basically a train car filled with beds. I thoroughly enjoyed it in retrospect, but let me tell you all the ways I messed it up.

1. I picked the worst berth. On one side of the Aisle, there are 4 beds (2 sets of bunk beds facing a table) that are perpendicular to the aisle, like so =|. On the other side, the cheapest bunks, are parallel to the aisle, like so ||. And I chose the upper bunk. During the day the lower bunk folds up to reveal two seats and a table. At bedtime, the bed folds down and the table and chairs goes away. If you’re on the top bunk, you’ve nowhere to sit or put anything, and very little head room. So when the babuska in the lower bunk decided 9pm was a good bedtime (and really, at night there’s nothing to see or do anyway), the only place to go was lay down in my upper bunk.
2. I might have been in the wrong car. I was supposed to be in car 16, and I was sure it said 16 on the outside, but a display screen at the ends of the car said 18. So I spent a good deal of time being terrified that someone would get on the train and make me move.
3. When travel guides recommend you bring flip flops or a good pair of slippers, you better do what they say. I had a thin pair that I’d gotten from the Transatlantic flight, and it was not enough to save my feet from the sludge on the floor of the bathroom.
4. When the Russian gentleman invites you to sit on his bunk because the babushka is sleeping, you take him up on the offer. I refused politely and said I don’t speak Russian. I could have had a great, social moment with a stranger and instead I stood in a super narrow aisle for thirty minutes.

All comfy in 3rd class. Honestly, with a friend or two, this would be a really amazing way to travel.

I got to Krasnoyarsk early in the morning, checked in to my hotel and pretty much just checked out. I was mentally exhausted by this point and so despite being able to see a ski resort across the mighty Yenisei River, I only explored the center city area on foot after a nap.

Krasnoyarsk straddles the Yenisei River, the largest river system that flows into the Arctic ocean.

That was it for Russia. 3 flights, 13 time zones, 7500 miles, and 16 hours later I was home.

My trip at a glance:

• Stayed in: Wichita
• Hours on ground: 36
• Social Interactions: 0

I haven’t made a dent in my plan to visit all 50 States in quite a while, but I decided I needed to start up again.

There’s not much rhyme or reason to choices, so I guess Kansas was next.

Now I think most people would have gone to Kansas City, which is 90% Missouri, so I didn’t think that would really fit my criteria for visiting a state, so I flew into Wichita instead.

Before I go into the wonder that is Kansas, let’s talk about the Wichita airport.

As airports go, it’s not huge, but it’s beautiful. Especially when you compare it to other US airports which are sadly cramped with little natural light. There’s a pretty good reason for this, which is many US airports were built decades ago and/or in a rush, and so the concept of open, natural-light filled designs weren’t really in vogue.

I arrived late on Friday, picked up a car and went to the Hotel. Easy enough as Wichita is a pretty small city.

I had a few things I wanted to see the next morning, but first a stop to a park along the Missouri river where the Keeper of the Plains stands.  Not so bad as city parks go.

The Keeper of the Plains. Wichita, Kansas

A two hour drive north took me to Hutchinson, a small town that is home to a productive Salt Mine called Strataca (http://underkansas.org/) that offers tours of the older, mined-out sections. It’s pretty impressive, especially considering its age, but dark and cramped feeling, so not particularly easy to capture in photographs. Old mining equipment and tons of trash are scattered here and there throughout the mine, the latter of which is very well preserved due to the presence of so much salt. We saw tons of old boxes, cigarette cartons, banana peels and even half an uneaten sandwich.

After a good 6 hours underground, it was nice to get back into the fresh Kansas Air. I drove further north to visit the Coronado Castle, a small stone building constructed in the style of a castle (as the name suggests) atop a hill in the middle of nowhere.

Here, the flatness of Kansas was much appreciated, as I got to see the beautiful wide open spaces of the American plains.

Coronado Castle, Kansas

View From Coronado Castle, Kansas

The drive back to Wichita was uneventful, but filled with the sort of flat landscape that we all think Kansas is completely comprised of. Just fields and farms and old trucks kicking up dust.

I didn’t do anything else on my trip, not even to find dinner. Maybe I was tired, or maybe I was just feeling the slow easy pace of life on the plains.

It’s difficult to really learn a foreign language as an introvert, because to really learn you need to put yourself out there and speak to natives and make mistakes.

But when you travel to countries where English isn’t universally spoken, knowing a few words is going to help you on many levels.

Luckily the English word is there next to the Hungarian word for Exit: Kijárat. But you won’t find bilingual signs everywhere.

I’ve been fortunate to study Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and Slovak formally, and to varying degrees on my own: Romanian, Dutch, and Icelandic. (I also have a degree in Linguistics, but I’m not going to lecture you on how that really doesn’t help me much.)

In Europe and Central and South America, really anywhere where a European Language is spoken, you can almost get by without learning much of anything, because many words like Hotel and Restaurant are going to be similar enough that you will be able to find a bite to eat.

Many guidebooks and travel sites will overwhelm you with a bunch of obscure vocabulary that you will never use, but that’s unnecessary, especially for a few days in Madrid or Berlin. Keep it simple, and learn these:

1. No
   
2. Yes
3. Thank You
4. Bathroom/Toilet
5. Men (or Women)
6. Where?
7. Pay
8. Pardon Me/Excuse Me (to Get Someone’s attention)
9. Open (or Closed)
10. Push (or Pull)
11. Exit (or Enter/Entrance)
12. English

Don’t forget to remember how to read and write these words too. Open/Closed and Men/Women, Push/Pull and Exit/Enter will be common signs that will save you a great deal of embarrassment.

You can get by without both words that come in pairs. If you’re confronted with two bathroom doors and one doesn’t say ‘Men’, you can just assume it’s for women.

Along with some hand gestures, this list can get you out of some tough spots. If you say Hotel while holding your hands out wide with palms facing each other. It will be understood that you mean Big Hotel. Likewise you can imagine how to gesture for Small, and Up and Down.

I left out numbers, because anywhere you need to talk numbers, there is very likely a pen and paper nearby. Just make the writing with a pen gesture and say Where.

You could even trim this list down, as WC (pronounced vay-say anywhere but English speaking countries) is very common, eliminating the need for bathroom or toilet, and the signing-your-name hand gesture is pretty well understood to mean ‘I want the check’, despite the fact that many places use chip-and-pin cards where no signature is necessary.

Add a few more to suit your travel style. Maybe you want to learn how to say “Bar” so you can go drinking, or “Peanut Allergy” because you hate peanuts.

If you’re lazy and in Sweden, you might want to add this word to your list. No, it’s not an angry cat. It means elevator.

And don’t forget to say Thank You. A lot.

But all of this memorization is pointless if you don’t get out there and use it. Very hard to practice for an introvert, but just one word bit of advice: Remember the last time someone approached you with a basic understanding of English asking for something. You probably did not laugh at them. If you’re like me, you admired their courage just a little bit and smiled and tried your best to help.