In Moscow, a tourist: how do our emigrants feel when they visit their homeland

It’s an amazing thing to be a tourist in Moscow. It seems like I lived here for eight years, and there in the courtyard is the same apartment where I puttyed the walls and painted the floor, but from the airport you go to see friends and sleep in other people’s beds.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

About how the immigrant from Russia settled in in New York feels, visiting the homeland, told in your blog Elena Zakharova.

Moscow is the beginning of all beginnings, here I fell in love for the first time, was left without money for the first time, earned money for the first time, went on my first trip, thought about what I really wanted to do for the first time, and started doing it. Even when I come to my parents, where I lived for 18 years, I don’t get as excited as on the plane to Moscow, where I haven’t been for almost two years.

Of good things, everything is just as interesting in Moscow. I am going to the “Man from Podolsk”, a wet August Friday, an uncomfortable hall in the basement of a residential building, plastic chairs and spectators occupying every cell of this unsuitable space for the theater. I also watch the “Arrhythmia” sincerely, which for some reason especially touches. Before a session, a woman asks for a change: “Excuse me, are you in splendid isolation? Let's exchange places, I'm here with my love. ” Good Russian cinema acts on me just like modern American fiction: when you recognize yourself in every sentence and easily empathize with everything that happens. As I have not found strong modern books in Russian, I can also say about American cinema. At the Moscow Art Theater, Bogomolov’s play - either I missed, or this time I’ve been especially successful. For some reason, I don’t have luck in the Gogol Center, I’m kicking a chair in front of me, for which I’m being justly and unkindly reprimanded, even in a trendy theater I won’t get away from Russian straightforwardness.

At the birthday of Natasha going to some documentalists. At last, that same kvartirnik whom I dreamed about when I came to Moscow. Cake tiramisu, Adyghe cheese, wine and vodka, the guys are discussing the movie.

From bad - unjustified aggression. Really lack humanity. As if the Russians have forgotten that being a man is also work, or they are doing it badly. They do not look each other in the eyes, do not smile, do not build phrases so that the other person is more pleasant, they do not hide a bad mood and they easily start quarrels. As partners in a long relationship, that stop trying. In my opinion, we are the most incompetent people in communication and conflict management. Where, Europeans keep silent, Americans will embrace and promise to meet for beer on Friday, Russians will quarrel and spoil the mood for themselves and those around them. It's not cool to prevent conflicts, but to “beat” harder and go ahead.

Especially hard in the early days, when you still do not overgrow with armor and do not feel like in the film Almodovar The Skin I Live In. When I almost got into a fight in one bar, they got nasty in the second, in the third they sprayed pepper spray - I poisoned myself, I went to the nearby cafe to wash, and there were the consequences of another fight: the blood floor, the police and the ambulance. A man in a suit was rude to a policeman, a woman in the subway cursed her companions for no reason, and a beautiful woman behind the wheel and a teenage son in the passenger seat called me an idiot because I prevented her from parking in the courtyard of a residential building. It seemed to me that in one week more happened in Moscow than in a couple of years in New York. It is as if everyone lives in constant tension and is ready to defend at any moment. Not sent now, send later - so do it first. In a month you are adapting: either you stop noticing, or - my theory - you connect to the general voltage and they stop attacking you.

Gray and big

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Going to the Patriarch's. Facebook friend Lida leaves the keys to her apartment. A car is parked in front of the house in the middle of the road, a policeman on a scooter is taken from somewhere, explains that you cannot stand on the road and asks to remove the car. The driver responds through the open window: "So what, crap ... am I someone?". What happens next I do not know, I speed up and hide in the doorway of my new house.

