Dad Goes Rogue

When my parents arrived, I was about to start my 2 p.m. class. My mom decided to take a nap, but my dad agreed to meet me when my class let out at 3:20 p.m. “It’s super close to your hotel,” I told him. “You go out of the hotel, turn right, turn right on the first major street that’s K something Most, then cross the next intersection onto Kamergersky where you’ll see a flower stand. It’s about mid-way up on the right, across from a Starbucks and Tibet restaurant. You’ll see a vertical green sign that says TEATP (theatre in Cyrllic).” Easy, right?

As I left my class I saw a text from my dad: “Lost. Call when out of class.” Uh oh…

I wasn’t too concerned, since at least my dad knows Cyrillic. I called him. Please note his responses were all quite calm and in a good mood.

“Dad, how did you get lost?? Where are you?”

“Is MXAT near the Pushkin Theatre?”

The Pushkin is about a 15-minute walk from MXAT. At my father’s rate, 25.

“No! Is that where you are?!?!”

“No, but I was.”

“Well where are you now?”

“I’m on Tverskaya.”

Tverskaya is the most major street in Moscow. And long.

“Dad, where on Tverskaya? It’s a big street.”

“I’m by a MacDonald’s.”

There are two MacDonald’s on Tverskaya. One across from MXAT. One near the Pushkin Theatre.

“Are you still near the Pushkin??”

“No…”

“So what else is there? Are you near the Telegraph building?”

“Is that the post office?

“Yes!”

“Yeah, that’s where I am.”

“Okay, Dad, use the perekhod, cross to the other—“

“The what?”

Woops, I forgot.

“A perekhod, it’s what you use to cross underneath the major streets since you can’t walk across. Do you see it?”

“Oh yeah, I see it.”

“Okay, I’m leaving the building, I’ll meet you on the other side of the perekhod.”

When I got to the perekhod, there was no sign of my father. I called him.

“Dad, where are you?”

“I started walking on Tverskaya.”

“What?! Why? Which direction??”

“I don’t know…”

“Dad, come BACK to the perekhod!”

“Okay!”

Father and daughter reunite, hug, and Dad takes a sit-down to explain. He is still in great spirits.

“Dad, HOW did you wind up by the PUSHKIN???”

“Well, the hotel gave me a map, and circled where I should go—“

Uh-oh. You know this is no good. The theater circled on the map is not MXAT.

“That’s not MXAT! Why did they send you there??”

I agonize over this for while, but we’ll move on to my Dad’s adventure…

“So I turned left out of the hotel (we remember this is wrong, right?), and then walked up and saw this great sculpture garden, and so I wandered around that for a while, and then I walked up and over by the Pushkin, there’s a great photography exhibit there, have you seen it? And then I got hungry, so I got a great hot dog—“

“Wait, Dad, did you get a stardog?!”

Stardogs, which I call Crapdogs because of how they look in Cyrillic, are stands everywhere here. Someone I know told me they have caused some serious food poisoning and said eating them is “playing with fire.” I relate this to my dad.

“Oh, well, it was really yummy. Then I texted you and realized I was lost, so I asked a policeman for directions—“

“You WHAT?!?!?! Dad, you NEVER ask a policeman for directions!! You never talk to them or even make eye contact!”

“Well he was really nice and helpful! I just said, ‘gde MXAT?’ and he pointed me in the right direction! He was very nice and he had a nice new uniform.”

(Later I deducted that I think my dad actually asked a security guard, not a police officer, or a MoPo as I like to call them.)

“Okay, well promise me you won’t do it again, okay?”

Thus ends my father’s adventure. I was never too concerned since my dad really likes to wander and is pretty city-savvy. But he’s been having difficulty walking long distances, and Moscow is about the most impossible city if you can’t walk to get around. We’ll see how things go when I take them to the Kremlin today…which is where I’m heading now!