by Gates, Moses
We head up the stairs to the terminal. I’m wondering if he hasn’t maybe forgotten about some other drugs he bought from some other Dutch pimp he met, so I send him to the bathroom with instructions to ditch whatever’s left and brush his teeth, as he absolutely reeks of whiskey.
“OK, watch my bags for me,” he says.
Yeah, right—I can see the scene right away: “Oh, no, those aren’t my bags, Mr. Customs Officer with the snarling dog. What do you mean, ‘Come with us’?” I send Steve into the bathroom complete with his two backpacks and duffel bag. When he comes out I ask if he’s gotten rid of all the drugs.
“Well, I’m definitely not throwing out the Ecstasy,” is the reply. Great.
Amazingly, check-in goes completely smoothly. Steve can’t help flirting a bit too much with the agent, but again his altar-boy looks get him by. He buys two bottles of whiskey at duty-free, we get on the plane, and he promptly falls asleep in his seat, drooling.
We land, and I manage to drag him through the logistics of flying into a new city: off the plane, on the bus, get a map, find the hostel. As soon as we get there he passes out again. Our Swedish contacts call about an hour later, telling us to meet them by the train station. I wake Steve up and tell him about the meeting.
“Should I come?” he asks groggily.
This is it. I’ve spent the last five hours schlepping him through two countries on three modes of transportation, all the while doing my level best to keep him out of prison halfway around the world from home. He can get up and drag himself down the block if he wants.
“I have no idea. Do what you want.” I head out the door. Even though the whole reason we’ve come to Stockholm is to meet these guys and explore the city’s underground, I put the odds of hearing him moan and get out of bed at about 5 percent. The odds prove correct.
I head off to the train station to meet our contacts. The first guy, Mats, shows up and tells me that his companion, Sven, is going to be late. We hang out and chat until Sven shows up about a half-hour later. He, like Mats, is a young guy. I place them both in their early twenties. We’re all set to go, when I glance over and see Steve stagger up to us, looking like death and reeking of booze again.
“It took some willpower and a whole lot of whiskey. Let’s go.” I am again amazed at what this guy will go through simply to see what’s down a hole in the ground.
Steve says: There’s a close relationship between transitional points in life and adventures. When you have commitments in life that involve other people, it’s a lot harder to take risks and invest in adventure. I had just broken up with my girlfriend of four years, and that gave me the freedom to spend a month roaming around sewers and stuff, quite happily. It had been a really productive adventure for me so far. Of course, when you have time and freedom to be spendthrift with yourself, it isn’t always purely productive. I’ve found that at times like this, when I work the hardest to delve into adventure, I also end up partying a bit too hard. When it came time to leave, I hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. The two hours on the airplane didn’t help much to rejuvenate me. When we got into Stockholm, I was dead tired—I felt like I’d been run over by three or four steamrollers. And I had the most unbelievable hangover I can ever remember having. As soon as we got to the hostel I fell down on the bed and resumed drooling on myself.
But we were still there for one reason. We were trying to alternate cities we could explore with cities where we could be tourists for a day or two. Amsterdam had been for tourism. Stockholm meant it was time to do some work. I sometimes need that kick in the ass to get going. When Moe eventually gave up on trying to get me out of bed and slammed the door to go meet up with the locals, that was enough of a kick in the ass to get me going.
I’ve never really believed in that whole theory of “hair of the dog,” but I’ve never had a hangover like that, either. So I dug out a bottle of whiskey, drank some of it, and filled up my flask with the rest. It wasn’t until we were in the subway and well on our way toward what turned out to be a six-hour trek through miles of the underground that I realized I hadn’t brought any water with me and the only liquid I had to drink in my horribly dehydrated state was my flask of whiskey. It helped, though.
Stockholm, December 2007
It’s a heck of a hole in the ground. Sweden is built on solid granite, and the tunnels underneath the city are blasted through this granite. The feeling is incredibly raw; it’s like being in a working cave. The other tunnels we’ve been in—catacombs, subways, drains—are obviously part of the built urban world. Walls are concrete, cement, brick, reinforced and finished. Even the catacomb tunnels, built two-hundred-plus years ago, still looked human-made, just old. Here you can cut yourself on some of the sharp granite edges that are left from the blasting.
