Warning: This essay includes mentions of racism, stereotypes, and family members saying dumb things. If you’ve never had to sit through an uncle explaining a racist joke, congratulations. For the rest of us: I don’t agree with what’s said—but I’m also not pretending it didn’t happen.
It was the middle of the workday on a Tuesday, and I had run out of money.
Days before, I went into an overdraft. And judging from my Monzo fees, not just went but actually sat there, made myself cushy, and brewed a pot of tea for the entire Financial Conduct Authority.
Just a few weeks before, my mother had mailed me some cash, which should have solved the problem of being broke—albeit temporarily—if only I had remembered that I had it.
“Those are old dollars,” my mother said to me on the phone, like, seven million times. “Go to the bank and deposit them.”
Living in London means never having cash on hand—it has less value than rocks from a beach in Brighton—but in Russia, cash is still very much welcome.
What is more surprising, at least for me, is that there are several versions of dollars. The old bills, the ones you see in the movies, are mostly green and black with a simple, uniform look. The new bills are more artistic. They have various subtle background colors (e.g., blue for $100), which doesn’t make any difference to anyone—except for Russians. Back in the motherland, you can’t change old dollars in a bank. Or actually, you can, but the rate will be worse.
“This sounds like a scam,” I told my mom over the phone.
“It’s because they’re old dollars,” my mother explained, as if that somehow made things clearer.
Old or new, the dollars my mother had given me were perfectly fine collecting dust in her drawer for roughly 13 years, since the last time she visited the US.
Then, earlier this year, either out of boredom or a desire to help her unemployed son write silly things online, my mother suddenly embarked on a mission to send them to me.
Without the luxury of SWIFT since the start of the war, the dollars packed their suitcases and made their way through a series of less-than-clean human hands, travelling to London. En route, they took planes, trains, and ferries, with stops in strange places like Baku, which would have been a worthwhile hassle if the sum in question was large.
But we’re talking about less than $300.
“Do you ever listen? I said, THEY’RE OLD DOLLARS,” my mother yelled into the receiver when I asked her why she went through the trouble.
I omitted the fact that $300—roughly £200—is what it costs Londoners to get out of their crummy apartments and inhale the spring air. (It’s £300 if you walk anywhere.)
“Ah!” I said. “I see… it’s because they’re old dollars.”
If you work remotely, people expect stuff from you, of course, but they also understand if you have “a doctor’s appointment” or “need to take the dog to the vet” or even “need to go to the bank.” The Brits don’t ask twice—which is hard not to take advantage of.
Back in Russia, if I were so brazen as to say in the middle of the workday that I had a toothache and needed to go to the doctor, my boss would scream at me through a Zoom screen that would always be on—to make sure I wasn’t wasting the company’s time—“DO IT ON YOUR OWN TIME. RIGHT NOW YOU BELONG TO THE COMPANY. BY THE WAY, WHY DON’T I HEAR ANY TYPING?!”
So—on that Tuesday, to exchange my poor mother’s old dollars, I decided to combine the pleasurable with the useful (a Russian expression, in my free translation). I laced up my running sneakers and searched for the nearest Barclays branch.
Besides its apparent pointlessness, there were two limitations to my chore. One is that most banks I use are what’s called neo-banks (e.g., Monzo, Starling, N26), which means they exist primarily online and don’t have actual physical branches.
The second limitation was that Barclays people prefer to work until 3 PM—which is why I couldn’t wait until the proverbial factory whistle told me I could fuck off for the day at 5 PM.
As I went outside and started running, I used Google Maps’ robotic female voice to navigate me.
In between announcements, I listened to myself on Spotify.
Because I am a narcissist.
Unlike Moscow, where, if you drive long enough, you’ll eventually encounter a sign that says 'MOSCOW' (crossed out), marking the end of the city zone, London is not really a city, but more of an area.
It’s a collection of little towns, where the difference between one council and the other could mean sitting outside eating avocado toasts with a glass of Prosecco vs. spotting needles and used condoms on the ground and having your phone snatched right in the middle of your favourite podcast.
