12.02.2007: transit therapy

Part 3: time-trapped in the twilight lounge

With eleven hours to fill in here at Sheremetyevo, I must say I could do with a good flashback. How about you?

*cups hand over ear*

*hears nothing*

Ok then, I guess it's up to me. In which case ... let's flash!

As I mentioned, I can't quite recall how it was decided that Scott and I would fly to Budapest (our eventual destination) this week, or even whether it was mine or his idea. I just remember a few weeks back thinking "I really need to get out of Almaty for a while", and almost before I knew it we were sitting in the back of a taxi with a disturbingly cross-eyed Kazakh man, rocketing along the highway towards the airport (and using both sides of it - I mean, why waste a whole 50% of the road?) A couple of hours later I was in an airport shuttle, heading out from Gate One towards my plane and thinking more or less the following thoughts:

"So here I am, about to take my first trip with an airline that 98% of the people I've known during my life have never heard of, flying towards a city which I was glad to escape from with all my limbs, for a holiday I can't really afford in a country I know absolutely nothing about, and I can't actually remember deciding to do this." And then, the follow-up thought: "Sometimes it really is good to be me."*

Obviously the Transit Therapy was beginning to work.

Flashing even further back now: when Scott and I left our flat in Almaty we didn't actually have tickets to Budapest. We'd bought them online and were supposed to pick them up at an Aeroflot office in the city of origin, but - surprise! - the Aeroflot office proved impossible to find. Later we found out that, despite there being several addresses for said office on various websites, it doesn't in fact exist. So at Almaty airport, we faced an unenviable situation: we were about to enter Russia with no visas and no proof of our intention to leave again. This is not the kind of thing that generally enders you to Russian authorities.

We pleaded for someone to call ahead and arrage to meet us at Sheremetyevo with our tickets, and after some time the check-in staff relented and helped us. So, as our Air Astana** flight landed in Moscow five hours later, there was an announcement on-board: "Will Mr. Cook and Mr. Benson please meet with our crew?" It was the first time I'd ever been named on a public address system inside an aircraft, and it was odd.

We were met on the tarmac by an extremely polite airline guy, given our tickets and then whisked in a private bus to our transit lounge. I'd imagined said lounge would be a gleaming, soulless shrine to the wonders of duty free shopping (with maybe an Irish pub thrown in), but instead we were taken to where we are now: a vastly improbable office-cum-lounge room type thingie with a view of the tarmac. If you can imagine the common room of a large youth hostel crossed with a slightly deco-flavoured pub bathroom - and if you can imagine sharing sharing this space with uniformed airport officials (one of whom just bummed a cigarette from Scott) - then you're on the right track. Throw in a bit of hospital reception, and you're getting closer. Finally, add to this picture the delightful tendency of female airport officials in the Russian-speaking world to improvise on their uniforms, adding stiletto heels, split skirts, fishnets and other vampish touches to the ensemble. Ok; now you're nearly there.

So anyway, I'm lying on a soft and comfy sofa in this little corner of the Twilight Zone, looking across at the one and only shop. It's called "Moscow Duty Free", and it's closed. Not just closed, in fact, but empty. The smoothly-curved shelves are completely unstocked, there's no cash register, no light fittings in the ceiling, and a bar across the door. Next to another of the comfy lounges sits an airline meal tray, looking entirely out of place at zero feet above sea-level, with plastic wrap across the top and a few stray mouthfuls of coleslaw salad remaining in one of its plastic containers. Behind me there's an empty cardboard box which initially contained our 'supplies' for the next 11 hours. It was full of fruit juice, bottled water, vodka and fizzy drinks, all bequeathed to Scott and myself by a group of Lithuanian businessmen who departed the lounge soon after we arrived. Unfortunately one of the Russian guards decided he liked the look of these items, so he basically walked up and took everything we had, shooting us a cocky look that said "Let's see you try and stop me, visa-less foreigners!". Meanwhile, in front of me a wide-screen TV is showing a Naked Gun movie, badly dubbed in Russian.

Still, at least the lounges are plush. My body clock is on Almaty time (i.e. it feels like about 3am), so I'm sure to need a little shut-eye soon.

As I fall asleep tonight, I'm probably going to contemplate the strange feelings that stirred in me as our aircraft approached Moscow. Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while will remember that, after living there for almost a year, I definitely wasn't sorry to leave. I had some great experiences in Moscow and met some wonderful people who I miss quite a lot, but unfortunately it was just an inhospitable and difficult place to live as a foreigner. On the day when the taxi took me to the airport and I left the city, I remember looking out of the window and thinking "Wow ... I survived." And I still don't know how some of the gentler souls I met there (Hi Astrid and Sasha!) manage to get by in such a harsh environment.

And yet, as we flew in I couldn't escape the feeling that, from the air, Moscow is probably the second most beautiful city I've ever seen. (The prettiest without a doubt is Bahrain, which looks like an enormous, glittering coral reef from above.) Then, once we'd landed, I spoke to several friendly folk at the airport and watched the chicardniy Muscovites going by as they made their way towards passport control. It was so strange! I suddenly found myself experiencing warm'n'fuzzy feelings about being here, and wanting to follow them out into their grand metropolis, just to lay eyes on it one more time. Weirdness.

Maybe as my experiences with Russian people start to add up (first in Moscow, then Sydney and now Almaty), I'm becoming a little bit Russified in my outlook. Or else I'm just beginning to appreciate a bit more of the 'whole picture'. Certainly a lot of things that used to annoy me about Russkiy culture have slowly come to make sense over the past few years, and a few of these might even make it onto my "Things I like about Russian folk" list now.

Here in Almaty, I've found myself defending aspects of the Russian influence on this culture, especially at times when other teachers are coping badly with things that I, too, struggled with at first. It's been an interesting process. I've heard myself beginning a lot of sentences like this: "As far as I've been able to work out, Russian people ...", and ending them with things like "... so if you give it time you'll find they're actually really nice, and they probably didn't mean to offend you at all".

For this, btw, I have several people to thank - like my student Yulia, who I taught in Sydney in 2006. Her comments about Russian life (and life in general) gave me a lot of insight into my own past experiences; plus, she's such a warm and lovely person, and so very Russian, that knowing her allowed me to re-appraise some of my interactions with people I knew in Moscow. But she's just one example - there are plenty of others, especially among the Russians I've met in Almaty. And so - to return to the point at last - maybe if I went back to Moscow now, I'd have a different experience. I still don't think it'd be the place for me (it's too big for one thing, and possibly even more dangerous for foreigners than it used to be, with ultra-nationalist organisations flourishing and literally getting away with murder nowadays), but I suspect I'd find more to appreciate than I did in 2005-6. Maybe I just wasn't 'ready' the first time around.

And that's three maybes in one train of thought, which as we all know = one kto znayet?***. Certainly not me.

In any case, sitting here in the transit lounge without a tourist visa is making me a little depressed, because there are people I'd love to see in a city that lies just a bus-and-metro ride away, but I can't leave this building. Perhaps next time I'll prepare a bit earlier, get myself a tourist visa, brave the skinheads and go for a little visit.

Ok, enough of these musings - focus, Anthony! I just need to survive one night in Sheremetyevo's Twilight Lounge, and I'll be in Budapest by lunchtime tomorrow. You'll be sure to hear from me at some point while I'm there. Until then ... da svidaniya!

Anthony.

* Plagiarised from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but nonetheless heartfelt.
** See, I told you you'd never heard of it!
*** "Who knows?"