Guns, Germs and Steel, and Luck

Day 12, Mon, 8/3

Moscow, Russia

Thankfully, this household didn’t resort to yelling and the clapping of hands in order to get us awake for breakfast. “Whenever you guys are comfortable,” they had told us the night before. So JW and I shrugged and slept in until around one in the afternoon.

Our train to St. Petersburg left at 7 tonight, so we had a good few hours to visit a cathedral, a grave, a university and the Kremlin.

I’ve forgotten to mention JW’s love for cats. In fact, the day he began smoking was the day his cat died about three years ago, a cuddly companion he’d been living with for nine years. So whenever we pass by a stray cat in the middle of one of our walks, he sits and takes dozens of pictures of it, telling me each time that he wishes he could take it back to Korea.

When we visited Archangel Cathedral, a burial of all the Grand Princes and Tsars of Moscow. JW was probably more interested in the baby cat that was sleeping in the lawn than the cathedral itself. It was pretty cute though, I can’t lie. And the cathedral wasn’t terribly impressive, either. Oh, also on the lawn was a pair of crows fighting over the flesh and innards of a dead pigeon, which didn't really tickle our funny bones.

Adjacent to the Archangel lies the enormous Novodevichy Cemetery, home - or resting place, rather - to many of Russia’s most prominent citizens since 1898 (namely scientists, soccer coaches, musicians, war heroes, etc.). I couldn’t find Dostoyevsky from the list of names, but JW found composer Dmitri Shostakovich's name among other tombstones of pianists, violinists and cellists, all of whom have had a significant impact on his musical career. We bought several bouquets of flowers to pay homage to these legends.

The cemetery was built like a maze, and each grave was worth at least a minute of attention, as most of them were embellished with at least a full-scale marble statue of whoever that lay underneath it. We spent over an hour looking for just four people, as we were distracted by soccer fans chanting the name of a coach who recently passed away, and a group of decorated soldiers saluting and draping a large Russian flag over a general’s grave.

By 3:30, we rushed to the Kremlin before it closed at 5. On our way, we passed by a horde of tourists surrounding a flickering flame just outside the Red Square, which apparently has been going since the end of World War II. We also ran into probably the most peculiar sight you’ll ever encounter in Russia (apart from the gum drop rain): a semi-circular wall riddled with holes just big enough for coins to be wedged inside. People were climbing all over these walls like spidermen, desperately sticking a finger or two in each hole to dig out treasure. Some were even using digging tools. JW and I couldn’t stop laughing at the mayhem.

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The Kremlin, which is Russian for "citadel," has been boasting its fortitude since the second millennium BC. The complete tour is made up of five different sessions, but JW only had time for one. We chose the weapon and armory exhibition, because that sounded the coolest and was worth 50 more rubles than the rest.

Now before you take this the wrong way, let me say that my parents have always raised me as a goodnatured boy, that is, to despise guns, knives, and anything that’s related to killing. This seemed to have worked, for I used to feel guilty owning even a water gun. But once I saw the display at the Kremlin, I never wanted to own a weapon more in my life, not to use to induce death upon my enemies but rather to bedeck wall. The swords, maces, knives, guns and rifles were gold plated and studded in ores, garnets, sapphires and even diamond. How unpleasant it would’ve been to have blood smeared on one of these! We also saw jewel-encrusted bibles thrice the length, width and thickness of the average science textbook; so much for the bible's imploration to be frugal. JW and I couldn’t help but imagine the priests struggling to open the cover. We wondered why bibles were on display in the weapon section, and eventually assumed that these books must’ve been weapons themselves, as they looked hard and heavy enough to inflict considerable damage. Although there seemed to be more watch guards than tourists, JW risked a few pictures of the priceless display.

We entered another room and noticed a huge, oval-shaped carpet enclosed in a glass case. As we neared it however, we realized that the carpet-like object was actually the tail of a dress that dragged along the floor. Sheezus. Imagine having to wash that. Other dresses came with waists so skinny that I was convinced I could make my thumb and middle finger touch if I wrapped my hand around it.

The final room included about a dozen carriages, all of which dwarfed the impotent pumpkin vehicle that appears in Cinderella. The wheels’ diameters were nearly twice my height. I peeked inside and saw that I could probably live in there. For some reason I also wondered if the dusty, yellowing seats were ever washed.

