Sept. 28, 2010: The Kindness of Strangers

09/28/2010
The stores in this area are very cash-based.  There are places that accept credit cards, but usually those places are more expensive.  In particular, the cafeteria at school only takes cash, they don't have a lot of change, and they really don't like to break large bills.

I went to the ATM yesterday and got 2 1000-Ruble notes (worth a little more than $30 each), so I decided to try to break them before I needed to use them for food.  So, in Russian language class this morning, I asked the teacher how to ask for smaller bills, and she gave me the phrase.

On our lunch break, I went to the bank next to school and said, in Russian, to the man at the desk: "Good afternoon.  I would like, please, to break these bills."  He shook his head and spoke a lot of Russian, so I asked, in Russian, "do you know where?" and held up the bills I was trying to change.  He pointed down the street, so I said thank you and headed that way.

I went into the first bank in that direction (in Moscow there are lots and lots of banks everywhere) and asked the woman at the desk the same question, with the same result.  She pointed across the street and said the name of a bank I thought I understood.

Heading across the street and struggling to read the signs in Cyrillic, I didn't see the name she had said, but I saw a long word that started with the sounds "bank," so I went inside.  The room I found myself in looked more like a hotel lobby than a bank, and the man at the desk was an older, portly gentleman with a gray mustache and a bald head.  I asked him my question, and he laughed and said "dyevuchka, nyet," which means approximately "young girl, no."  And he continuted smiling and laughing and spoke a lot of Russian that I didn't understand, but he gestured to the right, and I thought I understood him to say "go straight" and "turn right" and then the name of a bank.  I repeated his words with him and kept making him say it again, and the more I repeated, the more he smiled.  When I was pretty sure I knew where he wanted me to go, I said thank you and headed out again.

I walked the way he directed me until the street ended, and I didn't see any sign of a bank.  Looking right and left, I saw a Citibank sign about 2 blocks to the right, so I headed that way thinking I might find the bank I was looking for.  I didn't see anything sooner, so in I went to the Citibank.  I asked my question again to the woman at the desk, and she responded with a definite "no."  When I asked her if she knew where I could get them changed, she said in English "maybe in shops."

About to give up on the whole idea and just do as she suggested and try to spend the money in shops, I saw a "Bank Moskva" (Bank of Moscow) nextdoor to the Citibank.  Since it was right there, I decided to go inside and try once more.

When I asked my question, the girl at the desk didn't look hopeful.  She spoke apologetically in Russian, but then she held up a finger like "one moment" and made a phone call.  She shook her head again, and then asked the teller next to her.  He looked at me and looked at her and they had a conversation in Russian.  Then he took his own bag from underneath his chair, pulled out his wallet, and found change for one of my notes.  He used his own money to help me out!

I don't know how Russians normally break their large bills.  Probably they use them for groceries or other large purchases, and use the change for everyday expenses like metro tickets (which cost less than a dollar and cannot be purchased with bills larger than about $4).  Maybe they just never withdraw more than a few hundred Rubles at a time.  I wonder if the man who helped me will now have a hard time using the money I gave him.  I wonder if our meeting made as much of an impression on him as it did on me.  I don't think I've ever really depended on the kindness of strangers, but his help today, for me, was a really big deal.