When we landed I went through the doors to go through customs. There were a bunch of gates that said "For Russians" and one that said "For Diplomats". Well...I knew I wasn't Russian, but I didn't know what a diplomat was...so I stood in that line for a bit thinking it was the only other choice. Then I saw a university sports team from Canada going through some other gates that said "Passport Control", so I left the diplomat line and followed them. It turns out that was the right choice. I'm glad I found that out before getting to the diplomat counter and having them look at me like I was crazy! So I waited in yet another long line, and then it was my turn at the counter. The lady didn't say one single word. She took my passport, examined it for what felt like seven hours, did something on her computer, scanned my passport and Visa, printed off a paper for me and sent me on through the gate. Kind of creepy.
Next I went to get my luggage. I waited and waited until I was the only person still standing there and the belt stopped moving. The lump in my throat came back when I realized my red suitcase with the pink hula girl tag was not there. I went over to the lost and found counter and stood in line for another seven hours. Well...more like 20 minutes or so. When I got up to the desk she told me to go check the belt again. Knowing it was not going to be there, I went back anyway, only to find out that it was. Sheesh!
Then I headed over to domestic departures to figure out what my new flight was going to be since my original one had been cancelled due to the delay in Toronto. She gave me a new ticket with the departure time of 10:35pm. It was only 11:00am at that time! In her broken English she communicated that I should go upstairs to the Aeroflot information desk and they would put me in a hotel. I got upstairs and found the desk, which had probably about 60 people waiting in line. I waited for over an hour, feeling like the line never moved. I felt like I could barely stand anymore, and there was one moment where I was sure I was going to throw up. I didn't, thank goodness! When I got to the front of the line I found out that the hotel line was one window over. So if I knew how to read Russian I would have saved myself a lot of time standing in line! Luckily there was a girl in one of the lines who spoke English who helped me out (another lady kept trying to talk to me but she didn't speak English...the only word I understood from her was "sprechen", and that's all thanks to Madigascar, where one guys says, "You sprechen?" and the other guys says, "Yeah, I sprechen." ANYway, I was so extremely exhausted and couldn't hold back the tears that kept coming as I was trying to figure all of this out! I felt like such a dork! But hey...I'd been traveling for 20 hours already, only to find out I had another 13 hours left to go!
I boarded a shuttle bus that came to the hotel, and got a room, and a complimentary lunch and dinner. I was so exhausted, so I skipped lunch and had a 3 hour nap instead, followed by a shower. I felt so homesick and just wanted to turn around and come home. But I knew that was just a result of exhaustion and traveling alone for so long. I am glad that it will be the middle of the night by the time I get to Novosibirsk so that I can just go right to bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment