From Russia, with no love

Lets get the bad part over with.

Before I can really share my Russian experience, I have to get over one major obstacle. It was an incident that forever changed my perception of travel and precaution: no matter how experienced you are and well prepared, at the end of the day, you are still a stranger in a strange land.

It was Saturday and I wanted to go to the city center. I lived 30km from the city, in a district called Cafe Ogonyok. Going to my apartment, you have to travel south from the city where there are more trees than houses, apartments, and people. It felt like living in a forest with just a cluster of buildings in the center.
ANyway, one Saturday just a month since arriving in Novosibirsk, I decided to go to the city. My Russian was sufficient enough to communicate for commute-- "Skolka?" (How much? "Spasiba" (Thank you), "etta" (here).

I alighted in Richnoi Vakzal(River Port) Metro Station to take the train going to Ploshad Lenina, the main stop in the city. Just after dropping my token on the machine, it took less than a minute when I suddenly felt a kick behind my left thigh. I turned around and saw 3 youths (age guess is between 17-21), 2 girls and a guy, and they were shouting at me. At first I thought it was a case of mistaken identity, but before I could do more than shout the instinctive, "What!" one girl punched me on the face. I didn't fall down, and when I saw their faces, I saw all three were laughing. Since I didn't know how to say, "Help, some fuckers are going to beat the shit out of me," I ran to the nearest Metro personnel I saw. I mimicked a punch on my face to explain to her why I was anxious and I pointed to the 3 youths who were still hanging around and looking at my reaction.

The lady official didn't speak english, but probably understood enough, so she she stood up and started walking towards the hooligans. When the group saw this, they turned and ran. We ran to catch them and we did. When the lady official started speaking to them, I knew without speaking Russian that they were vehemently denying everything. When the lady official turned to ask for assistance from the other guards, the 3 bolted and ran to the exit. I ran after them, and when I was close enough to grab one of the girls, the guy with them grabbed my shoulder and pushed me several times. In the end, the stupid guards weren't able to catch the three hooligans.

They brought me to the metro security station for "questioning." No one spoke a word of english, and my Russian was just on the baby gibberish level. The station was small, with one sad looking ceiling fan desperately trying to pretend it could ventilate the stuffy interior. There was one desk, and a stern looking and shaved-head militsya (police) seated behind it and was trying to ask me questions in Russian. I saw that there was cell just across me to the left--to hold whatever culprit they would be lucky enough to catch, or someone stupid enough to be caught by an inept militsya. There was a small bulletin board hanging on the wall near the entrance with some official looking documents written in unreadable (at that time) cyrillic characters.

It was the first time in all my travels, which began when I was 8 years old and my parents brought me to America for my first vacation abroad, that I felt scared and alone being so far away from home. It was that moment that I knew I was going to cry for the first time because I was afraid to be in another country. I realized the cocoon of safety developed through experience and smarts that a seasoned traveller convinces himself to have is actually just a flimsy rationalization of the mind. I was in Siberia, I have not seen any foreigner aside from myself, no spoke a language I could communicate with, and I was alone in a Russian jail because I was attacked out of a sick whim by the locals. I was a city girl, cautious of city crimes like pickpockets, holdaps, kidnaps, stealing....but I was not expecting nor prepapred to experience a race crime.

In the end, the guy from the company who picked me up from the station advised me it was useless to file charges because 1.) the police wouldn't be able to catch the hoologans anyway, the security cameras in the metro station dont work, so there was no way to identify them, 2.) even if the 3 were caught by some miracle, they only need to pay 200rubles each to bribe the police and they walk.