If you missed the first installment about my trip to Russia, you can find it HERE.

Our first flight was from Orlando, Florida, to Miami.  It was a short flight and a small plane that had me blaring music in my headphones, closing my eyes, and gripping the armrests, pretending I was anywhere else.   I was relieved when we landed and had some time on the ground before we boarded our first international flight.  We would first stop in Shannon, Ireland, for a layover, followed by another flight to Moscow.  A couple of days of rest and brief sightseeing were planned in Moscow before catching a 24-hour train ride east to Izhevsk.  Everything was planned and timed with some breathing room and breaks, but the flights needed to go according to schedule.  Our quick flight to Miami was the last leg of the journey that went off without a hitch.  The rest did not go according to schedule.

Our flight to Shannon, Ireland, was delayed.  It wasn’t just slightly delayed.  Our plane was still an ocean away when it was supposed to be in Miami getting cleaned and fueled for our flight.  It wouldn’t arrive and be ready for our flight until the next morning.  We were already at the terminal, with no luggage and no options for finding a comfortable place to spend the night.  Our group received meal vouchers from the airline and used them to get some dinner.  We lingered as long as we could at the restaurant before walking to our gate.

As best as I can remember, our terminal looked like a massive warehouse with unnecessarily high ceilings, filled with row after row of chairs facing towards the towering windows.  The chairs were connected to make benches, but the seats were curved plastic divided by fixed armrests.  Of course, the intention is to make them reasonable for sitting, but impossible for stretching across a few for stranded passengers to sleep.  We piled our backpacks and carry-ons and sat in the hard chairs, waiting for time to pass.  As the last flights for that day departed and the last passengers and crew left the area, we realized our group was alone and locked in.  I still wonder whether we were simply overlooked or permitted to be there, but everything was closed, all the airport staff members were gone, and we had the free run of the place.  That would never happen in the post-9/11 era, but it was pretty wild even then.

Our group played cards on the floor.  We invented games to play in the rows of chairs.  A few of the guys sled down the smooth metal divider between two escalators they discovered while exploring areas we had access to.  Tiredness finally won out over the novelty of being alone in an airport terminal, and I curled up on the floor and listened to music on my Discman until I dozed.  I never really slept.  The fluorescent lights were bright, and the air conditioning was pumping to cool a cavernous room usually full of warm bodies in the summer Florida heat.  I woke up shivering and sore, and as dawn light started to glow through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the terminal began to fill with new passengers awaiting their early flights.  I took my backpack to the bathroom to brush my teeth and freshen up a bit before it was our turn to board.

Spending several hours in coach on an Aeroflot plane that still permitted smoking in the mid-90s wasn’t the most delightful experience of my life, and that misery was only amplified by the fact that I was starting the bulk of the trip on almost no sleep.  I actually remember more about the flight home than the flight there, and the lack of sleep is probably the culprit.  I do remember playing cards with the people sitting around me, writing in my journal, listening to music, and probably dozing as much as possible.  I don’t remember the meal, and there was no in-flight entertainment to remember or forget.  We really are very spoiled with ever-present entertainment now, aren’t we?  I remember thinking as a child how magical it would be to be able to bring a small TV with me on long trips.

I honestly can’t recall the time of day when we landed in Shannon, Ireland.  I know it was daylight because I remember looking out the airplane window at the bright green patchwork of the Irish countryside.  It really was as green as they say.  We didn’t have very much time in the Shannon airport, but we all visited the restroom to freshen up again, and I bought a scone from an airport pub to experience something sort of Irish while I was there.  I kept the napkin for my scrapbook and even took a picture with the man behind the bar, as if the airport were a tourist destination rather than just a place we were passing through.  Because of our delayed flight in Miami, we didn’t have much time before we were loaded onto our next plane headed for Moscow.  Again, I don’t remember much about that flight.  I do remember feeling overwhelmed at the hours I would still need to be on a plane.

