Open Mic Night in Moscow: And Other Stories from My Search for Black Markets, Soviet Architecture, and Emotionally Unavailable Russian Men

At 28 years old, Audrey Murray left her family and friends behind to embark on a nine-month solo trip through the former USSR nations. Along the way, she runs out of money, performs stand-up comedy to a crowd who did not show up to see stand-up comedy that night, tolerates strange bedfellows in overnight trains, attends the wedding of charming strangers, and is briefly kidnapped.

Open Mic Night in Moscow is both a deeply self-deprecating memoir and a potentially useful guidebook to places that aren’t often on the covers of glossy travel magazines.

Quote:
“The first thing you need to know about Aktau is that the city was built long after the rest of the world had adopted the street name + number convention of assigning addresses. The White House had been at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a century and a half; government leaders had been moving in and out of 10 Downing Street for hundreds of years; even Sherlock Holmes had long ago established residency at 221B Baker Street. The point is that people were using this system, and it seemed to be working.

For reasons that are not immediately obvious to visitors, Aktau's city planners decided to try something new. Whether because they were tired of coming up with street names or because Russian doesn't have a saying that means, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," we'll never know. In any case, the addresses in Aktau are a string of three numbers, separated by dashes, seemingly indecipherable to visitors, residents, and Google Maps alike, making the most reliable method of navigation not directions, but luck.

Instead of 34 West Third Street, an address in Aktau will be given as something like 12-19-04. You could be forgiven for thinking that the person sending you this accidentally messaged you her date of birth.”

Author:
Audrey Murray is a stand-up comedian, writer, and traveler. Her writing has appeared in Reductress, McSweeny’s, The Gothamist, and China Economic Review. Open Mic Night in Moscow is her first published book. 
 

Published: 2018
Length: 394 pages
Set in: Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan