The People of Russia

It's hard to believe that our trip is over half finished. With the constant stimulation and endless supply of things to do and see, I completely lost track of the day of the week and date until I was told yesterday that we leave Moscow on Monday.
While I have made it to numerous museums--the Tretyakov gallery and the Kremlin being the highlights--not to mention the plays and landmarks, I have easily been most fascinated by interacting with the people here.
I can only make two generalizations about Russians: they often look unhappy, and they speak much quieter than Americans. Both of these can be seen most obviously in service workers. Aside from the desk staff at our hostel, all of whom are extremely helpful and open, I have not seen a single clerk in a store, restaurant, or the metro who has smiled or spoken with anything other than a grumble. Granted, having worked at a coffee shop, I know how soul-crushing and miserable these jobs can be (and I worked at a relatively nice one). But I also know that if you act happier, you tend to feel happier. Maybe all the workers here just have SAD.
The quiet speaking is evident on the street as well. When I was in Germany, I enjoyed eavesdropping on strangers' conversations in the street to see how much I could pick up of what was being said. Of course, I was hardly able to understand anything, but just listening to the music of the language helped with comprehension later on. Here, in contrast, the people speak so dang quietly that I can't even tell if they're actually speaking Russian. So much for working on listening comprehension.
Despite all of these problems and the resulting feelings of isolation from the people as a whole, the individual Russians with whom I have spoken have been extremely nice and patient. For instance, Brad and I got to go back stage at "Prince Caspian" and speak with the actors. For about an hour we all tried to communicate in a combination of broken English and broken Russian, and they seemed to be having just as much fun as we were, even though the conversation itself left something to be desired.
The past two nights, I met up with one of the said actors, and we walked and talked around the city center. She spoke English quite well, I found, so we were able to make a stronger connection. Besides making a new friend (woo!), I learned about the cultural perceptions that Russians have about themselves and their country... assuming she was representative of other Muscovites. A small but striking theme was the difficulty of life in Russia, accented by a hard-to-explain combination of melancholy and reserved hopefulness. If we take into consideration pretty much any famous Russia literature, I think it's safe to assume that these are indeed nagging worries for many people here. I was quick to point out that her examples could also be found in plentiful supply in the U.S. It seems that there continues to be this perception of the U.S. as a promised land, although she--and the rest of the actors, for that matter--mentioned western Europe a couple of times as well.
Between these fortuitous conversations and the themes present in the shows we've seen so far, I've found plenty of food for thought. At this point, I just can't wait to have a good handle on the language so that I'm not dealing with an extra barrier. It's frustrating, to say the least.