Pre-trip
This is part 6 in the eastern Europe trip series. I resolve to finish the 5 remaining parts before one year is up.
When Luke and I were thinking about the trip we were keen on visiting Russia. However, it seems like Sergey was much less keen about the idea. I don't know about Luke, but I have a great fascination with former eastern Bloc countries, how could I not visit Russia when I am in the area, and when would the next time I have the chance to travel there with somebody who spoke Russian be?
To visit Russia one must have an invitation. It seemed like the usual way to do it was to book a hotel in advance and have the hotel "invite" you. We were hoping that Sergey might have Russian connections and so could invite us, however we were not so lucky :) Now I also realize that it's great responsibility to personally invite travellers. We processed the paperwork through a Russian travel agency in Toronto. Sergey recounted that when he first phoned, he got a girl who quoted us a certain rate, and the next time he called he got a different girl who, upon hearing that he previously spoke to somebody else, gave him a better rate. We forked over $200 each for the visa and invitation.
We left on the morning of the 23rd April. I wrote my last final on the 21st April. Luke and I were supposed to go to a concert with Prabhakar on the 21st, Jamie Lidell I believed, but I was just not feeling up for it. One year later I came to realize that yeah, I do experience stress, and I became rather anti-social, and it's not healthy so I must try to deal with it. I just packed for the trip and packed up my room for the evening, as I was moving out of the next day and flying out the day after. My packing strategy was twice as many pairs of socks and underwear than shirts. I also packed a towel, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and tea bags. The laundry detergent proceeded to leak into the tea bags. Mmm... Mountain fresh tea. Powder detergent, next time. Travel reading: Dostoyevsky House of the Dead for the Russian theme.
On the evening of the 22nd we stayed at Sergey's house in Missassauga and as usual his parents welcomed us warmly and as usual I was impressed by their hospitality and their familial relationship. Alex, Sergey's stepdad, was quite a character. He introduced me to rock climbing, took vacation to ice-climb in Alaska, hiked a lot, etc.. Also he made a mean carrot salad. I really enjoyed being offered tea and conversation after dinner, and I wondered if it's a regular thing in their household. I started drinking mint tea there. They had interesting things to say when they heard about our itinerary, ranging from "don't take the Moldovan train" (they took one that was flooded), to advice about Russian police, to tidbits about living in Russia like the state-imposed commodity prices (the 3 ruble bun, the 300-something ruble vodka), and so on. I also enjoyed the Alex in Kazakhstan stories like hunting for mushrooms and using napalm for campfires.
Anyway! We flew Czech Airlines to Prague, then connect to Moscow. I thought the Prague-Moscow connection was codeshared by Aeroflot and was looking forward to boarding an Ilyushin or a Tupolev but it seemed like their fleet was gradually being replaced with Airbuses. For the first leg of the flight we were initially unable to get four seats together, but they were very helpful and rearranged the seating so more of us could sit together, after more people had checked in. They called me at the gate (my first time!) to notify me of my new seat. At this point Sergey was still sitting away from us though... We were put in the middle section. One random girl was seated between Luke and I. She was traveling with her friend, and when we asked her if she wanted to switch seats with Sergey so we could sit together and she could be closer to her friend, she refused, I supposed because it wasn't close enough to her friend. So Luke and I decided on an alternate strategy of talking across her about music. She somehow managed to put up with it for hours, but finally gave in. Victory was ours!
I totally passed out during the Prague-Moscow flight. The folding headrests on the newer Airbuses were the best. When I woke up I could see the brown terminals of the Sheremetyevo airport already. It was a grey day in Moscow. We filled in arrival forms and queued at immigration. While queuing, I tried to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. I am proud to say that a year later I still remember them, and also my random collection of Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish phrases, but it seemed like I learnt the Russian phrases aurally and so could not prove here that I still remembered! Sergey, Luke, and I passed through immigration without much problem, in fact I have to say it's less painful and raised my blood pressure less than passing through U.S. immigration, but for some reason Marge was held back. Luke and I were standing around thinking "OMG" "maybe it's because she's Taiwanese?" while Sergey went back to see what was going on. However I supposed they just felt like holding Marge there for 15 minutes? Never found out what happened. Now that I think about it, there could be no reason at all other than bureaucracy.
It's late afternoon, and time to go to the hotel. We dodged taxi drivers, took a crowded bus to a metro station (forgot which one. I was falling asleep on the bus, and just followed Sergey around), then took the metro to the hotel. At the metro station we saw the police stopped a girl and asked for her documents. We were just like... OMG... kept our heads down and walked away quickly. I remembered Alex's advice about the police.
Our hotel was a huge complex of grey blocky buildings, and we were in the "gamma" building. What I saw of Moscow so far was all dusty muted colors, other than the neon signs near the hotel, and I thought it was pretty exciting. I was traveling with friends to interesting places. It's going to be different from trips I've taken in the past, with my high school friends or with my family. I was fascinated with that part of the world and was glad to have the chance to travel there before the countries all join the EU. I'd count Luke in one of the single-digit number of people I called good friends, and even though I only knew Sergey for a couple months I thought we made a good connection (I had heard of his exploits from Luke for some time before), and it's very exciting to travel with them. Even though there was some conflict, and I got quite unhappy at some point, I thought it was a great experience. We semi-joked that we should take a trip together from time to time in the future, since we (well, me in particular) were going to be in different cities and countries, and maybe we would only see each other on trips. So far it hadn't happened yet, but who knows?
