Russia: Experience points!
What is one thing you’ve always dreamed of since a child, one place or event you always thought would be an amazing experience? As an avid soccer enthusiast I have passionately followed the World Cup every four years through television, imagining what it would be like to physically be present at the host country as it all took place.
A major drive for this 6 month motorcycling journey across Europe had been the 2018 Fifa World Cup to take place in Russia. I had arrived in Ireland 2 months ago, where I mounted my motorcycle and began my way east, passing through amazing sceneries, meeting incredible people, and, inevitably, struggling through some difficult days, but now, now I was finally crossing the border from Ukraine into Russia.
I enetered the country through the south, in Troyebortnoye, and after 3 hours of waiting for customs to clear my motorcycle and stamp my passport, I was on the last 500 kilometer stretch to Moscow. During that ride, a mostly straight road through endless countryside that seemed to go on forever, I thought about the way I felt for having reached Russia. It was definitely a milestone in this journey, not at all the final objective, but certainly one to check off the list. I felt accomplished.
When I was a child, I used to believe accomplishments came and changed a person instantly, transformed them into someone better than before. Like a character in a video game that “levels up” after gaining a number of experience points, the character is instantly given enhancements he didn’t have 2 seconds ago. As I grew older, I learned this is not the case in real life. When I finished one school year and moved on to the next, I was mostly the same person I was the day before. I wasn’t greatly enhanced, I didn’t “level up” in the blink of an eye. When I graduated nursing school, I wasn’t transformed into a nurse from one minute to the next. A paper or a license isn’t what makes someone a nurse, it is the entirety of the passed experiences that do, the learned lessons and lived moments that made me a nurse.
Without resting merit to having reached Russia, the accomplishment was a work in progress; I was essentially the same man that had just been in Ukraine, but someone quite different than the man who arrived in Ireland a couple of months ago, and different still from the person 4 months from now, when I get to return home.
Distances are great in Russia, it is a big country. Because of this, and the limited time between one match and the other, I gave the motorcycle a rest in Moscow and took the train or flights from one city to the next, always following the Mexican national team. This path took me to several cities. For example, the capital Moscow with its Red Square and the sight of the city’s buildings lit up during a night bike tour.
Another host city was Rostov, which apparently, I read, is one of the cities that most contributes to Russian beauty pageants. Having spent a few days there, I can see why. This country is so vast, it not only sits in Europe, but extends east into Asia, which I had the opportunity to visit when Mexico played in Ekaterinburg. The last match I attended was in Samara with very warm weather; something I wasn’t expecting.
The most important memory I take from this experience is not necessarily the World Cup itself, or the goosebumps I experienced while listening to the national anthem before every match. It is not the travel destinations either, what I’ll remember the most are the welcoming citizens of Russia. In Moscow, I had the privilage of staying with Helgi, a fellow motorcycle enthusiast, and his family. Together, they showed me around their city and remained in contact after I left Moscow. It was Helgi who put me in contact with Eugeniy, who hosted me in Ekaterinburg and treated me like one of his sons. All other Russians I met were very friendly, too, not only the vodka intoxicated ones at the bars, but the sober ones at public places as well.
“A toast,” Helgi proposed one night we were having a barbecue at his place in Moscow. “In the presence of good friends and good food, with the moon up in the sky, I want to make a toast for that person, on the other side of the world, where the sun is just rising and he, or she, is packing the motorcycle to go out on an adventure.” And so we drank for the safe travels of that person. That toast was not only an excuse to drink, but a genuine wishing of safe travels to someone we don’t even know. It’s something that boggles my mind to think; somewhere, right now there’s someone leaving home on an advenutre of their own, with all the fears and uncertainties I had when I began mine, or perhaps this person planned it out a lot better and has far less uncertainties.
I left Russia through the north, spending a couple of days in St. Petersburg and its “white nights”, where the sun sets but it’s never completely dark. I not only checked Russia off my list during this month, but also the World Cup, something I had only dreamed of. This had been the main motivating factor for this trip, but I still have 3 more months, a lot of territory to cover, and many “experience points” to gain before I get to go home.
