TRANSCRIPT
I was recently looking at a photograph of myself from when I was 22 years old, standing in Lake Baikal in Russia, in Siberia. There was a quick stop that I had in the city of Irkutsk, or near Irkutsk, and I was able to run from the train and actually go wade into Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world. What came to my mind looking at this picture was how if I had listened to almost every single person in my life right before that time, I would never have gone there. I would never have ended up there. I never would have been able to see Lake Baikal. I wouldn’t have taken the Trans-Siberian Railway, and I most certainly would not have gone to Russia. This was three years after the fall of the Soviet Union. I came into Russia from Belarus, before that from Poland, before that from Germany.
Especially in Germany, people said, “Don’t go, don’t go! You’re gonna get killed. It’s the wild wild west. Russia is run by the Mafia.” People really sat down and said, “You’re young, you don’t know any better. You are naive. What you are doing is stupid and dangerous, and you are probably going to get robbed. You might get killed. People prey on people like you.” Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.
And I remember I was scared. I was terrified. But there was another part of me that said, “I want to do this.” I actually was taking the Trans-Siberian Railway to travel to China. So what did happen to me? Was it a bad experience? Well, the irony is, no, it was an awesome experience. Actually, from beginning to end in Russia, it was a fantastic experience. Ironically, once I went to China, I spent several weeks there, then I turned around and took the train back to Russia again. It was a great experience. Nothing bad happened.
But what I’d like to say is all that terror that people implanted in me, all this fear, “You’re gonna get robbed,” and all this stuff, “People are gonna rip you off. There’s gonna be ripoff exchange rates. You’re gonna lose half your money with the exchange rates right away.” Well, none of it happened.
Here’s what happened. So I was coming into Russia from Belarus, and I had a hundred dollar bill, and I needed to change it. Well, what happened is I ended up talking with some elderly Russian women on the train car that I was on. I remember telling them, “How do I change this money?” They didn’t even speak English, but I was trying to explain it to them. They all were worried, and they were all figuring it out. One of them said, and what she explained to me through sign language is that once we got to Moscow, to the train station, she was gonna go change the money, and she was going to bring back the rubles for me. She was going to make sure that I got a good exchange rate.
I remember thinking all these people who told me, “You’re gonna get ripped off,” they told me, “Don’t trust this woman. She’s gonna rip you off. This is months of two months’ wages for her. She’s gonna take all your money. You’ll never see her again.” Well, so what I did is I waited at the train station at the exit of the train. She was gone for like 20 minutes. Well, she came back, and she got me, first of all, a fantastic exchange rate. I wanted to give her some extra, but no, no, she wouldn’t take any money.
Well, that was the first start of a good experience that I had in Russia. Then I remember I had my guitar with me, and I went around and I started playing guitar in the streets. People would give me money. I remember one guy even gave me a beer. He didn’t rip me off, and he was actually a little bit drunk. Nobody tried to steal my guitar ever. But they’re gonna steal your guitar? Nobody stole anything from me. People were so nice. I met people who let me stay in their homes. Totally safe, wonderful. I shared what I had; they shared what they had. It was actually a lot of fun.
People were curious about me. People wanted to talk to me. I learned the Russian alphabet. I started learning Russian words. I learned a bit of Russian. It was actually a great experience. I got to the Trans-Siberian Railway like three days later, got on it, no problem, rode it all the way across Russia. Had a great experience, met a million nice people. Nothing bad happened.
And the funny thing was, it was even more comfortable when I came back because I was so much more flexible. I was so much more unafraid, even less afraid than the first time. I remember the second time I came to Moscow, I got off at the train station. I was totally confident. People would ask me directions in Russian because I seemed like a confident traveler, like I knew what I was up to. People who were Russian, I remember saying, “I don’t know how to get anywhere. I don’t know anything.”
Well, to take a step back and to return to the bigger point, the bigger point again is that I think so often people live in fear of all the bad things that can happen. They’re so afraid of what will happen if I take a risk, or what will happen is you take a risk, only bad things will happen. I think for a lot of people, a lot of bad things have happened to them. But what I’ve seen for myself, and I’ve seen for a lot of other people in the world, is as we get better at making decisions, as we get better at using our radar and being able to assess who is good and who is not good out there, as we are able to trust our guts more, life is often awesome.
I’ve traveled so much. I’m like, so rarely have I had bad experiences. Quite the opposite. Instead, it’s like again and again and again, as a traveler, and it doesn’t matter where I am. We’re talking Asia, Russia, the Middle East, Africa. The list can go on and on. Kind people, generous people, people who come out of the woodwork to be helpful. And I think to me that really highlights the inherent goodness in people in our world.