The Metro

Were the Moscow metro bombings a big deal for you? They were here. Last Monday, I woke up and checked the news like I always do and saw that there had been an attack on the metro in Moscow during rush hour. Having been on the Moscow metro during rush hour, I could only imagine the chaos; it's the 2nd busiest metro system in the world with something like 9 million people riding it ever day. I turned on my TV to see what the Russian channels were saying about it; nothing. If you wanted to know what was going on in the Moscow metro you had to have BBC or CNN International. No interruption of programming for the whole day.

I was on the St. Petersburg metro that afternoon and there wasn't any sort of extra police presence or anything like that, but I noticed everyone was a little jumpy. At one stop, I noticed nobody was coming into my metro car. I looked at the doorway and saw why: a bag of trash was lying in the doorway. From my view I could see it was just a few empty beer bottles, but from the outside it's a suspicious bag and better just move on to the next door.

The next day, I noticed there was an increased police presence. Apparently, word had finally filtered down from the top that there needed to be some sort of response to show the people. I read this from a Russian pundit, "It's not enough that the authorities treat us like cattle, but now we must die like cattle too." So, a show of more police officers and detainment of anyone entering the metro who looked like they might be from the Caucasus region happened. Now, I'm normally not the biggest fan of Russian police, but, full credit to them, they looked like they were taking their jobs seriously and wanted keep the public safe. This week, however, the police officers assigned to metro duty are a little less vigilant (they sit on benches and text).

So, while the metro might be a place of fear, being crushed like cattle, and racial profiling, it does have it's moments. The other night I was coming home late so it wasn't too crowded. While walking to my platform I passed an old lady selling flowers. Normally this place smells of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and body odor, but that night it smelled like a florist's shop. To complete the scene, there was an old man serenading passersby with Russian folk songs on his accordion. In her better moments, that is Russia: the scent of flowers and the sound of music.