Arrival, part 1

My Dear Readers,

What an adventure I’ve been having. Where to begin, where to begin. I didn’t have the 90 travel time that my friend Dustin had due to flight delays, but I would have gladly traded my experience for his, since he had someone to meet him at the airport and an apartment to crash in. When I last wrote, I was about to board the plane in Atlanta to fly to Moscow, so let’s start there, shall we.

I boarded the plane anxious to see who I’d have the pleasure of sitting next to for the next 13 hours. When I arrived at my seat in 36D, there was no one there. My hopes were that the seat next to mine would remain unoccupied. No such luck. The captain announced that today was a sold out flight, and soon an elderly lady took up residence in the seat next to me. We didn’t talk until later in the flight, at which point I found out she had had brain surgery and had trouble speaking even in Russian, her native language. The brain surgery certainly explained her pacing up and down the aisles and the blank stare on her face. Last year I had sat next to a portly Russian man who worked at the embassy, who had imparted some advice to me as to how to avoid jet lag. His advice was to drink until you pass out and then when you wake up you’re in Moscow. It worked last time, but this time was different unfortunately. The food and beverage service was very slow, so it was impossible to get enough booze in my system to fall asleep. When I did manage to get good and tired, I shut my eyes and almost fell asleep, but the two men in front of me would not shut up. They were the only ones on the plane talking, and in a moment of anger and bad judgement, I accidentally shushed them. They turned around and glared at me. I realized I would need to not make those same sorts of mistakes in Moscow, as they could turn out poorly.

One of the men I shushed spent a good deal of time standing up and talking to the girls he was traveling with, all the while staring me down, or so I thought. I was fairly certain that when I stepped off the plane, I was going to be beaten into a bloody pulp. After finishing his conversation he came up and approached me. Uh oh. Luckily, he actually just wanted to make conversation with someone and turned out to be quite friendly. He was a gymnast who had lived in the US for 16 years and was more than willing to help me practice my Russian and correct some mistakes. The experience reminded me that perhaps I should be less of an asshole.

I had tried to keep a low profile as an American the entire flight, but when we landed I was herded into the custom line for foreigners with the other Americans. Behind me was one of those organized mail order bride tour groups. A man sporting a beer gut, mustache, and a fishing shirt kept asking me for advice in a slow drawl. He told me he was in Russia to meet “a lady.” I wondered how much he had payed to correspond with her, and what his “lady” looked like. I felt pretty sorry for the women that were desperate enough to leave their lives behind to marry a man who knows nothing of their language or culture.

After customs it was off to buy my tickets for the Aeroexpress. I decided to go this route rather than pay $45 for a cab. In hind sight, that $45 might have been well worth it. But this is Russia, I had to suffer.

After purchasing my tickets, I waited for the train in a Starbucks, because they had free wifi. I ordered a parfait and a juice, but both for some reason tasted terrible so I discarded them. I had been purposely trying to avoid eating to minimize the chances of a bathroom emergency, but this was now coming back to haunt me. The nausea I discussed earlier was gnawing at me, so I found someone I felt I could trust and had them watch my bags while I went to the bathroom. I had forgotten about the condition of some Russian bathrooms, and was greeted by a terrible stench when I entered. Not much got accomplished in that bathroom.

After Starbucks, it was time to board the Aeroexpress. I took my seat and after a few minutes the train lurched forward and we began our journey. I looked out the window, and that’s when the lack of food and sleep began to first get to me. I had not slept in about 24 hours, and things in the window began to blur every once in a while, and in general it seemed like a bad acid trip. I felt like I was going to throw up. Luckily, the train stopped right before I was about to do that.

Next was going to be the hard part of my journey to the hostel: navigating the metro with 85 lbs of luggage (did I mention I overpacked?). Other than feeling stupid, and lugging around a heavy bag, the metro went fairly smoothly. I had done this before with two bags, so one wasn’t quite so bad. Also, it’s hard to get lost in the metro seeing as how it is a contained space and has definite stops and a map. When I got off of the metro, well, that’s different.