We are home. In Davis. With dogs. And I'm ready to revisit yesterday. When we crashed at Mike and Char's last night, we realized we had been up for 28 hours (at least), and I'm not sure how much sleep the others got en route, but if I got any at all, it was only for a couple of minutes.
Now I could say that we got on the plane in Moscow, changed planes at JFK and arrived in San Francisco at about 9 p.m. But what fun would that be? No...the whole story is MUCH more complicated (and painful) than that!
Let's start with the night before. We thought it was the last time we would see our favorite server, Mary Jane, and we had a tearful farewell and gave her a tip. We ended up seeing her the next morning, too, but we had already had our tearful farewell. There were several servers we liked, but the last week, we always went to MaryJane's table and she got to setting it up for us when she saw us come into the dining room.
I had a bad night and was awake at 3:30 a.m., so by 4, I was up walking the decks and taking pictures of the sunrise. It was strange to remember that just a little over a week before, in St. Petersburg, it never got this dark at any point during the night!
I even found a fisherman fishing off the dock by the boat at 4 a.m.
Our instructions were to have our bags out in front of our room by 7 a.m. I got mine out early--obviously the first in the hall to have bags out (you can see the "shop" which was across the hall from our room...lots and lots of beautiful, too expensive things to tempt us!)
By 7:30 we were on the bus headed for the Moscow airport. For one last time, we got to wave goodbye to Hotel Manager Dieter, who always waved whenever a bus took off on an excursion. This time he was joined by Katherin too. Unfortunately I was on the wrong side of the bus and missed my last chance to take a picture of these people we had come to enjoy so much.
Our nightmare began when Misha took us all to the gate which would let us into the check-in area, told us to go through the gates, and then bid us all goodbye. Like sheep, we slowly filed into the holding area and suddenly a woman asked who was going to Atlanta and who to New York. We were in the New York group and she began waving her arms at us and yelling "Go home! Go home! Come back one hour."
Kind of in a daze, we went back out the gate and milled around in the lobby. There were almost no chairs to sit on and we didn't have a clue what was happening or why we were standing there with no idea of what we were supposed to do.
Finally we tentatively started going back into the holding area again and this time we were permitted to put our bags through the scanners. I was surprised at how easy it was--no removal of shoes, no removal of computer. Piece o'cake! I could like this. Oh...how innocent I was!!!
From the scanners we went to the passport screener. Fortunately, before we went through that gate, Walt checked our tickets for the second half of our flight, from JFK to San Francisco and discovered that the woman at the first desk had issued him two boarding passes for the same seat, both in my name. So he went back and got that fixed. While he was doing that, we lost Mike and Char. I assumed they were way ahead of us, but it turned out that somehow in San Francisco, Air France had canceled Mike's return ticket and he had no reservation at all, so they had to go to Air France to get that straightened out. (Now I understand why Viking gets you to the airport four hours before flight time!)
After we'd passed through the passport control, then we went through another scanner. This was one of those full body scans, where we stood inside a glass tube with our arms upraised and they checked us out. There we took off our shoes. Still no need to remove the computer.
Naturally we were flying from the very last gate and naturally there were no moving walkways or tram cars you could ride. It seemed like forever that we wended our way in and out of Duty Free shops. I loved the cigarette shops with all the big colorful ads for cigarettes, all with HUGE signs that said "Smoking kills" slapped over them!
We finally got to our gate and settled in for the long wait for a plane. Beatrice, from New York, with whom we had become quite friendly, was concerned about her husband Wally, who has lots of health problems and who should never have had to walk that distance to the gate, but they had been unable to find a wheelchair for him.
After we had been sitting at the gate for about an hour, some security guy with a big gun told us we all had to get up and go back outside of the gate area again and line up for another screening. This seemed silly since we had all been in and out of the area for a long time, but we shuffled back outside and stood in line. Then, when we had totally jammed up the aisle, he told we we had to separate into men and women. When I tried to move into the women's line, I ran into these two...
