Part 7: The Metro

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Where to begin... Let's see. First is the journey down to the famous metro. The escalator seems like an endless tunnel to hell for most commuters, and I've often fantasised about them installing a slide for those of us that grind our teeth at waiting on an escalator.
Try walking up or down them. I dare you. In Russia to do this every day would be enough for a short gym session (could explain the lack of joggers.)

The metro themselves are marble wonders. Impressive but on first try are perhaps too complex. A pleasure for first time tourist gawkers but a pain in the ass for regular commuters. The crisscross of walkways and lack of English signage make for a frustrating campaign for tourists. How are we to know that on the metro map, where it shows circles over stations, that it means they are linked and can be walked to. And not a quick walk I might add. Everything in Moscow is a journey (or trek for the South Africans reading this.)

Rush hour is insane. I've been in the March of the Penguins at Waterloo station. I was one of those sad penguins. This is some other kind of monster; a Russian wave of pushing and squeezing (let's just say Russians aren't afraid to get up close and personal when it comes to our personal space) that makes you yell in your head "how can there be this many people in the world?"
It's chaos. It's rude for lack of a better word.

Some trains are brand new with (thank the Lord) English beneath the Russian words. The older trains are some death machine from the 70s. Listening carefully for the name of your station otherwise you won’t know where you are. The trains are very Loud. Very very very loud. Squeaky. Swaying like a ship in a storm.
I've climbed on and off the wrong train so many times in the beginning it became not funny very quickly.

The good news is that the trains are fairly consistent; one every two minutes give or take.

Lastly the consumers; there will be the usual suspects; beggars, old ladies, people carrying bags way too big, little kids, people selling stuff, stinky people, bearded people, but the amount of black people in Russia that I see; if I count more than two for a whole month, this is standard. For a kid growing up in Africa, seeing this many white people is just down right odd. The naughty raisins are missing from the pudding, so to speak. Here, they call Islamic or Armenian "black." That's Middle-Eastern. Or Indian, etc. Black is African. Black is black. White is white. You get the idea.


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