We left at around 4:50. I don’t know how we didn’t realize that our train left in a little more than two hours, and that we hadn’t packed anything yet. Our home stay was maybe eight minutes away by subway, not including the ten minute walk afterwards to get to the apartment. It would take at least twenty minutes to shower, pack and pay frantically, but with our relentlessly heavy luggage, the walk back to the subway station could take as long as fifteen minutes. Buying the ticket, walking down the endless escalator and waiting for the subway would subtract more time. The Moscow metro station was seven stations away, meaning the ride would take about fifteen minutes. But once we arrived, the Moscow train station was on the other side of the eight-lane road, so getting out of the metro, dragging our luggage through the underground passage and carrying everything up the stairs would take another ten minutes.

Instead of rushing to our home stay to safely get on our train in time, we decided to walk from the Kremlin to the University of Tchaikovsky. How could we have been so ignorant? (The answer will be explained at the end)

We ended up getting lost and meandered down the wrong road for twenty minutes, arriving at the university by nearly 6. The immense bronze statue of Tchaikovsky frozen in the pose of conducting was truly magnificent, but only then did we suddenly, stupidly understand how late we were. All along we had faced this time crunch like the way a cow faces an oncoming train, only to recognize the danger after it’s been hit.

Panic found its way under our skin. We began to sprint to the subway station, but soon stopped in case we wore ourselves out and were unable to carry our bags later. If you’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with me, you probably know just how slowly I walk (this always frustrates my friend Kartinah, who has the longest legs in the whole world). I had to jog slightly in order to stay with JW’s pace.

“I love walking fast,” he told me. “I used to have a girlfriend, and the main reason I liked her was because she could keep up with me.”

We broke through our home stay door at 6:25. The owners expected that we had at least rescheduled the train, but when we said that we hadn’t, they chuckled and told us, “you’ll never make it, just give up now!” Gee, thanks.

We stampeded back out the door at 6:35. After going through countless simulations of our movement from then until we arrived at the train station, we estimated that with luck, there was a small but reliable chance that we would make it in time.

What followed a few minutes later was the exact opposite of what one would deem 'good.' Maybe it was karma, but for certain there was some supernatural aspect in the sheer degree of my misfortune. As we were dragging our heavy luggage, panting and shirts covered in sweat, I tripped over a small crack in the asphalt, landed on my side in a puddle of mud, cut my elbow and leg, got mud smeared not only on my clothes but also on my bags, fractured my camera and iPod that were in that side of my pocket, thereby seriously bruising the part of my thigh that sandwiched them against the ground. Unable to walk fast anymore, I now had to limp fast. I will never forget the tickling sensation of guilt that concentrated in the back of my throat.

Long story short, our luggage and my limp was just too much for our out-of-shape bodies. We arrived ten minutes late. The only hope we were banking on at that point was some spontaneous mechanical breakdown or technical problem with the train that would maybe, just maybe, delay it enough for us to arrive in time. Well the odds of that happening were nil, so if you made a bet that we would miss the train, well, congratulations - you win! (but I also hate you)

Only if the subway had arrived a little earlier, only if I hadn’t fallen in the mud, only if we hadn’t gotten lost looking for the University of Tchaikovsky, only if we had spent about three or four minutes less each in the Kremlin, in the cemetery and in the cathedral, only if we had done everything exactly as we did except starting off the day ten minutes earlier, we would have made it.

Again, anyone could look at this and only help but wonder: how were we dull enough not to see this coming? Here’s my answer (or my excuse, if that's what you want to call it).

Mlodinov also explains this phenomenon in his book. Basically, the more random factors that are involved in the future, the possibilities of events increase exponentially, making it nearly impossible to comfortably predict what will happen. A common example is a chess game, where the more moves you try to foresee, the “butterflying” scenarios makes it more likely that you’re wrong. Yet one can easily explain why someone made a certain move after the event takes place. This can be applied to all other aspects in life; with the benefit of hindsight (kind of helpful in my opinion, maybe because it never fails), one can see “why a film did well, a candidate won an election, a storm hit, a stock went down, a soccer team lost, a new product failed, or a disease took a turn for the worse, but such expertise is empty in the sense that it is of little use in predicting when a film will do well, a candidate will win an election, a storm will hit, a stock will go down, a soccer team will lose, a new product will fail, or a disease will take a turn for the worse” (202). It is also why some U.S. presidents (without pointing fingers) seldom learn from history. JW and I will use this as an excuse for our apparent irresponsibility.

