Airport Transit Blues

I arrived in Moscow yesterday, after the longest and most excruciating trip I’ve ever taken. I flew from Tampa to Chicago to Frankfurt to Moscow, with at least two hours of layover in each city and seven hours over the Atlantic. All told, I spent 22 hours in airports and planes, and since I unfortunately can’t sleep sitting up, my typical nervousness was exacerbated by maddening exhaustion by the time I made my descent into Domodedovo International.

The flight from Tampa to Chicago was uneventful. I cycled constantly between trying to sleep (I got maybe three hours of sleep the previous night) and trying to read Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, which I bought from Barnes and Noble the day before. I received a $50 gift card for Christmas, and I used it to stock up on paperbacks for my stay: two Dostoevskys (The Idiot being the other one) and two Thomas Pynchon novels. I heard that Pynchon required a lot of time and effort, so I figured, what better time to tackle him than during a three month stint on the other side of the world?

O’Hare International Airport in Chicago was very impressive. The biggest airport I’d seen previously was in Newark, so the walls of sleek new planes and massive terminals left me gawking. The other travelers darted nervously between information desks; major snowstorms were coming, and across-the-board delays seemed inevitable. I ignored the panic-mongers and got an authentic Chicago sandwich, complete with rotting lettuce and drenched in Italian dressing. At the armored currency exchange cart, a small Chinese woman gave me an incredulous stare when I asked her for rubles. “RUSSIAN RUBLES?” she exclaimed, as if to say, “Why in God’s name would this college kid be going there?”

With my errands done, I found my gate and watched the hodge-podge of cultures that one encounters at any airport. After a brief time watching businessmen, priests and soldiers of all stripes walk past, I came to a sudden realization. Even though I really don’t like cold weather, I regret living in Florida simply because warmer menswear looks so goddamn classy. Vests, trench coats, caps of all kinds, slick boots, leather gloves…it’s really easy to look like a bad motherfucker when it’s snowing. Of course, I wasn’t looking so hot myself in my second-hand ski parka, but I made plans to relocate to cooler environs after graduating.

Luckily, my flight to Frankfurt missed the dread storm by a couple of hours. I lucked out and got put in the “Economy Plus” section, which was like Economy except with another inch of legroom and a sense of unearned superiority. As the 777 crept across the Atlantic on the map in front of me, my sense of dread over the excursion I was taking grew to uncomfortable levels. People who know me will tell you that I’m usually not the kind of guy who follows through with things. But it was far too late to turn back now.

Frankfurt was more of a pain in the ass than I expected. To get from one gate to another, I went through a total of four passport checks and two security checkpoints, one of which required a full bag search. When I finally arrived at the inner sanctum of the Moscow gate, the nature and challenge of my trip became evident: for the first time, not a single loud American tourist was in sight. As my fellow passengers and I crammed into a bus to get to the runway, I wondered how long I would last in Moscow with my feeble grasp on the Russian language. My aisle mates on the plane were a young Russian woman and her adorable little daughter. The woman said something I couldn’t understand with a friendly inflection as I scooted into my window seat, and I offered a simple spacibo in return.

One thing I can credit for the final leg of my journey was the quality of the Russian airline food: my breakfast consisted of a warm blini stuffed with fruit and smothered in thick butter, as well as bread, meats, cheeses and yogurt. As with any good Russian meal, even pre-packaged airline fare, we received small cups of strong tea when we were done.

The baggage claim at Domodedovo was adorned with English-language signs with helpful hints for tourists. One warned “our Dear Passengers” about the risk involved with “unofficial taxis.” Apparently, the Russians call these “gypsy cabs:” unlicensed folks who use their private cars as cabs for extra cash. They charge much less than their official counterparts, but this of course comes with the risks associated with hopping into a random stranger’s car in Moscow and flashing cash around while speaking in broken Russian.

When I stepped out of customs, I saw why the authorities were so keen to warn foreign passengers about the gypsy cabs: the first thing I saw was a wall of squat, mustached men yelling “taksi!” at everyone who passed. One locked onto me and guaranteed “cheap fare,” and asked if I spoke German when I gave some international signs of refusal. He eventually gave up and scanned the crowd for another foreigner; meanwhile, I found another squat mustached man carrying a sign with my name. He spoke no English, but I gathered that he was waiting on a second student. He directed me to a seat in a dark corner near the bathroom, presumably to keep me out of sight of the cab drivers, and went back to the gate to wait.

After about a half an hour, the mustachio returned with our fellow passenger, a recent college graduate set to start a business internship. She had already lived in Russia, so I let her do all the talking with the driver. In the car, we talked a bit about what we were doing in Moscow while the driver bounced around to the pop techno beats on the radio.

The streets of the Russian capital reminded me of a trip I took to Kansas City, Missouri last year for a college press convention. All the features of a modern city were present, but the buildings betrayed their considerable age. I wondered what it must be like for people like our driver, who must have grown up in these same Khrushchev-era apartments, but who now share the streets with Ikea stores and Chevy dealerships.

The campus of Moscow University for the Humanities (MosGU) consisted of several tall buildings surrounded by fence and guarded at all entrances (I later found out that the school is not in the best of neighborhoods, so I was glad for the security). I was met at my dorm building by a Texan who served as something like an RA. We took a tiny elevator to the 9^th floor, where a locked section door concealed the block of rooms where I and about 15 other Americans would be spending the next three months. When I arrived, though, only two other students were around. The RA gave a quick tour, which included teaching me how to finagle my key to unlock the door (it took some practice to get right). He proceeded to pick up my bedding; the top cover had either a massive blood stain or a massive shit stain, but he assured me that these were much nicer than the bedding provided last year.

After 22 hours of stressful travel on three hours of sleep, I was grateful just to have a mattress. The next day and a half would be spent nursing a serious case of jet lag. I wouldn’t have to worry about my overwhelming sense of terror until Monday.