National Post (National Edition)
Travel defeats stereotypes every time
How a trip abroad for the World Cup changed my perspective on the people of Russia Victor Ferreira
EVERYTHING THEY TOLD US ABOUT THIS PLACE WAS A LIE.
There was one thought endlessly cycling through my head as I stepped into my first Russian taxi minutes after arriving in Sochi: What if the driver doesn’t stop outside my hotel?
Before travelling to Russia to follow Portugal throughout the World Cup, I had read my share of horror stories cautioning unenlightened tourists from the West about the dangers waiting for them. There are muggers. There are scammers. There are gangsters. And there are police officers in their pockets.
Knowing this, a family friend was in tears when I called her before leaving Toronto. My mother demanded that I message her every two days to assure her that I was “still alive.” After telling him I was going, my doctor’s eyes bulged before asking me “why the hell” I would want to visit “that communist regime.”
Forty years after the first ended, I thought I was living through another Red Scare. I brushed off my family and friends, but when I was sitting in that cab, their fear and paranoia finally hit me.
Two days after safely arriving at my hotel, my best friend and I were walking through the evergreen parks of Sochi when he paused and turned his head towards me. “Everything they told us about this place was a lie,” he said.
Stereotypes surrounding the Russian people have certainly evolved since the height of The Cold War, but this evolution hasn’t always been positive. The news we read of Russia typically surrounds Vladimir Putin and his government’s mass corruption: stuffing ballot boxes, illegally annexing an Ukrainian peninsula, using chemical weapons in an attempt to assassinate former spies in the U.K. and influencing the U.S. election. And so, of course, in our minds, it contributes to a picture of what the country must look like. Sadly, the locals bear the brunt of our negative assumptions, leading to beliefs that they’re. rude, unhelpful and prejudiced with a deepseated resentment toward foreigners that is regularly expressed through violence.
Any Canadian would be hard-pressed to expect a warm welcome in Russia considering our government’s travel advisories, which warn that “harassment and assaults are prevalent, particularly against foreigners of Asian and African descent.”
Yet, even if I hadn’t watched Cristiano Ronaldo score a stunning hat-trick against Spain, this trip would have still been my most enjoyable vacation to date. And it’s because of the locals. It was upon arriving in Moscow – after a few days in Sochi – where I got a real sense of what the country was like. My friend and I arrived in the capital just two hours before Russia secured a berth in the knockout stages of the World Cup. We wandered into Khachapuri, a restaurant named after the Georgian staple (bread stuffed with Sulguni cheese and topped with a fried egg), but arrived only 30 minutes before it closed. The game was on when we walked in, and so, the two of us headed for a table before being stopped by the owner. He politely informed us that service was winding down. With my hands clasped together, I begged for a seat, explaining that there was only airline food in my stomach and I had looked to his restaurant for a cure.
He stalled and appeared to go over each possible outcome in his mind before finally relenting. By the time we had finished gorging ourselves, Moscow was taking to the streets in celebration. I approached the owner, told him the meal was the best I had eaten in the country and thanked him. His eyes widened with a grin as he shook my hand and told me it was his pleasure.
We followed the crowds chanting “Rossiya, Rossiya” from the restaurant to Nikitskaya Street, which had been closed off and transformed into a de facto outdoor nightclub. Ignoring traffic signs, a Moscovite drove his Volkswagen Beetle into the street, parked at the end and popped the trunk to reveal a professional sound system that would provide the night with its soundtrack. Even though the crowd was filled with Brazilian, Nigerian, Moroccan and Mexican tourists, the Russians made each of us feel like one of their own. They hugged us, they drank with us and they danced with us.
Walking down the street, I spotted a Russian man approaching me with his arms held outward as if he was about to hug me. Without saying a word he leaned toward me, grabbed the Portugal crest stitched to my jacket and kissed it. “Cristiano Ronaldo the best,” he told me, before walking away without uttering another word.
For hours, I was lost in conversation with different locals as they continued to approach me. There was the womanizer who was interested in Canada because “there are a lot of women with red hair there, yes?” The rosycheeked men who delighted in teaching me Russian profanities. You have to put your diaphragm into it, they explained. And the woman who used a translation app to approach my friend to let him know how much she loved his “painted on eyebrows.”
“But not for dating!” the app spit out, leaving me clutching my sides in laughter. My friend, drowning in confusion and unable to respond, could only run his finger over and over through his clearly bushy eyebrows.
A week later, on a 13-hour train ride from Moscow to Saransk, I met two Malaysian men, a man from Pakistan, another from Guatemala, several Iranians and a man from Siberia. Without outlets to charge our phones, we passed the time talking about the upcoming game and what we had done prior to meeting. When we arrived, most of our rag-tag group explored Saransk together. Our band of outsiders – as diverse a group of men as could be imagined – were never made to feel uncomfortable. We socialized, took photos and drank beer with the locals.
When I returned to Moscow for one more day in the capital before flying home, I spent my early morning with Ksenia. She was one of the few World Cup volunteers — clad in neon orange shirts and offering high fives with foam fingers to all who passed by — who spoke English well enough to hold a conversation. After she helped me find the train to Saransk, we exchanged contact information and promised to see each other again. Like many Moscovites, Ksenia is nocturnal. We met up at 3 a.m. outside the front of my hotel.
We wandered around the city, and as the morning light began to break, she told me about a Polish man she was interested in dating. She clarified immediately that ethnicity isn’t important to her — almost as if she suspected I was thinking it. When I tell her that I’m a journalist, she mentioned she had thought of pursuing a similar career. When the conversation eventually turned to freedom of the press, she was well aware it didn’t exist in Russia. We spent most of the night laughing, but when I told her what most of the West thinks of Russia, she frowned for the first time, her eyes glued to the ground.
“This is not the real Russia,” she told me as she shook her head in disappointment.
No, everything they told us about this place was a lie.