Yes, we missed the train and spent another hundred dollars each on the midnight train to St. Petersburg, but we eventually learned from this experience. I also got a chance to rinse my legs, arms and clothes, avoiding the embarrassment of jumping on a train covered in mud. My iPod and camera functioned normally too, which was surreal considering just how hard I fell on them. JW had a great time with the punching bag in the arcade, releasing his frustration by setting the second and third highest scores of the day. How fulfilling.

Okay Moscow, Let's Start Over and Try This Again

Day 11, Sun, 8/2

Moscow, Russia

One of my worst pet peeves is being woken up in the morning. And that's precisely what happened.

The old lady clapped her hands as loud as she could and screamed, "WAKE UP, WAKE UP, TIME FOR BREAKFAST!" clap, clap, clap, clapppp.

Gritting my teeth, I spoke from under my sheets, "We slept late, please don't worry about serving us anything." My phone read blinked 8:02AM.

"I already have the table set!" she replied, clapping even louder.

"Please, we don't like to eat right after we get out of bed, leave it on the table and don't worry we'll eat it cold."

"Fine," she finally said, and slammed the door. JW threw off his sheets and swore, complaining that he was having a nice dream. Right when I was about to doze off to sleep again, the lady entered the room.

"I change my mind; I can't leave to do my errands until you guys eat so wake up."

"Why?" asked JW. "We'll do the dishes, please go do your thing."

"No, just wake up now. Wake up, come on," clap, clap, clap.

Grumbling and rubbing our eyes, we walked into the kitchen and immediately felt sick at the sight of so much food. Moreover, the food wasn't even good. The soup was lukewarm and thick with bean paste and shrimp, which was terrifying. Trying to shove down grainy rice down our dry throats was torture, and we simply gave up after a few scoops. JW looked as if he were chewing on spoonfuls of cockroaches. We left the table leaving barely anything touched, as the lady quickly came in and began cleaning up. To my horror, I saw her take our bowls of soup and dump the contents back into the pot.

"We ate out of those," I said.

"It's fine if you boil it," she coldly replied. Trying not to imagine the countless people who ate out of the soup before me, I vomited a little in my mouth.

Too disgusted to fall back asleep, JW and I promptly began packing our bags.

"Leaving so soon?" chimed the lady. "You, don't forget to pay me $90, and you, I think I said 3160 rubles, right?"

"Actually I think I'll just pay $180 for both of us," I answered for JW. "For no reason whatsoever."

The lady narrowed her eyes a little and left without a word. $90 a night for this? What has the world turned into?

There was something about paying the woman and finally leaving that godforsaken place that made us rejoice and cheer for fifteen minutes straight. We brought our luggage to another home stay that JW found in his guide book, and at $60 a night it was not only as comfortable as our first but also the owners were much friendlier. It was also the oldest Korean-run home stay in Moscow.

The moment after we stepped in the door, the owner's wife ran towards us to help us with our luggage (unlike the other lady!) and offered us fresh watermelons. Her husband was out fishing but he'd return later that night. JW and I showered, finished a quarter of a watermelon and left to explore a little more. Too lazy to go anywhere specific, we wandered into random cool buildings for about three hours. At some point we passed by a subway station that was overflowing with hundreds of Russians dressed in red from head to toe, including a red scarf around their necks. There must've been a soccer game going on, and the sea of red reminded me of the horde of Korean 'Red Devils' during the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup.

We eventually came by a large concert hall and JW, the passionate piano major, sprinted towards the timetables to see if there was a show that night. Unfortunately the building was undergoing renovation and all performances were postponed to next month.

We did, however, run into a different kind of a show that I consider a lot more valuable than a ticket to Sarah Jung's live act. When we went down an undeground walkway to cross the road, we ran into an old man with thick glasses, playing a small trumpet, keyboard, and drums simultaneously. He was a one man band. Amazed at his talent, we couldn't believe how there wre barely any coins the cardboard box that sat in front of him.

After listening to him for a few songs and clapping along, I wondered if he could play one of my all-time favorite songs.

"Do you by chance know The Girl From Ipanema?" I asked.

"Of course, of course," he chortled with an enormous grin on his face. "This is a great song, yes."

I had to refrain from yelping with excitement. I asked JW to get out his camera and record a video of this wonderous occasion. The performance lasted a sweet two and a half minutes, which included an impressive trumpet solo.