Our neighbourhood is, obviously, the latter.
The area where Masha and I moved a year before I am writing this is full of council houses, trucks with Caribbean food, and “off-license” stores that sell suspiciously cheap wine. Stores like these usually have no logos or memorable names and are called just “stores” or “wine, vapes, sim cards”.
A few days before sitting down to write this, I spotted a car by my apartment building with a huge sticker on the back: ONLY GAY COPS PULL ME OVER.
Phone snatching aside, none of this bothers me in the slightest— if anything, it makes for fun observations and anecdotes — and cheap wine is always good. But it does shock my family, especially those who have never been to London, and still think of this city as a place filled with lords, ladies, and tea at 4 P.M.
“I was walking from the station and saw zero white people!” my cousin said instead of a hello, as he entered the door of our one-bedroom rented apartment.
He had flown from Moscow to attend boarding school in the UK and was still adjusting to a world where people don’t draw Z signs on the buildings. (A sign of Russian fascism.)
I told him not to be a racist, but he pressed on: “No, like, seriously. Everyone wasn’t white.”
I told him I got it, thank you, by the way, did he want anything to drink?
But he was adamant. “I’m serious. Your building is like an oasis in a black hole.”
I grew up partially in the States, where we were taught about slavery, segregation, and Martin Luther King. During the time we lived there, Obama became the first Black president.
My first best friend was from Zimbabwe. During recess, we used to pee together and compare our tiny penises. On weekends, we had sleepovers and cooked non-weed brownies while playing Mortal Kombat on his plasma TV.
In my childhood, I assumed this is what life was like everywhere: people from different cultures, backgrounds, with different skin colour, are friends. They become presidents. They fight for rights. Racism is wrong, diversity is good.
Turned out, I was as naive as a French tourist drinking tap water in Delhi, assuming it’s Evian.
Back in Russia —where seeing a Black person is as natural as snow in July — I would hear kids at school freely use the n-word when talking about anyone whose skin colour was a tone darker than Edward Cullen’s.
“What else should I call him?” my uncle asked me once when I told him to cut it out.
“I don’t know,” I replied, exasperated. “Man? Person? African American? Black?”
“Nah, that’s some liberal bullshit you picked up in America!” he’d say. “In this country, we call them what we call them. Check the dictionary—it’s a scientific word!”
I’ve heard variations of this from different people who grew up in Russia.
A quick Google search tells me that, yes, indeed, the Russian word “негр” exists in the Russian language and has historically been used to refer to people of African descent. Back in the days of Stalinist repressions and food shortages, it was considered a neutral or even a scientific term.
But the world moves on — we’re not in Soviet times anymore, are we? — and if people find it offensive, then why keep using it?
“Because this is my language, and in my language, we call Black people that!” my uncle said, a vein now popping on his neck the way it does when he stumbles upon, at least according to him, insurmountable stupidity. “Tell me, why do Black people have white hands?”
“I am not doing this,” I said, knowing full well where this question was going.
As I locked the bathroom door from the inside and turned on the tap water, I heard my uncle’s voice from the kitchen: “Because when God painted them, they were standing on all fours!”
The Barclays branch queue looked less like people doing their finances and more like they were waiting to see Ed Sheeran perform.
A woman in a blue uniform told the woman at the front of the line that she could check her balance through the app.
“Ah, thank you! Thank you!” the woman replied and shuffled off at snail speed.
The man behind her had a question about Barclays’ hiring policies.
The woman after him wanted to send her son a check, but didn’t know how.
A smelly guy with a grey beard wanted to find out if his coins had any value.
A woman with six children wanted something but then got a call, stepped out of line, and eventually stormed out of the branch altogether, yelling, “NOW YOU LOT FOLLOW ME OR YOU’LL BE SORRY.”
Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. My work call was in ten minutes. Even if I started now and ran like hell, I wouldn’t make it back in time.
“How can I help you?” the Barclays woman asked me, after a decade, two rows of brilliant white teeth practically blinding me.