I almost missed the development of the “new” Patriarchs, so I simply read about it already in New York. In part, it is even curious that a district with its behavior patterns and visual images appeared in Moscow. It seems to me that the traveler always sees sharper, plus what you expect, then begins to emerge. Here they eat oysters (where are they from in Moscow?) With a view of parked cars with closed rooms. A look at the bottles with a cooled rose, a look at the cost of an hour of parking, from which rooms are so artfully hidden. Here is a girl in high blue boots posing against the background “just like in Soho” of the street, opposite a different photo session: a dress in the floor, long hair, women like from the pages of magazines. I did not seem to have a confirmatory video. In the evenings, Chanel shows are held at the salon: three rows of super-identical women, tall glasses of champagne and a guy in a black suit who teaches to maintain this sameness.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Beauty salons here are very important, looking around it seems that the whole "beauty" is hidden behind their doors. Here, eyebrows are dyed, eyelashes are enlarged, epilation is regularly made, the tips are leveled, keratin is made, straightened or curled, depending on the initial data. I remember my eight years in Moscow - all of the above is quite familiar to me. In the States, at least in New York, it seems that all the cosmetics and procedures for the fan are to dye your hair pink, your lips black and try new facial tattoos. In Russia, everything seems to be about care, sexuality and standardization. Pictures with Wonderzine offline are almost never found. In general, the care is almost the third work of Russian women (after career and life). American salons are like a hole in the wall, where for fifteen minutes they do manicure and pedicure (I found a similar version in Moscow salons with the New York prefix in the name) or something super- “elite” (like the Patriarch's), where such the same super-elite women. In general, everything is as always: well-dressed women and mostly neglected men. As it is difficult to sit on the subway next to the man who took a shower, it is just as difficult to find a fellow traveler without makeup.

She found a Moscow construction site. It seems that Moscow is being shaken up again, they are shifting each bone and turning it inside out. From the outside, everything looks very archaic: wooden stairs with protruding nails, scaffolding, backed up on cans and fragments of tiles, painters without gloves, lack of uniform, some homemade carts, no explanatory signs with a plan of work, no fences and safety measures - pedestrians jumping on carelessly laid boards, only rare workers wear helmets. Muscovites, as usual: swear and rejoice with equal force. P. says that sometimes a worker looks in his window on the sixth floor, asks for water and continues to paint the walls.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Color proof on the wall. Or someone is studying skin tones. Or someone has come and imagines what is not.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

The fence, where everyone is photographed. I have a passport office at Barrikadnaya behind me, where five years ago I had a tape recorder, two complaints about public services and one call of threats to my address that I received a passport not at the place of registration. This is where the real nostalgia.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Metro

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

I'm flying to my parents for my birthday. Moscow-Chelyabinsk, Pobeda plane. Those who know how to read the rules will not have problems with hand luggage. In a provincial town of ten thousand people, nothing changes. Maybe more women are driving cars, which was very rare when I was growing up. State employees are still being delayed money (although the salary fund of one institution is less than the monthly salary of a programmer in Moscow). Stoves and firewood were replaced with gas heating, local Sberbanks adapted targeted loans for “gas” loans, unscrupulous residents learned to steal gas instead of electricity. The era of plastic windows has come to an end, having destroyed almost all wooden frames. Among the constants are pies with potatoes, pancakes, dumplings with milk mushrooms and my mother’s birthday cake.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

In Petersburg, the traditional weather happens, two days of wet feet and the perfect off-white sky - and I see the St. Petersburg brand of clothes with this name and a variation of light shades of white: “white” winter sky, “white” with yellow summer, depressive “white” autumn in the morning.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

In Petersburg, you need friends and a comfortable apartment, otherwise you will perish. I would also prohibit the sale of white light lamps, only yellow, and reinforce the law.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

In my relations with Petersburg, only one thing remains unchanged - the ease of returning to Moscow. I love and hate equally, but the house is where the cars from the head of the train.

Date with the old house. The beautiful Volodya settled in the apartment, the interior details were preserved, and the neighbor, still in the same robe, went out to hug.

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

And favorite entertainment at home

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Photo: Elena Zakharova

Read also on ForumDaily:

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As a Russian went to the United States, worked as a taxi driver and went into the American army

How much is life in California: the opinion of Russian women who moved 2 year ago

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