After the show, JW and I took pictures with the old man and paid him three hundred rubles, or about $10. I also threw in a 5000 won bill from the bank of Korea, which was worth slightly under $5. We sat there and talked for half an hour, as we learned that he used to live in China with his parents when he was a young boy. JW and I were too afraid to ask what happened afterwards - to his life and his parents.

Despite his slight stench, we hugged the old man tightly before departing.

"The world is yours," he told us with a smile and a wave. Had anyone else in the entire world told me this, I wouldn't have taken it seriously.

Walking aimlessly again, JW and I stumbled upon a luxurious hotel, lined with Ferraris and Lamborghinis. We entered the mammoth lobby and ordered coffee and cake, leaning back in the cushiony couches to get a taste of the lives of the riches. But there was something missing; the well-dressed, virtuoso pianist filling the halls with a thousand jazzy notes sounded somewhat empty. The coffee and cake were delectable, no doubt about that. But the atmosphere was very, very lacking.

JW and I left with our bellies full but somewhat unsatisfied. Then, long story short, we arrived at St. Basil's again. Not only was this simply ridiculous, but we also realized just how much we had walked. The enormous gumdrop raindrops bombarded us once again, this time for much longer. Learning from last night's infamous incident, we took the subway back home.

The owner was back from his fishing trip. He was just as overly kind as his wife, and offered all of us beers. For the second time on my trip I had to say no, for I was a minor. The owner however insisted in an avuncular fashion, explaining that drinking with adults would serve me well. We all sat around a low table on the floor, and I took a tiny sip because now his wife and JW were encouraging (pressuring) me too. I flinched at the bitter taste and handed the rest to JW.

The three of them had a blast drinking 6 huge cans with peanuts, discussing education, jobs and music. JW and I also derided our previous home stay, and the owner was shocked to hear our anecdotes.

"What, you actually think I can make a fortune out of running a homestay? Ha," laughed the owner. "The only reason I do this is so I can meet interesting people like you folks. It's truly amazing that you students have planned to travel alone on the transsiberian, ended up meeting each other, and changed your schedules according to each other. There's a certain beauty in that." He paused, drained the rest of his beer and poured himself another cup. "You aren't merely people who come and go, leaving some bread cash so I can live off of it. Hell no. Honestly, I hope you don't feel like I'm invading your personal space but I think of you guys, students, as my own kids. My son just graduated college and my daughter is still in law school. And you wonder why I offer you free beer. And, even though our website says that we only serve breakfast, do you actually think I'd say no if you guys asked for some lunch? How much does a bowl of rice cost anyway?"

Clearly the opposite of the previous lady who had wronged us.

Avid fans of live jazz, JW and I set out at 10:30 with the sudden urge to test out the music scene in Russia. We looked up the closest jazz club in JW's guide book, adorning ourselves in spiffy shirts, jeans, and cologne. Unfortunately, the pouring rain washed out most of the excitement as JW and I continuously tumbled into ankle-deep puddles, making our jeans nice and soggy.

And of course, after the fifteen minute trudge through dark Moscowian alleys, we arrived only to find a towering Cartier store without the slightest hint of jazz in the air. Clothes and moods quite rained out, JW and I returned to our homestay, cursing the author of his guide book.

The Drunkard's Walk: Moscow Style

Day 10, Sat, 8/1

Moscow, Russia

Stepping off the train after three dreadful nights, the huge sign that read “MOCKBA” might as well have been labeled “WELCOME TO HEAVEN.”

I bid farewell to my three German roommates and Lady Gaga, giving each of them a hug.

Gyu and I noticed English words covering street signs and restaurants, while store clerks, waiters and taxi drivers spoke enough of it so I didn’t have to jump up and down and wave my hands anymore. What Gyu had told us was true: eastern and western Russia are polar opposites of each other, as the former is much more European than the more Asian latter.

The Moscow subway station was so crowded that more people seemed to be jumping over the railing than waiting in line to buy a ticket. JW and I considered this but we had too much luggage to hull around. Fortunately the ticket system was very simple in that it cost you 22 rubles (60 cents) to anywhere you wanted to go. At first glance, the station seemed to be grimy and salted with litter, but once we went deeper inside I found myself in a museum. Everything was made out of marble as enormous chandeliers dangled above our heads. I’d also never ridden an escalator that took minutes to get me from one floor to another, even though it was moving twice as fast as one you would see in an American mall.