STOCKHOLM GRANITE SUBWAY TUNNEL.
© Lucinda Grange
To get to where we’re going, Sven first tells us we need to use a connection in the subway tunnels. We haven’t taken the subway yet, so I ask him how we get in—meaning do we buy a token or get a pass? Talk to the guy in the booth or use the machine? In response, Sven simply goes to the exit gate, waits for someone to exit, and squeezes through without paying a fare. This doesn’t seem to be hugely controversial; the guy exiting actually holds the gate open for him. At first I hesitate, but then remember that the exchange rate is awful and a ride on the metro currently costs the equivalent of about $4. So, when in Rome and all like that.
Sven tells us to wait in the station while he checks something out. He slips around the corner, changes into subway worker clothes, opens the gate at the end of the platform, and heads down onto the tracks. A few minutes later he returns.
“OK, the connection’s still good. Come on,” he says. We follow him down onto the tracks. Later Sven explains the need for the scouting excursion. “Yeah, we were painting graffiti in this station a few weeks ago. The police vandal squad came just as we were finishing up, so we ran out onto the tracks and through the connection to escape. I was worried maybe they’d seen us, found the connection, and sealed it.”
We spend only a short time in the subway tunnel before finding the connection and heading into the tunnels for the telecom network. Upon reaching the first laser alarm, hidden behind a doorway, the Swedes show us what to look out for and how to either climb over or slide under the invisible beam. OK, cool. We navigate a couple more, and then forget to check behind a doorway and trip one. I wonder if I should freak, but the Swedes seem to be OK with it, so on we go. The next thing of note that we reach are empty shell casings. I again wonder if I should freak.
“Oh, yeah—the army does training exercises for urban warfare in here,” Mats tells me.
The army has not yet come after us for the tripped alarm, and we make sure to not trip any others, so I don’t freak. Steve, in his fatigued state, almost screws up once, noticing the alarm just in time to stop his stride.
“What happens if we trip another one?” I ask Mats.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I’ve never tripped the first one before.”
Finally, the Swedes tell us we’ve reached the exit, which turns out to be a ten-foot chimney climb up a vent shaft, after which we have to squeeze out a grate into a park. I’m a little worried about Steve, with his combination of fragile hip and four-substance hangover, but he scurries right up. Stockholm is an archipelago, built on a series of islands, and it turns out we crossed underwater four times during the excursion. Altogether a good night. And as it’s pretty easy to be a slacker in Sweden—free health care, free housing, and even a cash allowance—our youthful companions are taking full advantage and, as such, don’t really have anywhere to be the next day. So we decide the night is yet young.
“We need beer,” Steve says. I’m also thinking it’s time to hit the bar, but the Swedes don’t look very excited at the suggestion.
“Why go to a bar?
There’s beer right here,” Sven says, motioning to a 7-Eleven next to us on the street. “We can drink in the park.”
“Yeah, sounds cool,” I say, although it’s pitch-black and about twenty degrees Fahrenheit out. “And don’t worry about the beer: I got it.”
Sven laughs at the offer. “No, man, you don’t need to do that. Just go ask the clerk behind the counter for directions. Pretend you’re French or something and don’t speak very good English. We’ll come in after.”
I know where this is going. I can’t believe I’m thirty-two years old and helping steal beer from a 7-Eleven. Despite our best efforts at distraction, the clerk easily catches on to the fact that Mats and Sven are stuffing six-packs into their backpacks.
“Those two were stealing,” she tells me and Steve in English as they leave, packs bulging. As she tries to excuse herself to call the police, Steve decides the best course of action in order to distract her and give our companions a head start is to flirt with her in French. Astoundingly, this almost works, until Steve presses his luck by trying to kiss her hand and the clerk gets fed up and reaches for the phone. We leave, meet up with the other two, and are rewarded with cans of watery Carlsberg 3.5-percent-alcohol beer, which is the strongest you’re legally allowed to buy outside of the state-sponsored liquor store. There you can get up to 14-percent-alcohol beer, which tastes like someone decided to ferment ammonia and add it to charred wheat mash.
There’s not a whole lot else to do in Sweden in December other than drink and go in tunnels. As we’ve now seen most of the tunnels, drinking is taking the front seat for the next couple days. I’m pretty happy with this: after weeks of exploring, I’m ready to just chill out, wind down, and get ready to head back to New York. The year has been great: I’ve ended up making it to eighteen countries; run around subway systems on three continents; explored countless drains, tunnels, abandonments, and bridges; and even gotten to ring the bell of Notre Dame. But these last few days have solidified what I’ve been suspecting. It’s been a great year. But I don’t want this to be every year.
• • •
And the next year, 2008, is different. I take this year to work on breaking other kinds of mental barriers—not the ones keeping me out, the ones keeping others from coming in. To start it off, I do something harder than forcing myself around the “Do Not Enter or Cross Tracks” sign for the first time, harder than taking the deep breath and crawling down the rabbit hole into catacombs. I call Sara and tell her I love her. It’s simple to love when the recipient is something inanimate: adventure, travel, a city. It’s only people who can make love a complicated emotion, make it a difficult thing to do.
Still, my love of New York remains full-fledged, doesn’t wane, and there are plenty of days spent wandering the streets—and even some nights spent adventuring above and beneath them. But these nights grow much fewer and further between. Life settles down: I finally finish grad school and get my urban planning degree, stop the tour bus hustle, and get a nine-to-five. Sara still lives in Toronto, so most of my weekends are spent either visiting her in Canada or hosting her in New York.
In the spring of 2009, Steve gets accepted into a doctorate program for history in California, with plans to start in the fall. Around the same time I leverage my first nine-to-five job into a better one: I can take some time off in between them, but once I start this new job I’m not going to get a vacation for a while. These two developments mean our available window for another trip is closing fast. If we’re going to get out of town for an adventure again, it’s got to be now. So we plan one last hurrah. Russia.
{PART THREE}
TWENTY-FIVE
Moscow, June 2009
The first job of a parent is to protect your children. At first it’s fairly easy: feed them, clothe them, don’t drop them. Once the kid starts to walk and comprehend simple sentences, the task becomes tougher. You have to keep them from falling down the stairs, sticking their fingers in the electrical socket, eating whatever they pick up off the side of the road. You soon graduate to teaching simple lessons—things like “Look both ways before you cross the street,” “Don’t run with scissors,” “Don’t take candy from strangers.” As the child gets older, more advanced lessons—“Use condoms,” “Don’t drink and drive”—start to be conveyed. Eventually the child becomes an adult and hopefully has internalized all these lessons enough to live a long and fruitful life devoid of venereal disease, DUI citations, and abduction by candy-toting strangers.
Of course, there are some things so obvious, and so lacking in any reason that someone might want to engage in them, that there is really no point in even wasting your breath to warn against them. My mother certainly never sat me down and said, “Moses. Remember. Don’t go to prison in Russia.” Yet here we are, sitting next to a huge statue of Karl Marx, staring uncomprehendingly at four guys in military uniforms holding machine guns, with this fate looking increasingly likely.
Three hours earlier
We meet Max, a contact we were set up with through Dsankt and Siologen, on our first day in Moscow. He’s a giant, about six-foot-six, resembles a bouncer at a mid-1980s biker bar, and is one of those people who you can immediately tell forms loyalties quickly and unbreakably. I instantly like him.
He opens his mouth. “So, guys, my English, it is fucking very, very bad,” he says. “I take a class in school, but I stop because teacher, she is a fucking bitch. I know my English because I listen to a lot of rock-and-roll music.”
I actually think Max’s English is pretty good—especially for someone whose main instructor seems to have been a combination of Led Zeppelin albums and Andrew Dice Clay routines.
Unfortunately we’ve missed the golden age of Russian exploration by about fifteen years. Post-Soviet, pre-Putin-era Russia was both an economic and an urban exploration free-for-all.
“Oh, yeah,” says Max. “Nobody would go anywhere under the Soviets. But then with Yeltsin, there is, like, one old lady guarding the entrance to the basement of the Kremlin. And if she is not asleep, you can just bribe her.”
