Back to (Russian) Reality

I made it back to Moscow.

I left my mum's house Monday, at 9:30 Winnipeg time and arrived at my flat in Moscow around Tuesday 8:00pm local time. A 25 1/2 hour journey, 1 1/2 of those devoted to sleep.

If you think it was uneventful you know little about me, little about air travel and damn near nothing about Moscow.

What did I do with a whole day's worth of waking hours? Here's a rough breakdown:


-14h 45 minutes in the air (Winnipeg -Toronto-Montreal-Brussels-Moscow
-3h by car to and from airports
-2h clearing various security and customs checkpoints
-2.5h waiting on tarmacs after scheduled takeoff, because airline scheduling personnel are sadists
-1 h eating airport sushi because I'm a masochist
-1h searching for free wifi in airports (you win this round, Pearson Intl)
-1/2h talking to an insanely flirty Romanian waitress (you also win this round, Pearson Intl)
-1 1/2h watching Hot Tub Time Machine (I recommend this)
-2 1/2h watching Sex and the City II: Carrie Somehow Manages to Insult the Middle East with Shoes (I do not recommend this)
-Some 7 hours listening to my iPod, staring at strangers, and willing their children to shut up
-However long it took to partially finish 47 crossword puzzles (I also discovered that when you are hopped up on daytime cold meds, you think you are awesome at crossword puzzles. You are not. All your answers are wrong, and the stupid puzzles are unfair, anyway)
-1/2h watching Russians try to cheat the laws of physics to into amending the space restrictions of overhead compartments to accommodate the insane Russian love of all things duty-free


But after 22 hours I landed in Russia. And we are in the home stretch now, right?

Ha.

I have to say, getting through customs is easy. Way too easy. In my jet-lagged, cold-pilled, free-mini-bottles-of-wine state I have filled out all my entry documents with 2011, promising an exit date of 2012--a full year after my Russian visa expires. My border guard takes one look at my documents, one look at me and stamps my paperwork through, laughing.

So much for international security.

But all the better for me beause now I can get my luggage. Well, half of it. The very friendly (?!) Sheremetyevo airport personnel inform me that one of my suitcases is still in Brussels, and will be delivered to my home the next day. This being the suitcase with the smuggled peanut butter, I am understandably disappointed, but too tired to care. I do hate Belgium now, as much as anyone can hate a country best-known for its waffles and lace, but it's just time to get home already.

I make a quick beeline through customs where 3 completely unrelated people are trying to check through either melons or squash (what?) and nobody looks at me twice. Then to the airport doors where I argue with a few taxi drivers until I find one who will accept my price. I head to a car with the one who begins to freak out because I'm wheeling my own luggage. That's right! I've been away a little too long to remember this particular awesomely sexist perk of Russian alpha-maleness, and I gladly give him my bags.

"The traffic is terrible" he tells me as we climb in. I shrug. I've got a fixed rate and a comfy back seat--bring on the Moscow rush hour. It'll be the easiest thing I've done all day.

As we pull out of the Sheremetyevo lot, the dashboard starts beeping--Cabbie isn't wearing his seatbelt. His response to this situation is to complain about the noise and turn up the radio to drown it out. Three months ago, this probably wouldn't have fazed me, but I've been in the West for a whole season, land of worrying and caution and believing that the rules pertain to you. I've forgotten where I am. Hey, Putin was recently photographed on vacation killing whales, with a crossbow in a rubber raft. So yeah. Fuck seatbelts.

Five minutes into the drive and over the upbeat blare of 1980's britpop I hear a groan and the most polite Russian curse words this cabbie can muster. I look out the windshield. Traffic is backed up. Not Canada, "this might take an hour" sort of backed up. Moscow backed up. Here's an example of the worst this city has to offer:

And it's like this, but on the highway. Standstill for what looks to be kilometres. There are more cars on this one stretch of road than are on every street combined in a Winnipeg rush hour. I'm prone to exaggeration, I know, but not this time. This is a three or four hour traffic jam if I've ever seen one.