On the base of the escalator, there was a gigantic shield hanging on the wall with swords crisscrossing over it. I then assumed that this place was so magnificent because it was the main train station in Moscow, but that wasn’t the case; every other station we passed ended up looking equally impressive and I just couldn’t stop wondering about the amount of work and money that went into all of them.

JW and I arrived at our home stay in around twenty minutes. The lady that owned the place was quite rude and seemed unable to speak without yelling. She also insisted that it cost $90 a night rather than the original $70 my dad and I had clearly read on the website. JW and I were irritated because we calculated that it was cheaper if we’d just shared a hotel room.

JW also explained to me that we needed to sign up for a visa registration if we were planning to stay in Moscow for more than three days. Again, going to a hotel would have been advantageous because there we can register for free, rather than paying a yelling woman $50 per person.

After showering and unpacking, it was just past noon and JW and I went out to explore the immediate vicinity of our neighborhood, saving St. Basil’s Cathedral for tomorrow.

Amateur, dirty street artists took up about half of the sidewalk with their work. I felt sorry for them having to sit under the unforgiving sun all day, painting their lives away, surrounded by stifling competition.

The gothic buildings, along with enormous arches and curly-Q lampposts definitely portrayed the atmosphere of Europe. Searching for food, JW and I passed by Italian pizza restaurants, Starbucks, and a Japanese place. After considering veal tongue salad for a while, we instead went into a Mexican restaurant and ordered a less exciting slice of lamb.

After our meal, we meandered into a pastry shop for some dessert. I chose what looked like two thin brownies stacked on top of each other, with whipped cream sandwiched in the middle. Terrible decision. When I took a bite, I realized that the white stuff in the middle wasn’t cream at all; it was as hard as candy and seemed more like pure sugar or dried frosting. I immediately threw the rest of it in the trash without even offering JW a piece.

Once we left that candy store of a bakery, JW and I wandered aimlessly, farther and farther away from our home stay. I must’ve asked him about twenty times if he had any idea what street we were on, and only one of those times did he do so much as to begin taking out the map in his bag and then stopping because he was too lazy. We honestly had no idea and didn’t really care, because we were just happy that our feet were treading on normal, immobile asphalt. We decided to walk in the opposite direction of our home and flip a coin whenever we came upon a forked road, and when we got tired we’d stop a taxi and drive back. Now this was fun.

What happened next though shocked and scared us to a point where we couldn’t realize just how incredible the situation was. We came upon two narrow alleyways and the coin came up tails, so we were supposed to go left. But we had gotten so many tails before that we were tired of going left and stubbornly disobeyed the random coin toss. And I swear to you, out of no where, no where, appeared St. Basil’s Cathedral, towering into the sky several hundred meters ahead of us. AHHHH!!!

What are the odds, not only of the series of coin tosses, but also accounting for the fact that JW and I decided to change our minds on that particular turn? I don’t even want to begin to know.

There were two twin arches - collectively known as the Voskresensky (Resurrection) Gate - that we had to walk under in order to enter the famous Red Square, Moscow’s favorite attraction. While directly ahead stood the cathedral, to our left was a shopping mall in the form of a palace, and on the right laid Lenin’s body in an enormous, rectangular grave. The vast, open space made me feel as if I was in Paris.

As you may already know, public bathrooms aren’t free in Europe and apparently neither are they in Russia. Usually someone sits in a beach chair in front of a row of portable toilets and demands about a dollar if you want to go in. Or if the bathroom is in a building, there’s a booth where you pay in front of the doors. This only makes me wonder, what happens if one of these workers has to use the bathroom? In any case, it was my first time in one of these portable toilets situated on the beautiful quad of St. Basil’s Cathedral, and what I saw in there ruined my mood for the rest of the day. Breathing through my mouth didn’t help either, as I had to chew 7 pieces of mint-flavored gum before the taste went away.

The colorful, twisting patterns that covered the cathedral gave me the impression that I was at an amusement park. Die-hard Tetris fans know that the original Nintendo version has the cathedral in the background, and once you get up to a high enough level, it takes the form of a rocket ship and blasts off into interstellar space. Thank goodness the real cathedral didn’t actually take off and incinerate everyone on the square.

