Terrorism returns to Moscow

A new entry has been a long time coming. This is mostly due to the fact that I was on holiday for the first two weeks in March, and then straight back on shift for another week. The events on the Metro on Monday, March 29th, have also delayed writing as well. On the upside, prior to my holiday in Paris, I acquired a digital camera and have uploaded several hundred photos of the French and Russian capitals, which you can find at my flickr account.

I'm not entirely sure it's my place to discuss the Moscow Metro attacks. Looking up the entry about it on Wikipedia will give you more information than I can. Yet what I can do, perhaps, is give you a basic version of the events for those who don't have the patience, or the background knowledge. I should warn you that I will hyperlink a bunch of phrases, something I normally hate doing (seeing as nearly every other damned blog post on the Internet consists entirely of links to other sites). Try to think of them as further reading. I'll attempt to keep things simple.

On Monday, March 29th, the first explosion struck the red line Metro station Lubyanka just before 08:00, which was smack bang during rush hour ("час-пик" chass-peek or "peak hour" literally). Lubyanka is of importance, not so much in terms of the transport network as it only meets the purple line, but what's above it. Here's a pic of the Moscow Metro's layout in English. Click to expand.


On Lubyanka Square is the headquarters of the former KGB (Комитет Государственной Безопасность - Komitet Gos-u-darst-vennoi Bez-o-pass-nost lit. Committee for State Security), now the FSB (Федеральная Служба Безопасности - Federalnaya Sloozh-bah Bez-o-pass-nost-ee lit. Federal Service of Security). In other words, it's the equivalent of London's MI5. As you can see from the map, it's just a little bit north from the Kremlin itself, making it a prime target for anyone wanting to attack the Russian government.

Approximately 40 minutes later, the second bomb went off at Park Kultury Metro station, located further down the line from Lubyanka and joins with the ring line station, which is extremely busy at the best of times. Both bombs occurred while the trains were on the platforms. Had they gone off while the train was in motion doesn't bear thinking about. The trains themselves can hit a top speed of about 70 km/h between stations, certainly at that time of day. The bombs themselves weren't that powerful, but they did contain shrapnel and metal rods, and were detonated via the use of cellphones.

As it turns out, Park Kultury was allegedly not the intended target, even though it is a busy thoroughfare at that time. Instead, Oktyabrskaya (one station anti-clockwise from Park Kultury on the circular line) was meant to be hit next. As for what's at Oktyabyrskaya... well, nothing exceptional comes to mind, other than the fact that it's a ring line station like Park Kultury.

The chief reason why the bomber was not successful in reaching Oktyabyrskaya is that perhaps she had been delayed. I know from an acquaintance - who was on the train ahead of the one that was carrying the second bomber at Park Kultury and heard the explosion behind her - that the red line was being closed off and people were being taken off the trains "for technical reasons" and "told to seek other routes", so the second suicide bomber there would have had to get off at the station regardless of whether or not she was heading to Oktyabyrskaya. It was also at such a time that news about Lubyanka was just beginning to spread. Consequently, access to the ring line at Park Kultury was also shut down for approximately an hour.

In addition, the bombers themselves were two young women - one in her teens - reported to be the widows of two Chechen militants (it's not uncommon for these men often have multiple wives). They have been named, and were allegedly accompanied by two men to the station they both got on at, which is Yugo-Zapadnaya - the first station on the red line from the south west. The apartment they were residing in and where the bombs were assembled has also been discovered. The manhunt for the two accomplices is underway.

On top of killing 40 and injuring 100 people and causing transport havoc - which greedy taxi drivers capitalized on at Metro station Komsomolskaya, also on the red line, by hiking up their fares to ludicrous sums (something in the region of 3000 roubles, or $100, to get to the centre of the city) - the mobile phone networks ground to a halt in the middle of the day as a result of the sheer number of phonecalls made and text messages sent. The authorities also asked the networks to do so in an attempt to block any further detonations. The phone network Megafon reimbursed its customers for any text messages sent from the time of 08:00 to 16:00, while mine (Beeline) sent me information messages about alternative bus routes or something along those lines (I couldn't tell, as the rest of the text was missing).

As for responsibility, it lies with so-called Chechen warlord/Islamist rebel leader/freedom fighter Doku Umarov, who is more or less deemed Russia's equivalent of Osama Bin Laden. Previous acts attributed to this man (or his group, of which he is its self-styled Emir) include the recent derailment of the Nevsky Express in November 2009, which claimed 27 people, as well as numerous homocides and kidnappings - all in the name of seeking the creation of the so-called "Caucasus Emirate".

Thankfully, all of my friends and acquaintances were unharmed, though there were a number of near-misses and those who slept in or were late for work.

As a result of Monday's events, I ended being contacted by BBC Radio Ulster to talk about it. Skip ahead to approximately 1:14:30. I was a bit nervous talking on national radio, so please excuse the inaccuracies that I have hopefully remedied with this post.