We wait patiently for ten motionless minutes. But there's a fixed rate at stake here, and Cabbie's having none of it. He pulls onto the shoulder of the road where traffic is at least moving--bumper-to-bumper at a slow crawl, but moving, nonetheless. Yet even that only works for so long and when the shoulder of the highway comes to its own standstill, more heroic efforts must be made. Without a word to me, Cabbie pulls off the highway into a ditch and proceeds to drive in it the length of the road for at least a full kilometre, offering only "You can't be expected to use roads in traffic like this." Just like that. Like: "You must use an umbrella when it rains." "You must sleep if you are sleepy." "If the roads are full, you must drive in the ditch." Common sense, right? When after about a kilometre there's no more ditch to be had, we pull back onto the main road. I clap heartily, because bloody hell, well-done, man. And he's pretty proud of himself.

Our celebration is cut short as something rattle-bangs under the car. We pull into a gas station where Cabbie gets out, leans under the car and--I swear to god--rips out the offending piece of machinery with his bare hands. Then we get gas and it's back to the highway. We painstakingly crawl through another 15-20 minutes of traffic, Cabbie shaking his head and saying "Moskva, Moskva, Moskva" (I imagine for my benefit) until we reach the MKAD.

And this is his chance to make up for lost time. To make up for it at 125km per hour. Picking and weaving through the still-heavy traffic, we approach speeds I last felt on the airport runway. Of course this, thinks Cabbie, is an excellent time to chat.

"Where are you from?" he predictably asks.
"Canada. But I live in Moscow."
"Canada?! Beautiful! Beautiful place. Where is Canada? It's in Germany, right? You speak German?"

Um.

Now I ask you: is there a good, honest response to this question when this man is driving at the speed of death and has already demonstrated that he may in fact be capable of tearing metal with his bare hands? No, there isn't. The passenger in me warns the teacher in me to shut the hell up.
"Um. I speak English."
"Aha. England. Canada's in England*. Alright." We zip past a semi so fast I can't even read the side.
"Mmhmmm. England."


We reach my block two hours after we left the airport. I tell him he can let me out on the road, where one of my neighbors is ineplicably walking a pig on a leash, but he insists on driving me to the door. Seeing as how I haven't really slept in more than a day, am still full of cold pills, and am not entirely sure that the pig was not a hallucination, I decide to let him, and direct him to the guard house.

He talks to security and tells them he's dropping me off from the airport, that I live here. One security guard peers through the windows.

"Yeah, okay," he says, signalling that the gate be lifted, "Yeah, she's ours."

Yes. Yes, I am. I belong here. I made it. I'm home. Finally. Yes, I am one of yours.

"It's okay." the first guard relays to the second "It's Lydia."

Whatever. I'll take it.





*I'd like to point out, for the record, that Cabbie's knowledge of international geography is in NO WAY representative of the average Russian's knowledge of international geography. This man is a special case. In every way.

2008 A SPAZZ ODYSSEY: BOARDING PASSES, SECURITY CHECKPOINTS, AND RICE KRISPIES SQUARES: PART TWO

September 24th

5:38 pm London time, 11:38 am Winnipeg time
Sitting with a Stella’s in Heathrow airport, waiting for my flight to Budapest. The Stella here tastes way better, interestingly. I’m about to eat some kind of local meat pie. So how was my day?

*flash back*

2:45 pm London time, 8:45am Winnipeg time
I completely slept through the fllight. Despite the airline serving what appeared to be an eraser sandwich for breakfast (a British delicacy?) all went well. I arrived and had myself an airport shower (it involves WetNaps, a facecloth and a toothbrush/paste). I felt rested, refreshed, and unintimidated by big, scary Heathrow airport.

I got my bags, and exited Heathrow 4 for Heathrow 5. A very helpful airline worker suggested I take the 490 bus, and even helped me and my ridiculously heavy luggage on board. So nice! It was a lovely ride, picturesque, with quaint, typically British buildings and fields…perfect. But wait--is that…a farm? British people are weird, so I’ll accept it. Oh, hey, a school! Seems awfully close to the airport, but okay. Hey, that guy smoking looks awfully grouchy. Guess his business isn’t doing to well today. It’s probably hard around the airport to sell…washing machines?

What. The. Fuck.

