My mom came to visit a couple of weeks ago and I was charged with buying her a train ticket back to Moscow. As always in Russia, this was much easier said than done. First, I had to get her passport number then go to a ticket касса in person (why would you be able to buy tickets over the internet? that would be too easy). After stumbling around Nevsky for 20 minutes, I found the ticket seller I had in mind and searched around for the shortest line. The one I selected had only 3 people standing – what luck! – but I soon discovered that the seven people sitting around were also waiting. No matter,
I had War and Peace with me, I had all the time in the world.But the line progressed so slowly that I thought perhaps all the time in the world wouldn't be enough. Although there was a schedule posted nearby, every person had to find out the prices of every possible configuration of trains within a 4 day radius of their departure date. We had only gotten through two people when, 20 minutes after I had first gotten in line, the ticket seller decided that she too had had enough and put a sign in the window: "Break – be back in 15 minutes."
By this point, several more people had joined the line and so, with her seemingly random choice of break time, the ticket seller left waiting 10 patient Russians and one exasperated American.
An hour later, I magically made it to the front of the line and handed the seller my piece of paper with the information. In all, I had spent one hour and thirty-six minutes waiting, only to buy a ticket in under a minute.
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