Have you ever been somewhere where you were speaking say, English and everyone else around you was speaking in a tongue that relied solely on the Cyrillic alphabet? That’s how I felt every day for the first six months of my new job when I moved to Jasper.
I once went to Russia for business…well, business and curiosity. As an incentive meeting planner and a person who could sway influence over where some of America’s leading companies held their international events, I was invited to visit Marriott’s newest properties in their collection; a brief visit to London and then on to Moscow, home to the KGB, the Kremlin and lots and lots and lots of vodka.
Landing in Moscow and waiting for what felt like hours to go through immigration formalities, I stood in line trying to make sense of the signage that surrounded us. The only problem is, the Cyrillic alphabet only has one or two symbols that even remotely resemble the same character in English. Really, this wasn’t going to be a problem because the entire time our group would be in Moscow we would be escorted by a lovely guide, Wanda, who spoke impeccable English.
Wanda was exactly what you would imagine a Russian tour guide to be. She had blonde hair and black roots, she wore lipstick that was far too red for her peaches & cream complexion and she liked to sport 5” stiletto heels while she herded us through the cultural and architectural highlights of Moskva. She was exceptionally efficient. We drank vodka and ate caviar and blinis in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral, overlooking Red Square. We toured the Seven Sisters, those buildings that look like Manhattan’s municipal buildings, but to us looked much more like giant cathedrals. We saw Lenin’s tomb a creepy experience I would never want to repeat. We visited a Russian Circus, complete with cycling dogs and the requisite ring-master who could not control those crazy Russian clowns. We explored the countless treasures of the Romanov Dynasty at the State Historical Museum and we even rode the Metro, Moscow’s subway system that boasts stations made of marble, with mosaic works of art and, of course, crystal chandeliers.
A special treat for us, however, were seats for a performance at the world-famous Bolshoi theatre where I fought off jet-lag and exhaustion while some of Russia’s most prima ballerinas twirled about the stage. Not such a fan of the ballet (how could I be when at the age of 5 I was advised I really wasn't built for ballet and perhaps should find some other outlet for any creative endeavors I might have), a night at the Bolshoi was somewhat of a waste on me…but our hosts were so very proud to show us the best of Russian culture and the arts, so how could I refuse?
Afterward, we were to take a taxi back to our hotel as arranged by Wanda, the lovely tour guide. Except that she forgot to find us an English speaking cab driver and I’m here to tell you, our ride from the Boilshoi to the Marriott was one I’ll forever remember as one of the most terrifying nights of my life...okay, that and that night in Rome with the guys with the machine guns! My imagination, never short on things to concoct, was full of stories from all those Cold War spy novels I’d read. I sat in the back of a dilapidated Lada, wondering just when exactly the Russian mafia would burst through the door of my cab, hijacking us and taking us to some underground nightclub where we would be sold to rich Russian men, never to see our families again.
So yeah, our cab driver didn’t speak English but we thought, no problem, we’ll show him the room key to our hotel, which in perfect branding was emblazoned with the Marriott logo front and back. Seems like the Cyrilic M and the English one, don’t look so much like each other. So we rode around and around those wide expansive Moscow boulevards late at night, desperately hoping that the next turn would reveal our hotel and we could safely retire for the night.
Eventually he made the right turn and amidst screams of STOP! HERE! He finally clued in that this was where we wanted to go. It took us 15 minutes to go to the Bolshoi, it took an hour to get home. If only we had enough rubles to pay the cabbie....but that's a story for a different day.