Finally, Russia Today went into overdrive on Monday with its coverage, some of which you can watch here. Their footage was at one point being streamed by both the BBC and CNN on the day.

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In other news, the snow is gone and it's warming up. Despite me looking forward to a winter wonderland of lots of snow remiscent of 2005/2006, which I got, it was too long and too dark. So much so that it was starting to take its toll emotionally. What'll likely happen now is a boiling hot summer, just like in 2006, which should be a joy when I'm at work.

I've also joined a gym literally around the corner from my apartment. Nothing exceptional, but it's open late, meaning I can go for a run after work, which is a relief after being on a 12-hour shift.

Last but not least, I acquired a faux leather office chair from Ikea for my flat. Its design is nothing exceptional, but it took a ludicrously long time to assemble because of its leatherette-ness. It was a balancing act trying to position a cumbersome soft thing next to another combersome soft thing, then trying to screw the two together. Three limb minimum. In hindsight I'd have rather changed the tires on a Hummer. Here's the completed article.

Someone should invent some sort of clamp specifically for Ikea furniture.

The (taxi) ride of your life

In trying to drum up something to write about, as I haven't typed anything in a while, I initially thought about writing on the mental and physical effects living abroad can cause. Then, ironically, it turned out to be too depressing and dull to write about, so I've settled to instead talking about a completely unique and life-threatening form of Russian transport - the gypsy cab.

I'm not too sure where the practice originates from. Maybe it stems from the economic hoo-haa of Communist times, combined with the whole 'equality' ideology as well. The basic process is this, and you don't need your phone to call up some pithy taxi company:

1) Go to the side of the road, preferably the busiest;
2) Stick out your hand (this is known as поймать машину poi-i-mat ma-shi-nu lit. catch a car);
3) Watch in amusement as several automobiles, usually the shitty ones, swerve across a few lanes to make it to the kerb;

[What a Moscow taxi maybe should look like, but yours certainly won't.]

4) At this point, carefully open the front passenger door of the first car, lest you break it. Confront the driver brusquely, state where you're going and how much you are going to pay. If he agrees: jump in beside him, as opposed to the back seat and off you go. If not, slam the door in his face and walk to the next one. Eventually, by the third or fourth, you'll get where you want for what you want. Always negotiate a price before getting in, and, although this should go without saying, never get into a car with two people in it.

Now for the ride itself. Quality of conversation - if you choose to have one - can range from simple chit-chat (traffic, weather) to historical debates (life in the Soviet Union) to them spouting racist outbursts. It also depends on whether or not the man (I've hitched a ride on two separate occasions with women, one of which was very manly and didn't charge me a dime, as it was a short journey to the end of a one-way street anyway, the other was a German real estate agent) is drinking stary melnik beer, smoking belamor cigarettes, eating sunflower seeds, or fooling around with his portable DVD player.

None of this is an exaggeration, I've been in a gypsy cab where at least one of these things has occurred. In some occurrences they've been nigh on terrifying. This New Year's drive home at 4am from my friend's flat I will never forget, for instance. I was with a lady friend, and I got the feeling the driver was trying to be the cock of the walk . It had also snowed heavily, so the roads weren't exactly ideal, but the metro was closed for another couple of hours, so death cab it was.

I've never been driven home so fast through so much snow with no real concern on the driver's part. He was doing the usual chit chat, and was on his mobile phone a lot, only pausing in conversation to whip the wheel around corners. Four hundred roubles for the pleasure (about eight quid).

Thankfully, having had a chance encounter with an English person at the airport a while back and sharing a taxi home, I now know that there are many reputable companies. For the expats, here's one called XXL, and you can call them at +74959958294, but you should really only consider them for long distance journeys to the airports. Domodedovo, for instance, is about 50 kilometers away.

Another instance was meeting a Dublin couple on the street a year ago. They had backpacks on, due to take the Transiberian express in a couple of days, and were looking decidedly lost, so my friend and I helped them find the nearby hostel, then went and grabbed a drink in the center to celebrate, only for us to realize later that it was a national holiday and the metro closed early. So we caught a ludicrously small, pathetic looking, clapped-out gypsy cab to squeeze into. My friend and I are desensitized to such things, but upon seeing the faces of the Dubliners halfway through the journey, I realized that the two of them probably won't forget the encounter for some time.

It's snowing a hell of a lot right now. Heaviest in 40 years. Take that, Luzhkov!

On the Seventh Day of January, My True Love Sent to Me...

...Bugger all to do, because the first week of January in Russia is their official Christmas, according to the Orthodox Calendar. I won't go into detail about Russian celebrations, safe to say that their 'Christmas' (i.e. all the gift-giving and celebrating on December 25th) falls on New Year's Eve due to the godless regime of the communists quashing anything to do with religion. I also won't touch on the Orthodox Church in Russia, other than the fact its rapid re-emergence since the 1990s has left NO separation between church and state in this country.

