WARNING: Snow Globes! or, How to Pick Up TSA Guys

(Sorry this has taken so long to update, but I don't have internet access near where I live. I need to go to school to get online...so get ready for barrage of old posts!)

This post is brought to you by the words смешные людей, meaning "funny people."

Privet from the Motherland! I am writing this blog post from the comfort of my hotel room in Sankt-Peterburg! After a whirlwind 24 hours, there is nowhere else I would rather be than in the company of my down pillow. I’ve never traveled abroad, before, so the international airport scene was terrifyingly exciting. What could have been a series of frustrating disasters ended up being anticlimactically routine. For posterity’s sake, I’ll walk you through each leg of my trip.

I arrived at the Phoenix airport very early because I was worried about my boarding pass situation. I had called Lufthansa the day before to check in for my Frankfurt > Petersburg flight but was unable to do so, and they told me I’d have to deal with the situation when I got to the airport. They took my bags (which weighed less than 50 lbs, thank the Lord) and shuffled me through to security. The TSA guys stopped me and checked my carry-on for a very suspicious item: my 4-inch Arizona snow globe (well, it’s a sand globe, really, since there’s no snow in the desert). The TSA guy was very nice and chatted with me about traveling abroad and souvenirs and jazz (while weighing my host family’s gift candle and telling me it smelled good)...After being ineffably charming for a while, I was able to go to my gate. The flight to Chicago was pleasant; I even got to listen to FAA air chatter by plugging my headphones into the armrest! Modern technology for the win!

I had a 3 hour layover in Chicago, during which time I took advantage of my last opportunity to use my phone (it doesn’t work abroad). Lunch was exorbitantly expensive and relatively unexciting, but it got the job done. The flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany was 8 hours LONG. I watched Shrek the 4^th, bits of Toy Story 2 and The Losers, and an episode of Monk before I got really bored. I spent the rest of the time trying to study my Russian grammar book, listening to New Age armrest music, watching the moon reflect off the Atlantic Ocean (!!) and discovering the meaning of futility, aka trying to go to sleep.

The hardest part of my trip was picking my way through Frankfurt’s airport. Not only was there a ridiculous amount of construction going on to the point where navigation involved a 3 mile hike around chain-link fences, but also the signs supposedly telling you where to go and what to do when you are flying in from another country were pitifully scarce and difficult to follow. Thus, when you are new to being a world traveler, are lost in a foreign airport with people speaking a language you don’t understand and are seemingly too busy to give you a quick answer as to whether you need to pass through Customs and Passport Control…it can be frustrating. I spent a good hour getting to the correct terminal and gate (I had to ask several Lufthansa employees where my St. Petersburg flight would be, since the monitors only listed the terminal and not the gate). Along the way, I went through security and had my bag searched, again. This time, the rather cute, English-speaking TSA-type guy apologized profusely for having to rifle through my carry-on to investigate my nefarious candle. (I thought that would be the end of my suitcase troubles, but Lufthansa confiscated my bag, along with everyone else’s, claiming we could only take one carry-on OR one personal item. They didn’t charge us to check in our carry-on, however, since they had made the mistake of telling all of us that two bags were acceptable. Silly Germans. Trix are for kids.) Once in the terminal, I had to figure out how to contact my parents to let them know I was okay. I ended up using some internet kiosks (at 37 cents a minute!) to go on Facebook. I am now officially a gigantic FB fan for allowing me to communicate with my family in less than 1.5 minutes.

The flight from Germany to St. Petersburg was rather pleasant. I sat next to a fellow study-abroader named Peter and discussed our mutual fears about Russian grammar and the giant unknown of our host families. Landing at Petersburg’s Pulkovo 2 airport was exhilarating and surprising in multiple ways. Actual touch-down on the tarmac was more akin to a moderate rollercoaster than a plane landing (Frankfurt’s had been equally as jarring), but needless to say, we all survived. However, I was surprised to see so many TREES at the airport. We probably taxied for ten minutes after landing before we made it to the gate. It felt like we were in a giant forest that happened to have an airstrip running through it.

After deplaning, we went through passport control and got our migration cards stamped, which basically entailed waiting in a line until it was your turn to hand a surly woman your passport, have her glare at your for an instant, type something into her computer, and usher you on so she could not smile to the next annoying foreigner invading her country. After that excitement was baggage claim, which was uneventful except for my discovery that my once-clean orange luggage had delightful black smears on the front pockets. Aside from the new refuse-chic art adorning my bags, nothing was damaged. I and my twenty new best friends from America then breezed through customs and were ushered off to our hotel. And then, our adventure in Russia began…

Until next time,

Katya