...the guy on the left didn't want to budge an inch and the guy on the floor (who had been sleeping there since before we first got to the gate) didn't want to move his computer, though told me he'd be very upset if I stepped on it.
I still don't understand the need for this screening. It seemed completely arbitrary. Char was patted down from head to toe and her luggage opened and searched. Another guy's sandals were given about 5 minutes of checking. When it was my turn, the woman looked at my passport and motioned me to go through, without body patting or luggage inspection.
When the screening was finished, the guy in uniform with the big gun paced up and down in front of us, almost daring us to try to leave the area. We all behaved ourselves very well. I hoped he wouldn't check my camera to make sure I had not taken any photos of McDonald's while in Russia.
Finally we got on the plane for the 10+ hour flight to JFK. The flight was pretty uneventful, other than the memorable flight safety video which featured a woman with more Botox than Lisa Rinna.
Walt was asleep before the plane even took off.
They gave us free earphones and the in-seat TVs had lot of options, including a choice of about six movies, all free. Invictus was one of the movie choices and I bawled like a baby all the way through it. Strange--you know what the story is, you even know how it all comes out, but it was so emotionally moving that I just couldn't stop crying. If you have not seen this movie--RENT IT NOW. Despite all my tears, it was incredibly uplifting.
The food on the plane was OK, though it seemed to take forever to feed us. At one point I realized that we were a group of people who had been fed five course meals three times a day, plus a mid-afternoon snack, for the past nearly two weeks and after the meal they gave us after take-off it was seven hours before they gave us anything but peanuts to eat. Best part was the Russian Baskin-Robbins ice cream.
JFK was an experience. There is no other word for it. Well, I could probably think of lots of words for it, but none of them would be very nice. I've decided that customs areas must be what it's like being in Purgatory--or have they decided there is no Purgatory. It is definitely like waiting at the gates of hell. We all optimistically filed off the plane and down into the bowels of the airport into this mass of people standing in line. Standing in line. Have I mentioned standing in line? The problem was that the line wasnt moving. At all. At first I thought it was because we had filled the corridor from wall to wall and aways up there was a gate that was supposed to divide us into two groups and so what seemed to be going on was that we were merging from a full corridor to a half corridor. But even when that happened, there was still no forward movement. I finally stepped out of line to look down the corridor and saw this:
You can't see if very well, but just beyond the guy in the right in white is a break in the line and on the other side of that break is another line, just as long, coming in the other direction. Two very long lines coming from two directions, meeting in the middle, and NOBODY moving. There was ONE TSA rep and she wasn't doing anything. We stood there, having no clue what was going on, for 20 minutes.
Finally our line moved and we were counted in groups and sent off to the left. We went down an escalator and into a series of TEN switchbacks which spanned the length of the room, back and forth, the non-citizens line crossing the citizen line back and forth. We shuffled forward, inches at a time, though the closer we got to the second of the ten switchbacks, the faster it started to move. As we reached the first of the switchbacks, there was an impatient woman yelling at us all the "hurry! hurry! hurry!" Fine. Keep is standing motionless for hours and then yell at us when we don't move fast enough for you!
We had lost Mike and Char long before we got to the desk and when we reached the "hurry-hurry-hurry" lady, she sent us off to a rep several slots down the row and we found ourselves directly behind Mike and Char. Weird.
The guy who screened us happened to be Russian and seemed to enjoy talking with us about our trip and what we had seen. He passed us through without problem. Then we picked up our luggage and went to the luggage screener who asked us about if we brought back food or liquor. We told him a pint of vodka and a box of chocolates (our Anniversary gift from Viking). He slammed the suitcase down on the moving belt (I hoe he didnt smash the chocolates--Walt was going to take them to his office as a gift) and asked us to move to the next room. In the next room, we were transferring our luggage to the new flight. I had now been through about four different screeners, none of whom had asked me to remove the computer and in this room, I checked the instructions and it clearly said to take off jackets and remove shoes but not a word about computers. So I didnt remove the computer. The suitcase went through the scanner and they yelled at me for not taking the computer out. I had to go back, unpack the thing and then send it through, and then they yelled at me for not packing it up again quickly enough.