Also on the quad stood a type of wishing well, except the area in which your coin was supposed to land in was terribly small. The “well” was also no more than an inch deep, so it was more than likely that your coin would bounce back out if it actually landed inside. So our tactic was to gently toss our coins underhanded, rather than hurtling them like a baseball like everyone else seemed to be doing. I ended up getting two in, and I used both of my wishes on the same thing so the chances of it coming true were twice as high. Should work, right?

The cathedral itself and the paintings inside were truly gorgeous, but the most memorable aspect was the floral pattern on the wall. It’s a shame that there were people standing around every ten feet, sniffing the air suspiciously to make sure that you weren’t taking any pictures. Here’s an image I found on Google though.

Back outside, JW and I walked behind the cathedral and found a series of cannons next to a pile of bowling-ball sized cannonballs. There also seemed to be a wedding going on, so I couldn’t help but get JW to take a picture of me with the Hummer limousine.

Walking further away from St. Basil, we came across a bridge that went over Moscow River. I think I can safely say that the middle of this bridge was my favorite spot in Russia - I wondered why this area was so devoid of tourists. St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, the shimmering river under the setting sun, lilies, ferries, skyscrapers and the enormous Lomonosov Moscow State University - standing there, you could see something breathtaking no matter where you looked. JW and I remained here until evening, taking pictures and soaking up the last rays of the day’s sun.

As we walked off the bridge, it began to rain. Not a really exciting piece of information for a travel blog you may assert, but let me explain just what made Russian rain so exciting. The rain wasn’t a light shower, nor was it a heavy pouring, and not even necessarily anything in between. In fact, JW and I marveled at how we’ve never encountered this kind of rain in our entire lifetimes of rain encountering. The raindrops were so huge that we could clearly see them and even catch them before they landed on the ground. We felt like we were being pelted at with mini-water balloons. But it was again a different kind of pelting than the one you receive in a torrential downpour; instead of hearing a soft thump or a thud, you could literally hear a splash. To this day I regret not having taken out my camera and getting a picture of my shirt, which looked like it was covered in dark, near-perfect circles about half-inch in diameter. When a raindrop landed on my forearm, it would explode and cover literally half of the length of my arm, and I would show JW before I wiped it off. Though at first we cursed ourselves for forgetting to bring our umbrellas, we ended up enjoying this Russian rain and tried to get hit by as many raindrops as possible, while we still could.

The mysterious rain mysteriously stopped after just a few minutes. JW and I finally admitted our exhaustion by spreading out on the benches and waiting for a cab to take us home. Unless you’re at the train station, cabs in Russia are quite rare, as we had to wait half an hour until we finally spotted a sedan wearing a little yellow bar on its roof. We had read countless horror stories of taxi drivers ripping off foreigners, but at this point we were too tired to care; besides, even pessimistically thinking, about how much would an evil taxi driver actually charge us for a five-minute drive home?

The answer is three thousand rubles, or the U.S. equivalent of about one hundred dollars. That’s right - pause from reading here so you can let that soak in for a bit. JW and I had made the fatal error of failing to ask the driver how much he thinks the drive would cost before we got in the taxi. When we arrived at our home-stay, the meter read 7km and the number 200. So JW and I thought that number was the price of our ride. However, the driver leaned over and pushed a random button that was apparently used for multiplying by fifteen. He leaned back and looked out his window, as if nothing had happened.

“Um,” I started. “How much?”

“Three thousand rubles,” he said, pointing at the meter but still refusing to make eye contact with me. I looked back at JW in the backseat, and found him just as confused as I was.

“I’ll sit behind the driver and put him in headlock,” JW explained in Korean. “And you can present a few blows of your fist to his face.”

Seldom having felt so enraged, I’ll admit I considered JW’s idea. But that would get us nowhere. I jokingly told him that criminal troubles abroad would get confusing, anyway. JW then proposed that we could just leg it. I considered that even more. Now that I look back on this, I think I would have; the streets were packed outside, there were no cops, I carried nothing but a camera while JW carried a tiny bag, I was on the track team and JW said that he was pretty fast, even though he was a semi-chain smoker. In any case, we weren’t even carrying that much combined, for we had spent most of our cash on food, entrance fees and grotesque public toilets.

