Admittedly, Pathetic

I can't believe that I have gone a whole month without blogging. I guess I more in shock not that I haven't blogged, but rather that a whole month has already gone by. I have found myself morphing more and more into a Moscovite, that is being one of the 10 or so million in the city's rat race, who always feel themselves busy, pressed for time, and in a rush (even, strangely enough, when I am not really even in a rush or pressed for time). Indeed, as I live here more and more, I have seen myself transformed into the in-a-rush person that living in a big urban center has made me.

Perhaps it is because we don't have a car, and so taking public transportation takes up a good chunk of my day--the commute to and from work, in the optimal settings takes 45 minutes each way. That is, 6.25% of my day is spent riding on the bus, metro, and walking to the office. It is (in my mind) aggravating to think of how much time it takes me to go but a few miles. Even though I read, study Russian, and every so often listen to music, this time still feels to me a lost hour and a half.

And that is under the best conditions. When the traffic is bad, a 8 minute bus ride becomes a 25 minute ride/walk. I say "ride/walk" because there are times where I have actually left the bus, started walking, and passed several buses stuck in traffic. The street проспект вернадского (Prospect Vernadskava) which my bus, #28, travels on to the metro stop университет (University, in English--which is so named for its proximity the Moscow State University) is a typical large Moscow street, but something quite unusual by American standards. It is actually 10 lanes wide, 5 in each direction, but those five lanes are broken up into 3 inner lanes and 2 outer lanes. The purpose of this distinction is that the 3 inner lanes are for cars that are simply going straight, there is no turning right or left on them, except to get over into the outer 2 lanes. Those outer two lanes are the ones which people can turn left or right on. Those two lanes also are where the buses run, and they also happen to be the lanes that are easily congested in the morning traffic, as cars are trying to get into and out of the center three lanes. And annoyingly enough, the bus stop for University metro is actually beyond the metro.

It is annoying for the simple reason that there are two kinds of bus drivers, the rule-oriented drivers and the sympathetic drivers. There have been times when I have wished that I had gotten out a stop early and walked to the metro because of the rule-oriented bus drivers. You see, while the distance past the metro to the bus stop is only a few hundred feet, those few hundred feet can take even 15 minutes to traverse. The sympathetic bus drivers are the ones who open their doors and let people out at the first sign of a traffic jam, thus saving the trapped, in-a-hurry Moscovites (and this American-who-resembles-a-in-a-hurry-Moscovite) precious minutes off of their commute. The rule-oriented drivers, as you have probably guessed, are those who won't open their doors until they actually reach the stop. While they are probably correct according to the manual, they sure don't make any friends. I have actually seen Russians yelling at the drivers when they don't/won't open the doors. Thankfully, I don't know enough Russian to yell at the driver without making a fool of myself, for there have been a couple of times where it was quite tempting to do just that!