June 25-6. I leave SF to LA, luggage booked through to Moscow to be collected and then transferred to St. Petersburg. Waiting
at LA at the gate. Several hours to kill, gradually people arrive. Reid
described a chaotic trip the week before, his flight delayed for several hours
leaving from LA, missed connection in Moscow,
spending the night at Moscow airport and
catching the first flight in the morning to St. Petersburg. My trip looks promising. The
plane is at the gate and while no apparent activity seems to be occurring, it
is not still in the air from Moscow
(as happened to Reid). About 45 minutes before the scheduled boarding, people
begin lining up in an eventually serpentine line that stretches throughout the
waiting area. Aeroflot personnel begin roaming among us, checking our boarding
passes and passports (sometimes several times by different personnel as there
is no way to tell if we have been checked as we did not board the plane). I
talk to a person next to me on his way to a church he is pastor of in Mongolia and has traveled several times to Russia. I ask
why are they lining up, don't we have assigned seats? He says welcome to Russia,
something I am to hear frequently. Eventually we board (by areas despite the
line and lack of decorum) and leave an hour and a half late. I begin to worry
about making my connection. The flight is uneventful; I sit next to a young Russian
living in southern California working on
obtaining his USA
citizenship also going to St.
Petersburg. He kindly offers to assist me in the
connection between Moscow and St. Petersburg. During the flight, after the
sleep period, a Russian man wakes, stretches, scratches his belly, takes a
bottle from his duty free bag (I assume to be vodka) and drinks deeply for what
seems to be a long time, belches politely and looks around for breakfast. I
arrive in Moscow,
having missed my connecting flight and go to the baggage collection. No
baggage. My seatmate goes through customs and I expect to never see him again.
I go to lost luggage and experience also a recurring theme. As long as I refuse
to speak Russian (I cannot) eventually a fairly bilingual representative will
be incredibly helpful in a generally frustrating but usually successful way
(not this time). If you speak Russian, the dialogue is brisk and dismissive. I
am helped; the Russian seeking her luggage is not. I am given a form and told
how to fill it out; she is dismissed with a shrug and finality. Eventually, I
complete and receive a lost luggage form with several phone numbers to call both
in Moscow and St. Petersburg and pass through a now
deserted custom check point with no contact at all. I now (after several
confusing instructions) seek an Aeroflot office that is hidden behind an
unmarked and well hidden door in the southwest corner of the second floor of
the international terminal to transfer from my scheduled flight to the last
flight of the evening to St. Petersburg. I run to the shuttle to the domestic
terminal, force the closed door to re-open, get to the terminal with 20 minutes
to spare and find my seat mate patiently waiting for the same flight. The plane
to St. Petersburg
seems to be a freshly painted but otherwise unchanged airplane from the cold
war era. The light is too dim for reading; the tray table is broken and falls
onto my chest. During preparations for take off, white smoke gently wafts from
the vents overhead. The airline staff is friendly and competent. I arrive at St. Petersburg late in
the evening of the 26th, to see my elder son, exhausted and worried. We catch the
last shuttle into town and hitch a ride to his home. It is the early morning
hours and still light enough to read by.
I have arrived.