Checking in at the hotel was an adventure in itself, although I participated in little of it, and that's for the next post.
When Luke and I were thinking about the trip we were keen on visiting Russia. However, it seems like Sergey was much less keen about the idea. I don't know about Luke, but I have a great fascination with former eastern Bloc countries, how could I not visit Russia when I am in the area, and when would the next time I have the chance to travel there with somebody who spoke Russian be?
To visit Russia one must have an invitation. It seemed like the usual way to do it was to book a hotel in advance and have the hotel "invite" you. We were hoping that Sergey might have Russian connections and so could invite us, however we were not so lucky :) Now I also realize that it's great responsibility to personally invite travellers. We processed the paperwork through a Russian travel agency in Toronto. Sergey recounted that when he first phoned, he got a girl who quoted us a certain rate, and the next time he called he got a different girl who, upon hearing that he previously spoke to somebody else, gave him a better rate. We forked over $200 each for the visa and invitation.
We left on the morning of the 23rd April. I wrote my last final on the 21st April. Luke and I were supposed to go to a concert with Prabhakar on the 21st, Jamie Lidell I believed, but I was just not feeling up for it. One year later I came to realize that yeah, I do experience stress, and I became rather anti-social, and it's not healthy so I must try to deal with it. I just packed for the trip and packed up my room for the evening, as I was moving out of the next day and flying out the day after. My packing strategy was twice as many pairs of socks and underwear than shirts. I also packed a towel, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and tea bags. The laundry detergent proceeded to leak into the tea bags. Mmm... Mountain fresh tea. Powder detergent, next time. Travel reading: Dostoyevsky House of the Dead for the Russian theme.
On the evening of the 22nd we stayed at Sergey's house in Missassauga and as usual his parents welcomed us warmly and as usual I was impressed by their hospitality and their familial relationship. Alex, Sergey's stepdad, was quite a character. He introduced me to rock climbing, took vacation to ice-climb in Alaska, hiked a lot, etc.. Also he made a mean carrot salad. I really enjoyed being offered tea and conversation after dinner, and I wondered if it's a regular thing in their household. I started drinking mint tea there. They had interesting things to say when they heard about our itinerary, ranging from "don't take the Moldovan train" (they took one that was flooded), to advice about Russian police, to tidbits about living in Russia like the state-imposed commodity prices (the 3 ruble bun, the 300-something ruble vodka), and so on. I also enjoyed the Alex in Kazakhstan stories like hunting for mushrooms and using napalm for campfires.
Anyway! We flew Czech Airlines to Prague, then connect to Moscow. I thought the Prague-Moscow connection was codeshared by Aeroflot and was looking forward to boarding an Ilyushin or a Tupolev but it seemed like their fleet was gradually being replaced with Airbuses. For the first leg of the flight we were initially unable to get four seats together, but they were very helpful and rearranged the seating so more of us could sit together, after more people had checked in. They called me at the gate (my first time!) to notify me of my new seat. At this point Sergey was still sitting away from us though... We were put in the middle section. One random girl was seated between Luke and I. She was traveling with her friend, and when we asked her if she wanted to switch seats with Sergey so we could sit together and she could be closer to her friend, she refused, I supposed because it wasn't close enough to her friend. So Luke and I decided on an alternate strategy of talking across her about music. She somehow managed to put up with it for hours, but finally gave in. Victory was ours!
I totally passed out during the Prague-Moscow flight. The folding headrests on the newer Airbuses were the best. When I woke up I could see the brown terminals of the Sheremetyevo airport already. It was a grey day in Moscow. We filled in arrival forms and queued at immigration. While queuing, I tried to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. I am proud to say that a year later I still remember them, and also my random collection of Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish phrases, but it seemed like I learnt the Russian phrases aurally and so could not prove here that I still remembered! Sergey, Luke, and I passed through immigration without much problem, in fact I have to say it's less painful and raised my blood pressure less than passing through U.S. immigration, but for some reason Marge was held back. Luke and I were standing around thinking "OMG" "maybe it's because she's Taiwanese?" while Sergey went back to see what was going on. However I supposed they just felt like holding Marge there for 15 minutes? Never found out what happened. Now that I think about it, there could be no reason at all other than bureaucracy.
It's late afternoon, and time to go to the hotel. We dodged taxi drivers, took a crowded bus to a metro station (forgot which one. I was falling asleep on the bus, and just followed Sergey around), then took the metro to the hotel. At the metro station we saw the police stopped a girl and asked for her documents. We were just like... OMG... kept our heads down and walked away quickly. I remembered Alex's advice about the police.
Our hotel was a huge complex of grey blocky buildings, and we were in the "gamma" building. What I saw of Moscow so far was all dusty muted colors, other than the neon signs near the hotel, and I thought it was pretty exciting. I was traveling with friends to interesting places. It's going to be different from trips I've taken in the past, with my high school friends or with my family. I was fascinated with that part of the world and was glad to have the chance to travel there before the countries all join the EU. I'd count Luke in one of the single-digit number of people I called good friends, and even though I only knew Sergey for a couple months I thought we made a good connection (I had heard of his exploits from Luke for some time before), and it's very exciting to travel with them. Even though there was some conflict, and I got quite unhappy at some point, I thought it was a great experience. We semi-joked that we should take a trip together from time to time in the future, since we (well, me in particular) were going to be in different cities and countries, and maybe we would only see each other on trips. So far it hadn't happened yet, but who knows?
Checking in at the hotel was an adventure in itself, although I participated in little of it, and that's for the next post.