Russia. Increadible to think one country can cover so much of the massive continent of Asia with a total of 11 time zones. It’s funny, almost every person who discovers I’m going to Russia warns me that it’ll be cold. As if the only distinguishing feature of Russia is the cold. As opposed to, say… Canada.
I think there are many people who are a little mystified by my choice of destination. And it is a choice – the desperate, no option destination would have been China or Korea; the easy route. I’ve chosen the hard way. I’ve chosen to go to somewhere that is cold. Somewhere that has problems. Somewhere where no-one speaks my language or uses my alphabet and a foreign teacher is not accorded the status of an honoured visitor. In fact, I’ll probably not be given any special treatment because I’m foreign.
Plus it’s a place which isn’t spotlessly clean. And which is known for bureaucracy and delays. And where the government is not the perfect democracy some Western powers seem to have deemed themselves to be. And I choose to go there just as there is a global recession and Russia is playing power games with the US and the South Ossetia situation has broken out.
Those of my friends who have left South Africa – and there are many – can be fairly neatly divided into two groups – those who have left in search (however temporarily) of the comfort and luxury and forgetfulness of the first world and those who have gone in search of foreign, indigenous cultures in strange lands. I respect both of those and am happy that almost all of them have found – and loved – exactly what they were looking for. I defy that categorisation to some extent. And I think that confuses people a little.
I’m not heading off to some small island to explore native cultures. Quite the opposite in fact. Moscow is the largest of European cities with 14 million people in the metro area – making it bigger than London, for the record. So I am heading for all that is so scary and so challenging about a city – all the things that make one of my friends love New York so much. The anonymity, the enormity, the stark reality. In a huge city you can’t escape yourself. There is far less space to be soft and to distract yourself with gossip about your neighbours wife. No matter how affluent a city, it’s almost impossible, short of being totally wasted all of the time, to avoid yourself. Cities cause constant reevaluation of the self and identity. Cities are a hard place to live. But that being with yourself and being forced to face up to things is also part of the joy of a really huge city. And, of course, there is the classic, cliched abundance of choice – cities have something for everyone and provide more space for everyone to be who they are.
But I’m also not going to a fancy, first-world city. I was reading the info booklet the group I’m going to work for sent me. One of the things they warn you about is that Moscow has a homelessness problem. One of the most important bits of studying history for me was a seminar where we discussed Baudrillard’s hyperreality in relation to shopping centres. Modern cities are a great place to explore the inner landscape but they are often an oasis where the very real problems that are out there and are part of most people’s everyday lives can be disregarded in a ‘bubble’, a complete delusion of universal affluence. I don’t want that. My reality is not only internal. This is not to say that it’s impossible to be in touch with the realities of hardship and poverty in cities like New York and London. But it’s a choice. I want to live in a place where it’s impossible not to.
So I’m not going to a big city where luxury eclipses all else and nor am I going to a place where I can be one with the primitive cultures. There are things I love about Russia and particularly about Moscow and St Petersburg – like history and high culture. The idea of being able to visit Red Square and the Bolshoi Theatre fill me with joy to overflowing. Moscow combines with this the opportunity to constantly explore and reinvent myself and to stay grounded in the reality which is central to who I am and the continent that will always remain my home.
