My brother often likes to ask me, “Why do you always act like you know where you’re going when you don’t?” My boyfriend often wonders how I managed to get this far in life. Fair question. Full disclosure, within just a few months of moving to Moscow, I lost my new Russian bank card, misplaced several re-loadable metro cards, left my apartment keys on the garbage chute, and was involved in an incident that required police assistance. And these were far from my first debacles on foreign soil. My first test of “survival” came a year before, a few weeks after I had moved to Nizhny.
In college, I studied abroad twice in Moscow, but this was always under the supervision of a fully-staffed, Northwestern-approved study abroad program. I spent nearly all my time with a cohort of other American students, lived with a host family, and was never more than a phone call away from my Resident Advisor. But in Nizhny, I was on my own.
Now, it’s important to keep in mind that Nizhny, while it is the fifth largest city in Russia, it is nowhere similar to Moscow or St. Petersburg. As a rule, very few speak English, bus tickets are just these tiny pieces of paper that woudn’t survive a single raindrop, the metro is far from the masterpiece it is in Moscow and only covers half the city, and there is essentially just one main street that subsumes all nightlife and high-end shopping. In fact, half of the city is devoted primarily to a large automobile factory and the residents who work there.
I knew no one when I arrived in the city, and my Russian at that point was rather limited. I did manage to make a few contacts over the course of the first week via the university that had agreed to be my affiliate. In addition, I had previously searched for possible volunteer groups I could join in Nizhny and came across SFERA, a wonderful national movement aimed at promoting charity and volunteer projects both in Russia and abroad. As soon as I managed to find an apartment (a whole other story), a few girls from the organization asked me out for coffee, and they invited me to a local concert/language meet-up at a bar.
Eager to assimilate and make friends, I decided to go. I hopped on the bus and proceeded to scramble inside the massive wasteland at the bottom of my Longchamp to find the 20 rubles needed for the fare. I arrived at the bar, said hi to one of the SFERA girls I had met previously, and went to buy a drink. It was in that moment that panice swept in: my wallet was gone.
To this day, my father insists it must have been stolen. It certainly is easy to steal on a packed marshrutka (a getaway van with extra seats bolted into the floor that somehow functions as a bus). I, however, think it fell out of my Longchamp, which wouldn’t have been hard. My Longchamp was the largest size sold and weighed about 10 pounds. It was also never zipped…
Frantic, I searched amidst the pool of bargoers dancing to one of the performer’s rock songs for the one girl I knew. She recommended I ask the driver when the marshrutka came back around. Unfortunately, the previous driver’s shift had already ended. After about five minutes of mispronunciation and evil stares, I managed to communicate to the new driver that I had lost my wallet, but he couldn’t help.
So, there I was, without even 20 rubles to pay for my ride home. Yes, I could’ve called someone, but WHO? Fortunately, the girl from SFERA gave me the 20 rubles, and I made it back to my apartment. I called my parents who then called the bank to cancel my cards and request that they express DHL ship me a new one to the university address. Thankfully, I knew that there would be one other Fulbright student residing in Nizhny Novgorod. He would be arriving the next day, and we had already agreed that he could stay with me until he found an apartment. He was kind enough to loan me cash—including the amount needed to pay the last of my security deposit—until my card arrived. Crisis averted.
I’d like to say that I learned a valuable lesson. But that would be a lie. Less than a year later, I lost my Russian bank card within a week of receiving it, and a few months later, I lost my American bank card in Israel (I found out a week or two later that I had just left in my back jeans pocket). So, how did I get this far? It’s a good question, one I don’t have an answer to. I will say that a 5 foot 2 girl with a mouselike voice can do just about anything with a little spunk.