3:45 pm London Time, 8:45 am Winnipeg time
So now I’m standing across the street from where the 490 bus left me luggage-laden and cursing that idiot airline worker in the middle of…

I don’t know where I am, exactly, but if Little Bo Peep comes along looking for her sheep, I’m going to ask her to help me find terminal 5 as well.
Luckily, It is no more than a few minutes before a 490: Heathrow 5 comes along, and patiently waits while I load my five--yes, five--moronically heavy bags onto the public bus. Thank God it’s free. And at least people seem to find the sight of me grunting and apologising and wincing in pain to be hilarious enough to take the edge off how annoyed they must be by my taking up so much time and space on what otherwise seems to be a remarkably efficient public transport system.

4:55 pm London Time, 9:55 am Winnipeg Time
My arms are killing me. As I check my bags for the last time before Moscow, I secretly hope that they get lost. I never want to see nor carry them again, at this point.

5:15pm London Time, 10:15 am Winnipeg Time
I go through yet another metal detector, and am forced to remove my boots again. As she is patting me down (a little excessively in the boob-area, I might add) the security woman is joking around with me.
“So are you headed home?” she asks.
I almost say no, before I realise that, yes. I’m headed to my new home.
“I guess, sort of,” I manage.
She nods.
“You can always tell who’s heading for home,” she says.
A tiring day. Time for a beer and some kind of local food, I think…

That catches you up to date on phase 2.

The Rice Krispies Squares Total stands at 5.

TO BE CONTINUED…

2008- A Spazz Odyssey: Boarding Passes, Security Checkpoints and Rice Krispies Squares: PART ONE

September 23

9:30 am: My mother comes into her guest room to wake me up. I beg for five more minutes and she leaves. Then I sit bolt upright in bed-I move to Moscow today! It’s like the first day of school! But with a really long bus ride. On a flying bus.

11:00 am: Call Jon--he’s driving me to the airport. No answer.

11:30 am: “It’s FIVE DEGREES in Moscow today” my friend calls to tell me. Sigh. I know. You are the third person to tell me so today.

11:40 am: Call Jon. No answer. Jeez.

11:50 am: Call Jon. No answer. Are you kidding me?

12:05 pm: Call Jon. No answer. Bastard! Ohmigod--did I pack socks? Must go check! I leave a “call me or else” message.

12:15 pm: A nazdarovya shot of vodka with my sister. Conscious of vodka breath, I eat half of one of the Rice Krispie Squares my mum bought for me for my trip through the airports. Eating one doesn’t make a dent in the rations, of course. It’s a gigantic box, man.

12:30 pm: I call Jon and leave a “you suck, I’m calling a cab” message. My sister assures me that he is not cruel, but likely asleep. I inform her that I am too stressed to differentiate at this point. This is resolved with half a nazdrov’ya shot and another half Rice Krispie square.

12:45 pm: A very sleepy Jon calls. A very panicked Larissa yells. A very calm Jon assures me that I do NOT need to take a cab, and that he’ll be picking me up as soon as possible. I feel a mixture of relief and rage. After all, I TOLD him to stay up all night, drinking coffee and taking ice baths until I called for my ride. Some people just can’t take directions

2:00 pm:
“You’re over. Eight pounds.” The woman at the airport accuses me in a tone that suggests that she believes the overage is due to eight pounds of dead kittens folded between my sweaters. I tell her that I am moving, and will happily pay overage fees. “No--you have to take it out!” she says with a grimace--she hates me because now she will have to wipe kitten blood from the airport floor. “We don’t even let you take suitcases THAT heavy.
“And there IS still and overage fee because it’s more than fifty pounds anyway.”
Son of a %!6@#.

2:15pm
“Would you be crying right now if you had to do this alone?” Jon asks me, as he sits cross-legged on top of my checkered Liz Claiborne suitcase patiently wrenching a gold sequined stiletto heel within the confines of the zipper.
“No way,” I say, “You should see what I had to leave behind in Vegas. There, I was eleven pounds over.” And that was one suitcase I was NOT wanting to open in the middle of an airport.
Jon finds a rogue Rice Krispies Square and now it’s his… The man earned it.

