Well, today was a difficult day, long and very boring. We stayed at the hotel just watching television (movies that I had brought – Monsters Inc. and Ice Age). I have discovered that Monsters Inc. spans the vocabulary span. She loves that movie even though she has no idea what they are saying. She sits and watches and watches and watches. She has seen it about five times now, and she is still just as captivated with it as the first time she saw it. Anyway, around 2:00 we went down to get a little more ruble so we could use rubles during sight seeing before the airport. I wanted to see the Kosch Palace, the pictures that I have seen are beautiful, but apparently that is closed to the public because the President (Putin) uses it as part of his private quarters, so we went to the WWII museum instead. It was very interesting and very beautiful. It was built in 1997 and is three floors. I saw the first and second floor but only a couple minutes of the third floor because Ally couldn’t take it anymore. They didn’t allow strollers in the facility because they only had stairs, the escalators were broken. I would imagine you could use strollers otherwise. Anyway, it was extremely fascinating seeing WWII from another perspective. They had six dioramas set up with various scenes from the war with the Germans attacking Moscow and the artists that did these scenes did a very good job, very lifelike. Then they had a museum and an art gallery (third floor). The art was beautiful that I saw, but like I said, I didn’t make it all the way through. It only cost about 300 rubles for me and the translator and my daughter, and then an additional 25 rubles to take pictures. (Make sure if you do go site seeing, you get the pass to take photographs. I didn’t know this before and so when I saw the Kremlin, I didn’t have the pass to take pictures and could only take them outside the buildings, not inside.) The pass wasn’t expensive (25 rubles = 85 cents), but well worth it because they have people scattered in every room ensuring that no one is taking pictures without a pass. Since it was a workday, there were very few people in the museum, thus making it a nice place to visit. The first room we saw was the room of prayers, and there were chains, small delicate chains, hanging from the ceiling with small crystals placed on the chains in various locations. The chains signified all the Russians killed in WWII and the crystals were symbolic of tears. The translator said that there were 27million chains. I don’t know if this is accurate or not because they didn’t have any books or postcards that I could purchase to read. There were definitely a lot of them though!!
Finally we got to the airport. We arrived a little early again, just to ensure that we were there. I gave our driver $100 in rubles, and a bottle of American Whiskey that I had brought with me. Jack Daniels in Russia was three times what we pay in the US, nearly $40 for a small bottle, I think I paid $10 for the bottle I brought and it would have been over $90 there. I also gave our translator gifts and included a tip in her bag for doing such a great job. I found out while I was there that the translator makes about $400 per month, the driver even less, but that is considered a good salary in Russia. I don’t know how good of a salary it is when she can’t afford to buy fruit and definitely has no frills for her family. Anyway, went through customs, they didn’t ask for my customs form, didn’t ask me about anything, I just walked right through and said hello on my way to the gate. Put the bags through the metal detector so I could check in. I did find this a little aggravating, but I guess it saves them time; you scan all your bags in a metal detector before you can go to the check-in point. The scanner is similar to the one that you use in the states that you go to the gate through, but lower to the ground. Then proceeded to the gate. Once I got to the gate, I had to ensure that they were ticketing for my flight – evidenced by a green flashing light next the flight information on the board above the lines. I was lucky to be there just as they turned the flight on so was first in line. Unfortunately, some Russians are extremely rude and they just cut in front of you, so I had two extremely rude men check in because they were in Business class and wanted through the line, rather than wait in the Business class line. I checked my bags and stroller, and then proceeded to passport control. This is the area that is frustrating because it is very slow and you can wait in line for a very long time. Finally, when it was my turn to go to the counter, I handed the lady the passports and tickets for my daughter, and she and me requested to see the adoption documentation as well. I pulled it out of the carry – on bag that I was carrying and waited while she must have read every word of every page of the document. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she stamped the passports and we were through to the pre-gate area. Now, they don’t allow you to enter the waiting area for flights, until the gates are near boarding time, I don’t know why because they didn’t do that last time we were at the airport, but they did this time. The checkpoint you go through to get to the boarding area has three gates, and if all three of the flights are boarding later, then they close the area and won’t let anyone in until it is one hour from boarding for one of the flights. I wandered the shops buying two very overpriced toys because I had rubles to get rid of and figured I would probably lose just as much trying to exchange it back to dollars and finally they were allowing people into the seating area. Again you have to go through metal detectors and all carryon luggage must go through the x-ray machine before you can enter this area. This is like a cattle call; there is absolutely no orderly fashion to this process. Getting into the seating area is almost the last hurdle to getting on the airplane, after this tried and true process, I have found that the best seats are closest to the gate door that you will be exiting. They do not call seat numbers at this airport, they just state that the flight is boarding and it is a mad rush for the gate. I was sitting at the only seat next to the gate, so as soon as the woman opened up the gate, I had Ally and was up at the gate so we wouldn’t be so pushed, we would be the first ones on the plane. We handed her our boarding passes, and she didn’t want to see our passports again, and then headed down to the plane. The walk way on the planes for the Russian Airlines are much smaller than on the planes that I have flown in the US, because my carryon will fit rolling between the seats in the US, but won’t on the Aeroflot planes. Perhaps it is just my imagination, but I always have to pick up my carryon on Aeroflot because the walkway is too narrow. There also is no rhyme or reason to the seating on the planes. They will fill up a row sitting three strangers next to each other, but there will be four empty rows around them. I have noticed this on all four flights with them. Luckily, our planes were not packed and we were able to secure three seats for the two of us so I could get Ally to sleep.
Since I am stopping in Brussels, I won’t be able to write about the JFK experience for a little while, I will be in the US in April, and will add the JFK experience to the process. Brussels was a piece of cake. They didn’t ask about the adoption or anything. They verified her visa in her passport for Belgium and then stamped us through. Of course, the airlines didn’t send the stroller, they sent it on a later plane, but I haven’t returned to get it. Is it worth the aggravation of driving one hour, parking and getting a parking fee, to pick up a $10 umbrella stroller? They don’t have delivery service for Aeroflot, so either I pick it up, or I just buy a new one. I don’t know which. We are all home now, and very tired. Just as I feared, Ally threw an absolute fit trying to put her in a car seat, because she wasn’t sitting with me, she has been used to sitting with me in Russia with no seatbelts (I don’t think the car even had them), and now I was trying to set her in a strange contraption in a strange machine-a (car in Russian) and sit elsewhere? I finally allowed her to sit on my lap for this trip home, and would work the car seat issue later. She was tired, I was tired, and she definitely wasn’t pleased with other people that she didn’t know being there (our two other children were at the airport as well). We will give it a few days and see how it goes. I am sure she will come around in a few days; it is just going to take some time.