We landed in Moscow in the middle of the night, which made customs even tenser and more terrifying.  It helped that my dad was an old hat when it came to traveling in Russia, and he walked us through it with confidence.  As I remember, customs was in what felt like a basement.  The fluorescent lights all seemed dimmed, or perhaps more than half the bulbs were burnt out.  The customs officers were sharp, barking, and stonefaced.  We had to open almost every suitcase and bag, unpacking and then repacking as quickly as possible.  As a fluent Russian speaker, my dad took the lead and eventually, after what seemed like forever, we emerged from customs.  I don’t know enough about the ins and outs of Russian customs, but at the time, it felt like intimidation was probably the point.

The sun had risen by the time we emerged from the airport.  When we stepped outside, it felt like that moment you walk out of a movie matinee, not expecting the brightness and being shocked and blinded by it.  We were loaded into vans that were supposed to take us around Moscow to see a few tourist highlights, but it took us straight to our hotel instead.  We were going to stay in that hotel the previous night, but since our flight was delayed, we only had a few hours before our train left Moscow for Izhevsk.  We would go to the hotel, take showers, and grab what sleep we could before going to the train station.  I remember taking a shower, changing into fresh clothes, and then collapsing dressed on the bed, hoping to nap until the minute before we had to depart.

When traveling on an overnight train in Russia in the mid-90s, there were no dining cars or vendors who came through with snacks.  You had to bring your snacks and meals, or buy something to eat through the window from sellers who swarmed the train at busy stations.  The latter option could be risky since you had no idea how the food was prepared.  Well, that was pretty much true of most of the places we ate at, but the degrees of trustworthiness varied when it came to food and beverages.  For us, my dad bought some bottles of water and orange soda, cheese, cured meat, butter, a few pierogi, and a loaf of bread.  He’s a fan of Russian black bread, which can be as dry as sawdust, so I was glad that he purchased something similar to a French baguette.  When it was time to eat, he would pull out the spread and cut pieces of meat, cheese, and bread with his folding pocket knife, and we would eat everything with our hands.  It would be called a charcuterie board now, but then, it was just a make-do train picnic.

Living in Germany, I had traveled by train before, but I had never taken one overnight.  Our group was spread out over several train compartments.  Our numbers worked out so that the men and women could be in separate compartments, but my dad and I were the odd two out.  We ended up in a car with a middle-aged Russian man.  I was absolutely mortified at the thought of sharing a cabin with a strange man, but it was just the way of it, and there really wasn’t anything to be done.  At that stage of our trip, though, I was so exhausted that I shoved down my concerns, claimed the top bunk over my dad’s bed, and slept.

As the train took us further east, it also took me further from everything that felt comfortable and familiar.

I had always been a picky, persnickety child who didn’t even like using the school restrooms.  I would rush home every day with a full bladder, tearing through the apartment to finally go to the bathroom.  While I ate most vegetables other kids didn’t (I loved artichoke, asparagus, and zucchini), I was a picky eater.  I once wouldn’t drink milk at a friend’s house because it was in a funny-looking carton with a cow on it.  I was only going to drink grocery store milk, not cow’s milk.  Yeah, I just didn’t know, and the unfamiliar carton and graphics were enough to make me refuse it.  I wanted my water filtered, cold, and served with ice cubes. (That’s still true, and I have to beg for ice when traveling in Europe!)  I didn’t like the grit and salt of the beach, so I would sit in a five-gallon bucket of clean hose water.

I was headstrong and fearless in many areas, but unfamiliar foods, public bathrooms in foreign countries (other than Germany, because the Germans know how to do immaculate public facilities), sharing a train compartment with a stranger, navigating a culture I didn’t understand…all of those things were showing me this was going to stretch me as a person, and I didn’t know if I was flexible enough.  I wasn’t even at our destination, and I wanted to go home.

But, between using the train car bathroom, which was quite the experience in itself, getting yelled at by a stranger in Russian for a reason I still don’t understand, and eating a day-old pirogi stuffed with a highly suspicious mystery meat, I walked the narrow window-lined hall of our train car and watched the Russian countryside go by, recognizing its beauty and the privilege it was to be there.  I had seen the Berlin Wall, passed through Checkpoint Charlie, visited East Germany and what was once Yugoslavia.  It had never even occurred to me that I would be able to freely travel to Russia as a 17-year-old, yet here I was.

It took me a couple of weeks, but I eventually decided to embrace it all…