(or, Livin’ on Tula Time)
The whole point of traveling to another country for language study is cultural immersion. It isn’t enough to know vocabulary, and to be able to read street signs, and to ask natives relevant questions like Где я? (“Where am I?”). To learn a language is to learn a way of life. It is to live for a while as a resident, and not just as a tourist, shielded by bus windows, English-speaking guides and American fast-food franchises that serve beer, but also charge extra for ketchup packets. It is to walk the roads, breathe the air, trade in local currency.
The flight to Moscow via Aeroflot dipped our American toes in the Russian waters. Getting through airport customs eased us in a bit more. (A uniformed clerk there asked to borrow my pen; maybe I should have let him keep it.) Then, we were on a bus to the hotel. We had been told that the hotel would not be a tourist-style accommodation, with conveniences designed to make an international clientele feel relaxed, secure, even pampered. Rather, this would be an establishment built by the natives for the natives, and that local customs, language and hospitality were to be expected.
Perfect! That was exactly what I wanted. Beyond a few nights in Sonora, Mexico, I had never spent extended time in Not-USA, and I wanted to savor it. Also, in general, I don’t really ask a lot from hotels. My basic needs are like enhanced camping: electricity and water, secure place to store my stuff and lay my head, and clear demarcation between me and local wildlife. Offerings much more beyond that, especially of the shiny, satiny, or indulge yourself-y variety, are designed to keep me from my ultimate goal: to spend as much time as possible away from the hotel, experiencing the country I had traversed ten time zones to see.
The Metallurg Hotel met my requirements like a student one unit shy of an already-delayed graduation. From a distance, the appearance is innocuous, even pleasant, in a subdued purple way:
The color comes from royal blue ceramic tiles affixed by the tens of thousands to the exterior of the building. Interestingly enough, they differed from standard tiling in two significant ways: 1. They were very small, about two centimeters square; 2. They were colored and glazed on both sides. I know this latter fact from finding a number of loose tiles on the ground nearby, probably having come loose due to poor adhesion to their glazed surface. (I carried a couple of these tiles around in my pocket for years afterward.) Upon approaching the entrance to this enormous edifice, the visitor was greeted not by a marquee, or garish neon light, or even by the hotel logo in soft bas-relief, but by this sign:
There was likely an audible gasp from some of my compadres, but no, not from me. I saw an adventure just beginning.
Despite my general view of hotels as places to spend the night and little more, I regret not having taken more pictures of the place. I feel this way about my activities on the program in general. Wouldn’t it be neat to have the technology to store and record everything you view with your eyes, for later playback? (Answer: No. It should take only an episode or two of Black Mirror to disabuse anyone of that notion.)
My brief photo essay of this grand establishment concludes with this shot, in which I was demonstrating to my roommate Pat the remote function on my camera:
That’s the room I awoke to each morning for five weeks. The decor seems to have been inspired by the interior of a bedsheet fort. The curtain behind the TV covered a window that faced out to a moderately busy street. I opened it once for some fresh air, but closed it later because there was no screen and mosquitos were getting in. A remarkable thing, since we were on the fourth floor.
The hexagonal wall ornament was a radio, permanently tuned to only one station. In Soviet times, this would be the go-to source for inspirational speeches and the like; at least it could be turned off. I never checked, but that would have been the obvious choice for planting a microphone.
Note that I claimed the bed with the two nearby electrical outlets; this place clearly surpassed my old classroom for modern conveniences.
Following the advice of previous Study Abroad participants, I had packed some powdered detergent and clothesline, so that I could do my laundry in the bathtub and dry it overnight. On the bathroom wall a huge hot water pipe emerged, turned upward, then made two more turns for a big U shape before disappearing again into the wall. I guessed that this was a way to provide some radiant heat. It was hot to the touch, and wet jeans draped over it were dry enough to wear in a couple of hours.
Speaking of hot water: in 1994 (and to this day, for all I know), heated water for a building came not from an individual unit on site, but was piped in from a central water heating plant within a few miles. Great Scott! This was the epitome of the kind of centralization that the Red Scare folks warned us about. Like any utility, it’s out of mind until it stops working. Moscow’s water heating plants had scheduled two-week shutdowns for maintenance every summer, which meant that entire neighborhoods would take cold showers or go across town to bathe at a friend’s place. Sometimes it takes a village to wash your hair.