What I have been up to since my last post hasn't been that action-filled, but because it's the first week of January and that the whole country is officially comatose, I no longer have any excuse not to write something about last month. My months of being stingy have finally enabled me to waste it in more sensible ways - most prominent of which was a short trip to Shanghai.

Given the fact that a Belgian friend of mine was extremely kind enough to host me in the spare room of her gorgeous Shanghai flat, and the fact that Aeroflot (Russia's national airline) were doing deals at the time of purchase (approx 16,000 roubles round trip, or £320), meant that there was little reason not to get the hell out of Moscow for once.

Unfortunately, I have to confess that I'm one of the worst tourists in the world. I didn't take a single photo, mostly due to the fact that I don't have a digital camera (the one on my Nokia does not count), but I didn't really need to. It wasn't one of those "I need to embrace the local culture in full" type of trips. I just came to hang out, to see what life is like for my Belgian friend and her expatriate acquaintances there, to eat some weird vegetables that look like they are from outer space, to watch my friend argue with souvenir sellers, to shake my butt in extremely pretentious and overpriced nightclubs that have shark tanks by the dance floor located in skyscrapers, and to attend a party held by the local Russian community, only to pointlessly win a subscription to the local community rag in the lottery at the aforesaid party. All of these instances are short stories in themselves, and it would not be fair to cut them short in this entry.

Chiefly what I gathered there is that, much like Moscow isn't Russia, Shanghai isn't China. Oh sure there are Chinese people living there, and they all speak Chinese, but it's very Westernized, a bit of a concrete jungle in the center, but, at least to me, rather comfortable. Even though there are about 20 million people in Shanghai (roughly 5 million more than Moscow, officially), it didn't feel cramped in the slightest. Maybe something to do with the fact that I was on average about a foot taller than everyone else.

Moscow, on the contrary, especially with its winter workday commute on the metro, can be stressful for those who have not yet lost that part of their soul. Shanghai is clean, the locals don't scowl, and the living costs for foreigners are minuscule. Yes, they spit in the streets, but I'll take that over the foul Russian habit of clearing one's nose (Step 1: close one nostril. Step 2: blow out the other. Step 3: repeat with the other. Try to do it in a crowded area as possible for maximum revulsion) any day.

And yes, there are bicycles. Everywhere. Even my Belgian friend has one. Those songs you've heard about the Chinese and bicycles, they're all true. Just bicycles and taxis. The rest of the world should take note, rather than demonizing the Chinese for its sizable contribution to industrial pollution.

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In other news, Mayor Yury Luzhkov's bullshit snow prevention plan has fallen on its arse. Someone sensible in the Russian Air Force (VVS - Voyenno-vozdushnye sily Rossii lit. Military-aerial strength of Russia) has said that they need two weeks notice before they do any cloud seeding. It doesn't really matter now, as Europe appears to have stolen this year's quota. That's not to say it isn't cold. It's very cold. The day I left for Shanghai it plummeted to -27ºC. It currently hovers around the -15 mark, which is just about the temperature where your nasal hairs start to freeze whenever you inhale.

The End of the Beginning?

Two things to talk about soon:

1.) Snow has fallen, quite heavily. I'd produce photographic evidence, but unfortunately it's still hovering around 0°C and has since melted. A good half-inch or so throughout the day yesterday. It further confirms my prediction that this winter will be a cold one. Last year's sucked ass. Just wet, slushy, and miserable - and the lowest it got was -15°C. This year round it reminds me of the winter of 2005/2006 when I was studying here. It was roasting hot in September, then very mild until approximately the end of October, and then the snow began. In the first week of January of 2006 it dropped as low as -32°C. I'm looking forward to it, honestly, because when it's around -20°C and you're surrounded by a blanket of snow and there's no wind - it's like a fairytale and, despite what one might think, very dry. Complete contrast to the howling gales of Glasgow that chill you right to the bone, even though it's only something like 5°C

2.) The aforementioned Haye-Valuev fight takes place later today in Bern, Switzerland. It will be interesting to see if Haye will live up to his recent remarks about Valuev (circus freak, hairy animal, etc...), and his latest training method of beating up a dummy with a goblin mask on it. "That's Valuev," Haye pointed out, before smacking it at an open workout session on November 4.

(That pic isn't from the workout session, just a press conference, but you get the idea)

Truth be told, Haye will probably get hammered, though all his cruiserweight fight wins were KOs, and he has lost only once to Carl Thompson back in 2004 (at the time he had 10 KOs). His manager threw in the towel after a right hand made Haye lose his balance, sending him in the direction of the canvas.


Here's how the two match up against each other. Note the respective hairiness.



Pictures property of AP and Action Images