(In which I almost become irretrievably lost on the way to my first lecture, but am rescued by some brawny car stereo salesmen)
Exit from Kitai-Gorod station. Check the map. Turn right, away from the park. Check the map again. Definitely the correct direction. Correction: where the road curves, turn right onto Solyanka, the street named after pickled cucumber and sosiska (sausage) soup, best described as the Russian housewife's deft makeover of last night's leftovers. Keep swimming along amongst the pickled citizens and sausage stands, down to where Solyanka shakes hands with Yauzskiy boulevard. Here, turn left again? Doesn't seem quite right, the map shows two parallel yellow lines separated by a grey gap, which must signify a river. Ah there it is. Shouldn't be too far now, check the time, even so I'm going to be late. But what a relief, I'm not the only one, there is a fellow student on the corner. Looking suspiciously lost.
“I've been all the way up that side. No sign of the university.”
Surely not, this is the only configuration corresponding to what's shown on the map. Let's stop at that shop. Walk in with my crumpled printout, try not to seem too foreign. Prostitye pozhaluysta, excuse me, where is this school? Strangely, though it's a well-known institution, nobody seems to have heard of it. The security guard turns the paper this way and that. A helpful customer appears and offers his opinion, then another. Finally, the three of them agree that I need to walk further up. All indicators would suggest that they have no idea what they are talking about, but out of desperation, I choose to ignore this. Too late, I will learn that hardly anybody knows where anything is, even if it's two blocks away. That woman who's been sitting lazily outside her kiosk for the past twenty years? Not to be trusted. The police officer laughing with his mates in the metro? Might as well be a tourist.
Another fifteen minutes under the sweating sun and we are firmly in the middle of not exactly nowhere, but not exactly somewhere reassuring either. Under an industrial bridge, along a grassy embankment. The only indication of human habitation is a broken down building, a sign tells us they sell car stereos. Decide to go inside. Lounging around the counter are some guys who are real men, I mean real proper men with dark tans and huge muscles, wearing wifebeaters and gold chains. If they haven't killed someone yet, they probably will soon. When they finally figure out where we need to go, they click their tongues in amazement at how far away we are, expressing doubt as to our ability to walk back. As we stand and chat, I realise that the map has disappeared. What have they done with it? Are we stranded here, have they decided we will make tasty hostages? Nyet nyet, it's out back with the IT expert, Oleg, he's producing a new one for us, more accurate. My faith in humanity is restored.
One and a half hours tardy, the heat in my cheeks a feverish pink, we stumble into the classroom where the professor lectures haphazardly on Russian history. His voice fumbles clumsily across my eardrums, still numb from the hum of the traffic. Slumped in my seat with half-closed eyes, I happen to glance down and suddenly I feel alert again, alert with the fear of a hunted animal, I want to get up and leave now, leave the place where such things are allowed to be commonplace. Carved into the desk is a tiny swastika.