I explained that I had some old dollars that I needed to exchange and put into my account.
“Sorry, we don’t do dollars anymore. Try the post office,” she said.
To do what? I wanted to say. Send them back to Moscow?
“There’s a Sainsbury’s in the shopping mall where you can exchange them.”
At the shopping mall, I went up and down escalators for eternity, until I found the Sainsbury’s. As promised, there was a kiosk for what Brits call “travel money”—basically, anything not in pounds. But the man working there seemed to be moving in slo-mo. Even a straightforward task, like opening a register and handing over the money, took him six times longer than it would a regular person.
As I began to criticise myself for being a mean person — for all I knew, the employee might have a hidden disability — it was the man in front of me's turn. The employee apologised and—much faster than he’d been moving up until that point—rushed off.
On his exit, he put up a sign that stared right in the man’s face: LUNCH (ONE HOUR). The man shrugged and walked away.
I hadn’t experienced this level of disregard since my teenage years in Russia, when I went to government clinics just to avoid being sent to the army. There, patients were treated like scum for daring to exist in the doctor’s presence.
I turned around, ready to give up, when I spotted another currency exchange. It looked empty. But when I stepped inside, I saw an older lady by the counter, counting coins at the speed of one per minute with her raisin-like index finger.
“Ah, love, this doesn’t seem right,” she said to the cashier after what felt like an hour. “Can we do this again?”
“Ma’am, I’ve counted your money four times already,” the man behind the counter said, annoyed, without looking away from his phone, on which his right thumb was busy flipping Reels.
“No, it’s not right, love. I need forty-six pence, and here are only forty-three.”
He unwillingly pulled three pence from the cash drawer and handed it to her. “Here, ma’am. Just go. Go!”
She beamed. “Ah, thank you, thanks dear. Wish you all the best. Love to you and your family.”
She sounded sweet. Though I still wondered if she just tricked the man out of three pence. You can get a Russian out of Russia, but you can’t get Russia out of a Russian.
After what felt like another day, it was finally my turn.
I walked over to the employee, and he flipped his thumb a few times, scrolling through some videos of kids falling on playgrounds, and then looked at me, his eyebrow raised, as if to say, “What do you want?”
As I ran back home, this time uphill—fifteen minutes past my call time—my mom messaged me.
“Did you manage to go to the bank?” her text said. Then, in another message, “Because, as I told you, nobody wants to take them in Russia. They’re old dollars.”
I stopped, panting, exhausted, and looked at my phone, feeling like a complete idiot. Here I was, in the middle of a workday, in the middle of the street, cars going around me, in full running gear.
Back at home, I still had at least three hours of work waiting for me. I messaged the team I wouldn’t make the call. They seemed to understand. (“No worries!”)
Then I took a deep breath and typed up a text, “Yes, mom. It’s taken care of.”
As I walked the rest of the way back, enjoying the spring sun that had come to London, taking in the familiar scenery of the neighbourhood I had come to love, I thought, as always, about life.
And about how whether it’s with your mother who means well, your uncle who should know better, or not making it in time for a work call—some fights just aren’t worth it.
After all, when you live in an area of London where you can buy a bottle of wine for £4, what’s there to feel bad about?
Sure, it might be 70% petrol and banned in most EU countries.
But it’s all I can afford these days with my now fully exchanged “old dollars”.
Thanks for reading. Don’t forget: until the end of April, you can get your free subscriber copy of A Friend Among Strangers – a collection of the best essays from 2024 chosen by readers. You can email me at faldin.sergey@gmail.com for your free copy.
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My sympathies Serge but at least you mamaged to exchange them :) I spent the best part of a day in London trying to exchange Venezuelan bolivers (one of Husbands postings ) and beng sent to multiple institutions , including the Post Office , only to be told finally that as the currency was so unstable no-one would touch them.....good to have been told that at the beginning but such is life. Here in Portugal we have excellent wine from upwards of €1.50 a bottle, sadly I don't drink but it is great for cooking ! Keep writing and we will keep enjoying :)
Genius! Thanks love 😜