Then we just had to get to the other end of the airport (why don't we ever leave at the CLOSE gates?) with no moving walkway in sight. But all the signs were in English, at least. I spied a water fountain and said "Oh we're back in the US where it's safe to drink the water. I can drink out of that water fountain!" But no. It was broken. Then I decided to go to the restroom, but the line for the women's facility was too long. And we finally spied a moving walkway, that wasn't working. Sigh. Welcome home!
But finally we were at the gate until our plane loaded. There was a bird trapped inside the airport trying to get out the window near the window where we were sitting. I'm still worrying about that little guy today.
Our flight from Moscow to NY was Delta; our flight from NY to SF was also Delta, and it was the difference of night and day. The plane was dirty. I had to pick up a wadded up blanket on my seat and throw it somewhere so I could sit down. There was crap in the seat pocket. I asked for a seatbelt extender and they gave me a broken one. NOTHING was free. The headsets were $2, the same movies that had been free coming from Moscow cost $6 to watch on this plane. Water (the only free thing) was served without ice...I was afraid to ask for ice, fearing I would have to pay for it! It felt like flying on K-Mart Airlines, since the cabin attendants all carried around machines for swiping credit cards for whatever you wanted to buy from them.
Lunch was offered (for a fee) or if you didn't want to pay, you could have a small packet of peanuts. We had the choice of "Flight delights" which consisted of bagel chips, asiago cheese spread, olives, pomegranate-vanilla glazed cashews, dried cranberries and pineapple, swiss milk chocolate and a collectible card highlighting Delta's exciting worldwide destinations" or "Travel Treats" which was a tasty selection of snack items containing an assortment of chips, Jack Link's beef nuggets, crackers, cheesse, dried fruit, cookies and candy. We chose the "flight delights" because I just couldn't live without getting a collectible Delta airlines card
(aren't you jealous?)
About an hour out of San Francisco, I had a mini meltdown. I couldn't sit still, and I swear if I could have opened the plane door, I would have jumped out. I don't know why I was so antsy. I went to the bathroom and nearly burst into tears when I thought I heard the announcement that we were about to experience turbulence and everyone should return to their seats. (It turns out I was hearing things). But I kept myself under control and we landed safely and got home safely, after only a couple of glitches (it's hard to remember where you live after 28 hours without sleep!)
I collapsed into Mike & Char's recliner and slept all night, waking almost human this morning. Char plopped a flower down on the kitchen table this morning, popped a couple of waffles into the toaster, and we had breakfast, after which Walt and I took our bags out to the car and we headed home. Mike and Char stood on the sidewalk and gave us "the full Dieter."
So it's all over, but it sure was a great experience. I'm not ready to head out on another adventure this month, but once things have settled and the laundry has been washed, I'm sure we'll be thinking about what we're going to do next!!!
One of the sad things about coming home again was receiving the word that a friend of ours had finally lost his battle with cancer. Juan Ignacio Vergara was a physician from Chile who led our first group of Chilean students, and who stayed with us during their 3 week homestay. He was very quiet and kind of embarrassed with us, but we developed a nice friendship, I think. We used to hear from him regularly as he completed his residency in Chile and then when he married and started raising a family. 
What am I taking away from this trip? Victoria read a hilarious supposedly real blog about someone's experiences on another cruise which essentially said, for each day, that they had seen a 14th century cathedral, a Kremlin that had been attacked by Tartars, and a huge statue of Lenin. We all laughed a lot because it does kind of feel like that. Ho hum...another golden dome, another huge statue of Lenin. Maybe if you live in one of the original 13 US colonies that have a Revolutionary heritage or in states that fought in the Civil War you can relate to all the emphasis on battles and war heroes and monuments better than if you live out west, where our heroes found gold or founded industrial empires or lead scandalous lives (or all three).
