The town of Irkutsk in Siberia, Russia.Getty Images/iStockphoto
Sometimes things don't go as planned – and those moments often make for the best stories. Tripping columns offer readers a chance to share their adventures.
One of the most interesting days in the long, long winter I spent teaching English in Irkutsk, Siberia, came when our building was taken over by the Russian Mafia.
I was teaching a class of teenagers and was interrupted by a man who knocked on the door then came right in. He was wearing a blue camouflage uniform with a logo, but he wasn't police. He was also carrying an AK-47 machine gun. He looked straight at me, motioned with his hand.
"Everybody out!"
I was too shocked to answer, but one of the teenage girls, with a bored look on her face, answered for me. "Ten more minutes," she said, and the blue-jacket left, bemused at being chastened by a child.
"What the hell?" I asked the student. She shrugged, and we finished our lesson.
After class, I walked out to find a half-dozen more uniformed men, all carrying the same Kalashnikov rifles. As soon as we exited the front door, they clamped a big lock on it and stood in front of it. I called my boss and she talked to the armed men. "Emm, no class tonight," she said. "Please wait for your next students and tell them class is cancelled."
That evening, I waited. One of my adult students showed up, talked to the men at the door and explained what happened. The owner of the building hadn't paid his protection money, so the Mafia took the building instead.
"So," I said, "not legal?" "Not legal, just typical Russia," my student said, completely unfazed. Then he smiled. "No class! Want to get some beers and go for a walk by the river?" I felt like I should be traumatized, or outraged, but it was hard when everyone around me was so cool.
The next morning, I waited to warn my children's class. Filip and Nikita, twin six-year-olds, grinned when I said there was no class and squealed in joy when they saw the rifles the guards carried.
"Kalashnikov!" they screamed. As I watched a hired goon showing off his weapon of death to delighted children and their smiling mother, careful to stress that they look but not touch, the absurdity of the entire situation hit me.
This was just another day in the life of these Russians. It was normal, like the frigid weather, the corrupt cops and the rising price of groceries. I was almost sad a few days later when the thugs got paid off and we went back to work.
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