Ticket Office

The remnants of Soviet culture in Russia are disappearing more and more quickly as time passes. Neon signs beckon passers-by into high-end clothing stores, sex shops, and sushi bars. Brightly lit supermarkets and hypermarkets (the Russian take on Walmart) are slowly but surely replacing hole-in-the-wall grocery stores, where all the products are behind the counter and you have to talk with at least one and usually three or four surly attendants to get your groceries. Even just since three years ago, you can break a 1000 ruble note at most places without dirty looks from the cashier or needing to open your wallet and show that no, you really don’t have any smaller bills (although they still ask for change to round out the total). Stores are well-stocked. Babushki are still dressed in long, drab coats and clunky boots, but anyone under 55 is always dressed to the nines. Foreign cars fill the streets. And I even saw two separate joggers this morning. However, one place still evokes images of the bygone Soviet state: the railroad ticket office.

I buy my tickets at the main office on Canal Griboedova, not because it’s terribly convenient anymore, but because that’s where I’ve always gone, and I know exactly where it’s located. A 30-foot tall, majestic gate in the shape of an on-coming train opens to the main doors, which opens into a gigantic room. 47 ticket booths, their cashiers safely sealed behind glass windows, line both walls of the room, set into alcoves. Benches for the weary and elderly are set up along the alcoves; train schedules hang on the walls outside the alcoves, arranged according to station.

I went to the ticket office today to exchange my train ticket. I decided to get to Kiev via Moscow, thus completely avoiding Belarus; this will be much cheaper and much less of a hassle than getting a $177 transit visa.

When I went to this office a week or so ago at 3 in the afternoon, there was almost no one there. Today, however, at the exact same time, the place was a zoo. Why? Because you can only buy train tickets 45 days in advance, and New Years now falls into that time period. Everyone is getting their holiday travels in order. Only about a third of the 47 booths were open, and each of them had a line out the door. However, Russian lines do not work the way American lines do; in fact, they’re usually not lines at all. To join a line, you approach the clump of people that look like they’re waiting for the same booth, and ask “Who’s last?” Someone among that clump will raise their hand, and then you say, “I’m behind you.” You are then free to walk away, say, to double check the train schedule, and your place will be saved. Lines are complicated by the fact that many people will reserve places in more than one line (sometimes with the help of a friend), and then just watch to see which line moves faster. So there’s the potential to approach a booth that looks like it doesn’t have many people waiting, but actually end up much farther back in the line than you expected.

Today I approached Booth 47 and asked “Who’s last?” Apathetic eyes stared wearily up at me from the benches; none of them were last. A man in line pointed to the guy behind him, and I said, “You’re last? Okay, I’m behind you.” Suddenly an overweight, huffy woman in her late 50s scurried over from another line and started scolding me, “What do you mean, you’re behind him? I’m behind him, young lady! How dare you try to cut! How could you even think such a thing possible?” She then proceeded to point out the exact order of people in line. I’m like, “Okay, lady, chill out. I did ask who was last. If you are last, then I’ll be behind you.” A woman in the line for booth 45 kept barging in and telling those who approached exactly where they would be in the line, which rather set me on edge, for some reason. I felt like telling her to get her nose out of our business and occupy herself with her own line, but I didn’t say anything.

Choosing a line at the ticket office is further complicated by the cashier’s breaks, which are displayed on a card in her (always a her) window. Every two hours, she gets a ten-minute break, and invariably that break comes exactly when you get to the front of the line. When that happens, there’s nothing to do but wait for ten minutes till she comes back (unless you have a friend in another line who gets to the window faster). Today I lucked out and got to the window just before my cashier’s 4:00 break.

As it turns out, you can’t return a train ticket at booth 47, only at booth 21. So I bought my new tickets first, on the № 55 to Moscow, then on the № 41 to Kiev (I’ll have a 6 hour layover; I’m planning to hit up the Tretyakovsky Gallery). Then I found booth 21, where the cashier was also on a 4:00 break. However, I was first in line, so I wasn’t too worried about waiting. A middle-aged man joined the line behind me; I commiserated as he remorsefully explained that he’d just bought this ticket three hours ago, and now had to change it, and at a 50% loss at that, as he was returning the ticket within 8 hours of departure. Loathe to fight the crush at the regular ticket booths to purchase the ticket he wanted instead, he decided it would be okay to join the line at booth 20, ostensibly reserved for members of the military and disabled persons (later, a woman approached the growing crowd at booth 20 and grumbled loudly, “What, is this how they serve the disabled here, with lines??”).

In all, I spent 1473.1 rubles and 1 hour in lines and got 1227.6 rubles back; the roughly $10 plus time is definitely a better deal than the Belarusian visa. I’m a little bummed that this change means I won’t have any time to see Kiev between my flights and trains, but I won’t have to stay in a hostel either, which is nice. Next Wednesday I’ll be within the 45 day window to buy my return tickets; since we’ve got Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving, I’m hoping to get to the ticket office early on Thursday morning to avoid the crowd.