UNH Student Learns of Attacks While Studying in Moscow
WASHINGTON – When four planes were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the woods of Pennsylvania two weeks ago, UNH Senior Leah Weinrich said she was told to “keep a low profile” as an American studying abroad in Moscow.
Weinrich, of Westford, Mass., is studying Russian in Moscow for six months on the Boston University Moscow Internship Program. The American Embassy has advised all Americans in Russia to be careful about revealing their nationality, and Weinrich said she is still being cautious.
“I think right now I’m a little more aware of my surroundings,” she said. There are large Afghanistan and Muslim populations in Moscow and she said she is “not afraid of those populations at all but I’m more reluctant to speak English out loud or go out with loud groups of Americans.”
Weinrich said she first learned of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, at 7 p.m. on September 11, which was 11 a.m. in the U.S.
“I was in the metro and we were on our way to a soccer game,” Weinrich said. “I hadn’t heard any of the news. The group that I was meeting was very, very upset and that’s how I found out.”
She said she and the 13 other Americans studying with her in Moscow skipped the game and went right to their program director’s house to check in and get the news, which was incomplete and mostly in Russian.
“(The news) was definitely sketchy at first,” she said. “We heard a bunch of different stories. We didn’t know if it was a freak accident or a terrorist attack. I was very overwhelmed.”
She said the phone lines to the U.S. weren’t working right away, and she placed 15 calls home before she got through.
“I was basically in shock like everyone else,” she said. “I hadn’t been homesick until then. A lot of people had friends working in the World Trade Center and they were upset.”
Weinrich said that in the wake of the attacks, the foreign city’s sentiment was pro-American, and the news “was definitely about tracking bin Laden and what had happened.”
At the American Embassy in Moscow, Weinrich said people had placed lots of candles, notes and bunches of flowers outside the gates. The flowers were left in even numbers, which is a Russian funeral tradition, she said, explaining that any time flowers are given for any other reason it is only in odd numbers.
“I’ve always been given flowers in odd numbers (in Russia) so it was strange to see that,” she said. “There’s a lot more activity going on (at the Embassy) than there was a few weeks ago.”
Weinrich said some of the leaders of the Communist faction of the Duma, the Russian parliament, made statements saying the attacks were due to U.S. foreign policy and they were bound to happen. She said one of the most shocking moments of the week was seeing the word, ‘Armageddon,’ splashed across the Russian newspaper front pages. Since it is the same word in English and Russian, the sight was striking.
Two days after the attacks, on Thursday at noon, President Putin called for a minute of silence, said Weinrich.
“That hasn’t been done in a long time,” she said. “That was a major event. We were in classes that day. We gathered in the hallway and the teachers gave a little speech. They were very upset and worried about the safety of us. My first thought was that it’s very ironic that here I am in Russia probably safer than I would be in the U.S.”
Weinrich said that though the Russian people were saddened by the attacks, their history made them see the tragedy differently.
“The Russian people have had their share of terrorism,” she said. “This was a shock but it’s a different mentality.”
