Astrakhan Against The Odds

This morning I decided not to go to Red Square, it was snowing pretty hard and I didn’t want to take that long walk in the snow so I stayed at the hotel and did some things to prepare for tomorrow. I’ll see Red Square on my next trip.

At 2 PM my translator and driver showed up to take me to the airport as planned. When we got to the airport things began to change. Go with the flow, expect the unexpected, all things that are said repeatedly by adoptive families traveling all over the world to bring their children home. Well today’s trip to Astrakhan was just another example of expect the unexpected and maybe a little bit of just how much can you take? I checked in and my translator left me at the security gate. As I was going through a young officer came over and took my passport. He then started asking me several questions about where I was going and why and announced that my visa was wrong and that I could not fly on a tourist visa. I was able to fly on this visa from the US to Moscow, but apparently I can’t fly domestically within Russia on a tourist visa, it’s so much easier in the US, no visas to cross state lines, maybe it’s something we should think about, we could keep all those New Yorker’s out of Florida. Of course I have no way of knowing how to solve this but my translator has been well trained. Unbeknownst to me she had not left the airport, she was waiting to see if I cleared security and when I didn’t she came over and talked her way in to help me. A few phone calls and a lot of conversation and the young officer let me through the security area….. we’ll see if they let me fly back to Moscow on this visa, can’t wait!

Landing in the Astrakhan airport was different. We landed on an airfield where we had to get on a bus to take us to the terminal, I’ve done this before but the strange thing was the plane we were on was the only plane on the airfield, I guess we don’t have to worry about air traffic control here (see previous post about leaving JFK… ha ha ha).

Against the odds I made it to the hotel, not the one I thought I was going to, but that’s OK, I’m staying in the Azimut, it’s an older hotel right on the Volga river. A few minor problems here that my translator and coordinator are going to solve tomorrow, I was told not to unpack my suitcase, my coordinator had to pay for my room in cash tonight, etc. etc. One thing for sure is that I know I’m in good hands, I’m sure they will resolve everything tomorrow and hopefully tomorrows post will be without incident, one can only hope!!

Julian, great post, thanks for the laughs, much needed and I’ll be sure to count the layers of clothing tomorrow.

Happy Valentines Day! Chris