2:30 pm
We triumphantly arrive, nine pound lighter and ten feet farther, at the entrance to customs. Despite his valiant effort hauling my massive suitcases into the airport and now hauling a bag of shampoos and lotion back to my mother’s house, he is not permitted to come any further. He gives me a quick look, clearly wondering if this overpacking, now shampooless woman who has been crying with her sister half the morning can make it any further alone without killing a border guard.
“Are you moving away?!” Boarding Pass Checker Lady asks me with keen interest
“Yes”
“But… just you?” she says with big eyes, looking between me and Jon.
“Yeah.” I manage in my very best please-fuck-off-this-is-none-of-your-business-and-don’t-you-see-this-everyday-anyway-you-nosy-twit- tone.
“Ooohhh…”
This had better be her first day here.
So we move the four steps to the left that we are permitted for goodbye as Boarding Pass Lady sits at her desk fifteen feet away, still looking at us. But whatever--you don’t get to do these things twice. I’m caring more about the fact that there is no such thing as a long enough goodbye. As I come out of a hug, I see Boarding Pass Lady no more than two feet behind me, leaning on a door frame with her very best I-am-not-listening-I’m-watching-the-airport-behind-you-hmm-hmm-hmm-Idon’t-notice-a-thing- look on her face. She leaves when we notice her, only to be replaced moments later by a border security guard with his best I-am-protecting-this-doorway-and-must-stand- near-you-and-am-not-some-emotional-voyeur look on his face.
Sigh.
I ignore them for as long as I can, before entering customs sans shampoo and sans my boy. As I drag my worldly possessions up to the customs desk, I note behind me the security guard and Boarding Pass Lady whispering and looking at me.
Someone at Northwest airlines please bring them newspapers for their next shift.

2:36 pm:
“So what’s this pretty Canadian lady doing moving away?” asks Do-You-Have-Anything-To-Declare-Guy.
Seriously, don’t need to get hit on right now, Declare Guy. Save it for a girl who hasn’t been crying all morning and didn‘t just have to give up her toiletries.

3:30 PM:
The Winnipeg Airport international terminal is very…. 80’s. And woodsy. And small. It looks like the community centre at your local lake. I keep looking for the guy selling 50/50 tickets. Eating a Rice Krispies Square, but I hope they have crackers or something one the plane…I’m getting hungry

5:45 pm:
I wake up to discover that the plane should be landing…it’s not…there’s a storm… MAN this guy sitting beside me is HUGE…his thumb is the size of a Snickers bar…I can’t believe I fell asleep on such a short flight…I bet they’d be mad if I asked for my coffee and crackers now, eh? So hungry…. I’m eating a Rice Krispies square. I’d offer one to the giant because he‘s kinda looking at mine, but I won’t, because he’s trying to use his cell phone so he’s a douche. Besides, Gigantor probably doesn’t eat Rice Krispies squares…He probably eats, like, babies, or something…

7:49 pm: Sandwich and a beer in a Wolfgang Puck Express…found the note my little sister hid in my luggage. Yeah, I cried again.

8:01 pm:
The total of Rice Krispie Squares eaten stands at four, plus one given away.

8:36 pm:
I am sitting on the floor in Minneapolis terminal G, because on the floor under the phone banks is where there is a plug for me to charge my computer. And I am not at all easily embarrassed.




This is me, sitting on the floor. (This is the best shot I got--one solid minus to travelling alone)


They are BLASTING CNN in this waiting room--the interview of the president of Iran. They are yelling about religion and the murder of women and children. I wondder if anyone else6: thinks this is unusual airport viewing?
I want to sleep on the plane--I’m taking a sleeping pill.


11:54 pm:
I am sitting on the floor in Minneapolis terminal G, because on the floor, under the phone banks is where there is a plug for me to charge my computer. And this is not an accidental re-type. We all boarded the plane, we were sitting there for awhile. I started to get that yucky taste in my mouth from the sleeping pill, so I ate something (we’re at 5, now, plus a giveaway) I’m thinking I might offer one to my seatmate this time because he is very friendly and not scary looking. Then more waiting. Then the news that we have to deplane, there is something wrong with the breaks, and we’re getting a new one.
I have to catch a plane in London tomorrow, but had nearly a twelve hour stopover (thankfully) so all this will do is cut down my loitering time in Heathrow.
No, my only problem is that I HAVE TAKEN THE FREAKING SLEEPING PILL. I want to curl up on this floor and nap, now…
Oh wait--I do have another problem--I’m drinking a Diet Mountain Dew. It’s all that was left. It is beyond revolting. I’d rather they had taken off in the bad-brakes plane than make me drink this. Sadists at Northwest Airlines…



TO BE CONTINUED...