I live in Japan and am accustomed to reading a language that in not in Roman script. Many of my visitors worry about getting around when they come here but in most case places like stations and hotels have names written in the romanised form using the English alphabet. My sister and I found ourselves in Moscow exploring the amazing subway stations. There was very little in the way of romanised alphabet. We found ourselves looking at the cyrillic alphabet as if it was some form of hieroglyphic and and trying to match our map signs with those on the station signs
.We took ourselves off to see The Kremlin Ballet Theatre who were performing Swan Lake in the Kremlin no less. We were told, or so we thought, to go to a very official looking building to apply for tickets. We managed to find our way to aforementioned official building, get past some stern looking guards and into a musty office. It felt all very James Bond but we just thought because it was in the Kremlin maybe there were security hoops to jump through. We filled in a form that wanted our academic background and speciality as well as passport details, citizenship and phone number. Seemed like rather a palava to go through just to get a Ballet ticket. All this took about an hour. We were finally called into a small room with a rather severe looking pursed lipped lady. She looked at our application and asked what we wanted. We smiled and said we wanted tickets to Swan Lake. She replied ”This is the office for Library cards” Whoops. Exit stage Left.
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- Poster for Swan Lake
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- Applying for a Library Card
We finally found the box office, yes just like at home, and managed to purchase tickets very easily! Our theory about Kremlin security measures was not completely without premise as that evening we found there was a line and a check to get into the Kremlin grounds to get to the theatre. Good thing we went early! The ballet was superb, we had excellent seats and loved it.
Yoroshiku Onegai Shimasu
Leanne
NihongoJapango 
Wonderful entry for this week’s challenge. Thanks. 😀
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😀 I spent one year in primary school learning Cyrillic script – we all had to, it was Yugoslavia and Cyrillic was one of the official scripts – and I have not regretted it one bit. That said, I often wonder how I would do in Japan, for instance, in places where not many foreign tourists visit.
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yes countryside can prove a tad more tricky! I wonder if my sister and I took it a little more in our stride as we both read a foreign script. We didn’t have a chance of reading the Cyrillic but we could pick out shapes and pair up our map with the station signs and of course had used similar subway systems in Japan so weren’t phased by it. I am sure you would be the same in Japan.
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