Liberating Spaces

Continuation of Some Kind of Life (1), (2), (3) and (4)

You never know how it is going to go in Moscow Domodedovo airport. Sometimes there is a long queue full of Caucasian families in front of the passport control booths waiting to be questioned and requestioned, other times it is just you and a a mixed of a few tourists and Russians. Michael was lucky this time. It was the second.

Michael’s ‘Dobroe utro’ is received with a mumble from the guard in the booth. The mumbling guard takes Michael’s passport. He looks once, twice at his face. He puts his passport on the reader, and waits. Michael considers whether to smile at him or just look straight. The second. His passport is duly return to him. He is now officially in Russia.

No surprise. His usual driver, Igor, was waiting for him with the sign “Michael Forsyth-Demtri”. Wrong. It was actually Forsyth-Demetri, but this is the price of willing to keep his mother’s name in his surname. She made for a big part of what he was. He wanted to reflect that fact somewhere in his public identity. ‘Privet, Igor’, ‘Privet, Mr. Forsyth, how was your flight?’, replied the driver with an obvious Russian accent. ‘Bumpy, but it got here. Never guaranteed.’, ‘Sorry?’, ‘Never mind. Let’s go, I have a busy schedule today.’

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Moscow, Saturday, late night.

The drunk man stumbling and running into anything that was slightly vertical. In contrast with its day buzz, Arbat street was at this time empty. The man’s linen, light brown jacket on his shoulder. His beard white with strokes of black. His body fumbling from left to right, from right to left. Until he rose his eyes and saw a figure turning the right corner of the next street. He gasped, turned first his head, then attempted to turn his body, and fell for the speed of the movement onto the ground. The whole of himself on the pavement, he extended his arms and hands trying to get enough surface to push himself back on both legs. Unsuccessfully, he fell again, hitting his cheek. He could hear the steps of the person he knew very well getting closer to him. ‘What can I do?’ he thought, ‘sooner or later I had to bump into him’.

Steps closer. A thin voice breaks the street light silence. ‘Dario, shouldn’t you know better?’. Fast and short breathing from the drunk man. ‘You know you shouldn’t be in Moscow, streets are dangerous at this time of the day, especially for a drunk man.’ This drunk man raises his eyes and sees him. The person he didn’t want to meet again. ‘Why did I come back to Russia?’.

The standing figure kneels down next to the drunk man. Puts one hand in each side of his neck, movement over the drunk man’s head. A thin string between his hands. Pulls towards himself with force. The drunk man feels the threads cutting his skin. He can’t breath anymore. He gasps, moves his arms, hands and legs. Resisting with all that’s left in him after a night of vodka, rum, beer, wine and more. His sight is blurred. He is saying his goodbyes, for he can’t resist anymore. His face hits the pavement. The figure’s face approaches the drunk man’s face. Listening. Feeling. Stands up. Leaves.

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Before I left Moscow on Monday afternoon, I went to Saint Petersburg for a short weekend trip with a friend of mine. We left Moscow for Saint Petersburg at 6.40 am on Saturday 22 May. We arrived back to Moscow at 10.50 am on Monday 24 May. We slept a total of 6 hours during the whole trip. It was a total success (except for the tiny detail that I lost my iphone on Saturday night ).

On my previous post I wrote that it was always a pleasure to travel with David Luff, my companion in this trip to the imperial city, for

We both love to walk in cities to explore those corners out of the tourist trail that hide its real essence.

How truthful this is. We’ve enjoyed like “des fous”. The weather couldn’t have been better, the city is beautiful and the people are very open and smiley (the sun might have helped). Among many experiences we had in just two days (it looked like a week), I’d like to mention three, divided in three different posts. The first concerns two very special religious ceremonies.

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“One cannot stay at home with a day like this”, this is what I said to myself today at noon. I had tons of work, but outside the sun was calling my name. So I took my camera and headed towards Victory Park in Poklonnaya Hill, around 40 minutes walk from my flat (map below). I know my work should have been a priority, but one is not every day in Moscow. I don’t regret it even a bit! I took a few good pictures (click on them for bigger version). (more…)

This is what the Internet is about. Thanks to a comment by someone from the Radisson Hotel on my post “From my window“, in which I show the view from the window of my Moscow flat, I’ve discovered that the new Hotel Ukraina has a blog! There is a video showing the surroundings of the building (including the White House) and the interior.

Somehow connected with the previous post, I must admit that I am rather luckier with my window view. From the flat I normally occupy while in Moscow I can see one of the “Seven Sisters“, the old Ukraina Hotel (now Radisson Royal Moscow), which re-opened after full renovation in April (above picture I took yesterday night), and the White House, which used to host the Russian Parliament (below, the same).

On my way from the airport to the flat where I stay in Moscow, I remembered something I thought revealing the time I was told about it. The power towers scattered all around the way made me recall of another kind of tower in front of a window. A tower the first time that was seen through that window was perceived as a threat, but soon it was captured and transformed into a friendly shape.

The story goes like this. (more…)

Tomorrow Sunday, volcanic cloud willing, I am taking off from Barcelona to Moscow for teaching. My relation with Russia is not new. Already during my “Cold War years” I was quite intrigued by the Soviet Union and a bit suspicious of the US. I felt an odd attraction for the big bear. My favourite James Bond movies is in fact From Russia with Love and I liked Ivan Drago, the Russian boxer in Rocky IV . Later, an uncanny experience happened to me in August 1997, while I was studying French in the Alliance Française in Paris, a pretty blonde Russian girl approached me in the coffee shop of the AF and started to talk to me in Russian. She said I looked Russian. That intrigued me. The following year, while I was studying in Sciences Po, I followed Russian language courses (not very successfully, for I’ve never liked to learn languages in a class). I thought my love with Russia had finished then. But I was wrong.

In 2006, I was asked whether I wanted to start teaching in the new Masters programme set up by the College of Europe and the MGIMO, within the cooperation framework between the EU and Russia. My Russian attraction was reborn, and I said immediately yes. I don’t regret it even a bit. It’s been always a very nice experience. I teach twice a year there, in winter and spring.

BUT my Russian “love affair” didn’t end there. (more…)