But those days are long gone. Tales of getting into Metro-2, Stalin’s secret subway system that links the Kremlin to an airfield and bunkers outside the city, have intrigued us to no end. In the 1990s, it was simply a difficult challenge: Steve once met a guy on a bus who claimed to have been there after a twenty-four-hour jaunt walking in the subway system. Now, with security back to Soviet-era levels under Putin, it would be like breaking into the Pentagon.
Luckily, our goal for the evening is a bit more doable, and no less historic. We’re going to travel the length of the Neglinka River, where the original city of Moscow was formed. Today the Neglinka has been put entirely underground, doubling, as do most underground rivers, as part of the storm drain system. We meet a few other local Russian explorers and head to the entrance point just inside the city’s innermost ring road around dusk.
Max gives us semi-official-looking vests to wear as we approach the manhole. This is OK?
“Oh, yeah. Nobody will mind. Only the special government police. And they are only around the Kremlin.”
We pop the manhole and head down into Moscow’s original river. The Neglinka runs through a lovely tunnel, changing its structure every few thousand feet or so. Storm drains are generally thought of as simply functional, something built so that the water has somewhere to go and the city doesn’t flood when it rains. But there is a real beauty to many of them. Buildings may be just a place to live, subway stations just a place to stop the train. But that doesn’t keep the people who build them from trying to make them something more than this, something that contributes to the city in an aesthetic, not just a functional, way. And this aesthetic sometimes extends to places you would hardly think would be considered—places like the one we’re in now.
I quickly notice that we aren’t passing many manholes on our journey. They’re much fewer and farther between here
than in the storm drains back home. I’m becoming a bit worried about how to get out in an emergency.
Moscow is gigantic. It’s 386 square miles, larger than the five boroughs of New York City. There is about half a square mile patrolled by the special police force Max warned us about. So of course we have chosen to walk right underneath their beat. The Neglinka River originally served as the Kremlin’s moat. Today a small brook in Manezhnaya Square, just north of the Kremlin, claims to spring from the Neglinka. Tourists dip their toes in it every day. We’re about ten feet deeper in the real thing. We’re basically walking right under Red Square.
After an hour or so of trekking underground, we reach the junction with the Moscow River. Through the gate we can see the south bank of the river and the reflection of the buildings shining off the water. The reflection, however, is a strangely oscillating one. It takes me a bit before I realize it’s because the small ripples outward are caused by the falling raindrops hitting it every so often.
• • •
The first, last, and only commandment of exploring storm drains is: “When it rains, no drains.” Well, there are other ones, but generally speaking breaking them won’t get you killed. It doesn’t matter if it’s just drizzling. Everything that hits concrete will eventually flow into a gutter and down a drain, where the water will funnel into small tubes. These small tubes will combine into larger and larger ones, until the combined volume of the rainfall is all flowing into one large drain that leads out to a body of water—a drain like the one we’re in now. If you’re in such a drain when the rain hits, your best-case scenario is that it stays a trickle, leading to a slowly rising water level that you can slog through quickly enough to get to a manhole where you can either get out (hopefully avoiding oncoming traffic) or, if the rain gets worse, at least climb up the ladder and pray the water level doesn’t eventually reach the ceiling. Your worst-case scenario is a real downpour, which will create a tsunami-like current that will immediately sweep you off your feet and carry you down the drain until you’re drowned, washed over a retaining wall, knocked unconscious by debris, or dashed against the floodgate or bars to the entrance. Being in a storm drain when this happens isn’t an absolute recipe for death—people have survived this scenario—but your chances of survival wouldn’t be described as “good” by any means. A large collector drain, like the one we’re occupying, is the ultimate destination of the storm runoff for an area that’s miles wide. Since we’re currently right at the end of the drain, looking through a metal gate, if a legitimate rainstorm starts, our fate is easy to ascertain: we’ll face a wall of onrushing water that will crush us against the metal bars until we drown. So when I recognize the plitter-platter of rain against the river, I don’t panic, but this not panicking takes a conscious act of will. I point the rain out to Max.