Unable to think clearly due to the sheer ludicrousness of it all, JW and I emptied our wallets and paid the driver the rest of what we had. Put together, our coins and bills totaled only 2,500 rubles. However, instead of getting angry that we were short of his demand by 500, the driver nodded his head and repeated “Ssank you, ssank you,” multiple times and made a gesture as if to say “run along now,” still not making eye contact with either of us. Stunned, JW and I stumbled out of the bogus taxi. Seven kilometers. Five minutes. Twenty dollars per minute. We had paid fifty bucks for an hour long taxi ride in Irkutsk when we had the street expert, Gyu. Here we were in Moscow, undoubtedly robbed. Should we have written down the car’s license plate number and reported him? Possibly. But as I’ve told you before, Russian cops were quite corrupt as well in that they sought to squeeze money out of clueless foreigners.

JW and I walked back in a drunken zigzag, cursing the driver and not wanting to spend a ruble for the rest of our trip. It was comical to know that we couldn’t even afford a bottle of water to quench our thirst.

“At least we can’t get robbed anymore,” JW wisely noted. “Now I’m not afraid of anything.” Maybe that was the cheap safeguard against getting ripped off - traveling with your wallet empty.

The day that had begun and nearly ended so beautifully had, in fact, ended horribly. Serendipitous luck followed by frustrating unluck. JW and I entered our homestay in sour moods, only to encounter something else distasteful (of course!). The lady had demanded 90 dollars for a night in one of her lukewarm rooms, but since JW only carried Russian currency, he asked the woman how much it’d cost to pay in rubles. She pulled out her calculator, pressed some buttons, nodded her head and told him that it’d be 3,160 rubles. Now I don’t know about you, but just by the sound of that number I thought that that sounded like a little much. All day we must’ve passed at least a dozen currency exchange booths, all of them clearly showing that the dollar was worth slightly over thirty rubles. JW pulled out his cellphone and divided 3,160 by 90, expecting the dividend to be somewhere between 30 and 31. Instead, his screen flashed a number slightly greater than 35. Either the woman was a crook, or suffered in the subject of division to a tragic degree. Even if she were a crook, she was still kind of lightheaded for expecting us not to notice anything unusual in her demand.

On the verge of being ripped off for the second time, JW clenched his fists and eventually I had to restrain him from going out and buying Coke and Mentos to leave the lady a little surprise by the time we left the next morning. Instead, he vowed to leave the worst review ever written by man once he returned to Korea (by the way, this home stay is called RUSKO. The website looks snazzy but don’t be fooled!). That idea I was okay with.

After a while we fell out of the desire to argue with the woman, and concluded that I’d pay his share in USD and he could pay me back later in the correct amount of rubles.

At five minutes to midnight, once we were washed up and getting ready for bed, the white walls suddenly glowed pink and neon green. Looking out the window, we noticed fireworks setting the velvety black sky on fire. Although there was nothing particularly remarkable about these fireworks - as they ended as abruptly as they began - something about their mediocrity calmed us down. After the show, JW and I tried to summarize the day’s unfortunate events once more, except this time viewing them in context.

On the transsiberian I had finished a highly entertaining and informative business book called The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow, a genius author and professor who co-wrote A Briefer History of Time with Stephen Hawking. In it, Mlodinow expresses how in a world ordered by chaos and chance events, strings of highly unlikely occurrences are inevitable and should mathematically come as no surprise. And though it is not wrong to say that today was full of unlucky surprises - discovering that a night at the home stay costs $20 more than we expected, choosing the worst tasting cake, getting cleaned out by the cab driver and meeting an unfriendly owner who also tried to clean us out - the human brain tends to single out these negative moments and as a result overshadow the positive ones. Instances of wonderful fortune such as unknowingly arriving on the same day in Irkutsk to meet one of my closest companions, meeting Gyu the day before he left and coin-flipping our way to the Red Square were memorable but would’ve gone generally unnoticed and unspoken about tonight - or ever - had we not seen the fireworks, which in turn would’ve passed unseen unless we had stayed up the few hours disputing over how to pay the old lady, and so on. Chance is a curious thing, as you may also recognize what I’ve described as the butterfly effect. Once JW and I were able to zoom out this way, we realized that today’s events were quite nothing in comparison to what has happened to others, or what could have happened to us. For example, my dad was mugged of his passport, wallet and cameras while he slept among the homeless on newspapers when he traveled Europe in his early twenties. Numerous other mishaps befell JW’s friends, too. At least we still had our passports, food, running water, and nice beds.

So we showed appreciation for our fortune by sleeping in the nice beds.