I had not brought toilet paper, on the advice that I could buy it locally. Or, I could use the sheets of newspaper thoughtfully provided by the hotel maintenance staff. The toilet was the European design, with far less standing water in the bowl than what we’re used to in the States. I had read that in the Soviet days, when the KGB would search an apartment while the tenant was away, they would often leave a “calling card” in the form of an unflushed toilet. Not until I encountered the Russian loo did I realize just how offensive and menacing such a message would be.
Also European (I was told) was the hotel’s custom regarding the room key. It was attached to a large wooden knob, because rather than carry it around, the guest was expected to leave it at the front desk when away from the room, and ask for it back upon returning. The knob was used to hang it on a wall in something resembling a large pegboard.
I had been accustomed to third-floor classrooms at school, so I felt quite comfortable using the stairs on a regular basis. The elevator was functional, but its button technology lacked the ability to retain more than one floor request at a time. You pushed a button, which would then pop out with a snap! when the chosen floor was reached, and only then could you choose another button. The things we spoiled-rotten Americans take for granted.
Update: someone out there has posted a video of that very elevator in action. Be sure to have your sound on for the complete snap-out experience.
One day I was preparing to leave my room to go to class, when the cleaning lady knocked and entered. After a perfunctory smile and greeting, I watched in utter fascination as she proceeded to mop the carpeting in the room. Huh.
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A quick word or two about my student compatriots (and fellow Metallurgians): the photo above features Pat, a high school Russian teacher from the Phoenix area. In an adjacent room were Richard, from Connecticut, and John, from Tucson (whom I’ve run into once or twice back home). Someone told me that among the hotel staff, as a group we were known as dyadi, “the uncles.”
I have a vivid memory of many other of the students, some of whom appear in my photos, but to my chagrin I find that I remember very few of their names. That’s what I get for waiting two dozen years–and for websites to be invented–to write all this down. One exception is a young student who became my regular companion (sputnitsa, the feminine form of sputnik, or “fellow traveler”), on some field trips, shopping, or other ventures. For privacy’s sake, any mention I make will refer to her as Dawn.
Epilogue. Unlike many things in Russia (and elsewhere), the years seem to have been kind to the hotel built on behalf of the Metallurgists’ Union. It’s listed on various hotel-finding sites, and its own website shows a beautiful accommodation, “in a quiet district of Moscow.” It calls itself an economy-class hotel, and advertises a room rate of 1000 rubles per night; as of this writing, that’s the equivalent of $20, cheaper than a Motel 6. Clicking on the booking page shows updated rates, but even so, a double room comes out to $100 or less.
A promotional video for the hotel, uploaded in April, 2018 (I was only the fourth viewer), gives a slideshow of the accommodations, to a twangy soundtrack. Another one I found, from 2013, was a ten-minute survey by hand-held camera, narrated in Russian by a man who was clearly more interested in parts of the hotel that more closely resembled the Gostinitsa Metallurg that I knew. Ужасно! (“Terrible!”) he would exclaim over rotting woodwork and Soviet-era fixtures. That video had over 1700 views.
Would I stay there again? You bet. And I’d be sure to check out the elevator.
•Дополнении•
• About the subtitle: I was in Moscow, not 200 km away in Tula, though in the same time zone. But when obvious and clearly brilliant wordplay comes forward, sometimes it just will not be repressed.
• As a person who always seems to have a song in his head, I had adopted the habit of whistling to myself in hallways, elevators, other situations that ended before people had a chance to ask me to stop. I did so at the Metallurg as well, until someone told me that Russians consider whistling inside buildings to be rude, or even bad luck. Undaunted (or not taking the hint), I switched over to sotto voce singing. My music of choice was often old pop tunes. And so it was, for part of the summer of 1994, the halls and stairwells of that staid Moscow hotel were softly serenaded by the likes of “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” and “Love Potion Number Nine.”
• One of my shining moments of language fluency occurred at the hotel front desk. I had come back from class, and requested my room key. The clerk, who could have been my mother’s age, looked at me sternly and said, Мне кажется, это женский номер. (“It seems to me that that’s a female room.”) Without hesitation, and with all the instinct of my Slavic ancestry, I gruffly retorted, Нет! Это мужкой! (“No! It’s male!“) She looked at me for a moment, shrugged, and gave me my key. I walked away in victory, feeling a momentary kinship with Alexander Nevsky.
• The day that I checked out of the Metallurg, I opened the window one last time to leave a parting gift on the ledge outside. I can only hope that the water balloons that suddenly hit the pavement of Oktyabersky Lane one day were received in the right spirit.
