From Russia, With a Little Love, pt.1

How I Learned How to Obtain a Visa and Fly Withouth S******g Myself…

If Ljubljana was a chick, she would be petite and cute.

And I was cruising through this Kate Mara capital on a rented city bike, swollen up from yesterday’s three thousand lagers, making my way to the consulate of the Russian Federation via Central European freezing air, with no gloves on. Needless to say the joints in my hands were aching intensely. I decided to put my newly purchased Sony in-ear headphones to use, spinning my soundtrack to the upcoming Russian adventure. On repeat:

I arrived in front of a bourgeois villa with some people already waiting before a massive steel gate. Half an hour later, a blonde, stereotipically Slavic looking guy with a very thick accent came out of the building and started letting us in one by one. I prepared all the documents (Passport, Visa support letter, Visa form, two 2x1.5 photos, and a Maestro card for paying the fees) and walked in. The process was quite painless and it was quickly over and done with. I came back a week later to pick up this very valuable piece of paper pasted inside my passport. Only thing left to do was to wait for the month to pass for my trip to begin.

After finishing up an afternoon/evening shift at work somewhere near midnight, i only had an hour or so left for a quick shower before catching an airport shuttle going to Venice Marco Polo airport, where i had to meet my second-greatest phobia, flying. I took a flight only once before this trip, and suffered a massive anxiety attack on a perfect-weather 40 minute smooth glide from Austria to Germany. I got out of the van at the airport gate very early in the morning, so I had to wait for a couple of hours to board my flight to Munich. The airport security control was rigorous, to say the least. We had to take our shoes off as if entering a mosque, let alone belt-buckles, or anything of the sort. Luckily, this time, no rectal inspections. Once inside the terminal, I barely had anything else to do but buy an ovepriced prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich, and wait it out.

Finally, the airport staff boarded us first on a bus that drove us to our airplane, and then onto the plane itself. It was a very cramped-up Air Dolomiti tin-can, I could barely sit properly (6'6") and the small vent was blowing in my left eye the whole flight. And that wasn’t all, by all means. I had to sit next to an Italian fella, who just wouldn’t turn of his phone, even though the flight attendant asked him numerous times. He was just listening to music. As if it wasn’t enough that I had to face the thrust from the airplane jets upon taking-off, I had this Italic, annoyingly loud bloke getting himself all comfortable on the seat next to me, trying to elbow his way to more sitting space. I thought I was going to pound his head with my fist, but then happiness overtook my focus, when i realized we were up in the air, making our way over the Alps to Germany without any panic attacks. We landed in Munich about an hour later. More waiting. I decided not to give a rat’s ass and go full-on Navorski on the terminal; I took my shoes off, laid down across three or four seats, and I took a nap. Then the time came to board a big ass Lufthansa Boeing to Saint Petersburg. I actually didn’t know until I was on the plane itself that the Lufthansa staff went on a warning strike a day earlier, and all of the flights were postponed until the day I left for Russia.

Inside the plane I shared my three seat compartment with a pleasant blonde Russian lady who showed me the ropes on taming the in-flight meal. When we were somewhere around Kaliningrad (that’s the detached part of Russian territory squeezed in between Germany and Lithuania, historically a Prussian city of Königsberg, birthplace of Immanuel Kant, the famous philosopher) we had to fill out the migration forms, similar to the ones in the movie Argo, where there are two identical copies you have to leave at the customs when entering and departing the country. With the forms filled, all that was left for me to do was to monitor the map in my tourguide and compare it to the terrain we were flying over. I was looking out for a giant lake, Lake Peipus, a water mass shared by Estonia and Russia. When you fly over the imaginary line that splits the Peipus in half, you’re in Russia. The scenery changed instantly. The Estonian and Polish snow-covered flatlands were replaced with coniferous forests with thin furrows that turned out to be roads. Occasionally, you could see the road lead to a perfect square of cut out forest, where there would usually be residential buldings (in the middle of nowhere ??) and some factories.

I could see the end of the Finnish gulf through the tiny window, so it was time for us to descend. The plane circled around a massive gray urban and industrial area, and landed safely on the concrete plateau of Pulkovo airport, Saint Petersburg. The plane didn’t even slow down on the strip when a Russian passenger unbuckled his belt, stood up, opened his overhead compartment and started pulling out his hand luggage and jackets. The flight attendant shouted furiously: “Sit down, please. SIT DOWN, NOW!!!” The snake-eyed comrade had no intention of sitting down, and wasn’t even disturbed by the flight attendant’s shouting. It was clear the man didn’t understand a word she was saying,and wasn’t even aware the shouting from the back of the plane was because of his actions. Luckily, Snake-eyes didn’t injure himself or other passengers, so when we went to a full-stop, it was time to disembark. But not without problems, as is the custom in Eastern Europe.

The police and the airport staff showed no intention of letting us off the plane, because, as we were told, no buses were available to take us to the terminal. So we waited for twenty minutes or so, before boarding the buses and entering the Russian customs. It took me another half hour of queueing before presenting myself to the policewoman for further inspection. She looked very strict, checked if it was really me on the passport photo numerous times, and i just waited there humbly as i was told — When in Russia, don’ mess with the po-po. I sucessfully passed inspection and went on to collect my suitcase. Turned out to be another surprise. The conveyer belt was halted, and my suitcase was just lying about on the floor nearby, clearly thrown carelessly of the conveyer belt. I passed through the gate and there was waiting for me, the sole purpose I got on this trip in the first place — a little woman with a purplish-blue beanie — my girlfriend, Russian language and lit student, on student exchange in Russia’s second largest city. As it should be, we shed a few tears, exchanged kisses, and then took a bus to the nearest metro station. I had a room booked in Druzya hostel on Griboedova street in the city center, near the Kazan cathedral (Kazanskiy Sobor). I got settled in a six-bed room with bunkbeds, and went for a stroll around the Kazan cathedral with my better half . I must say it felt pretty darn good finally being in the city called Venice of the North…

Part two, coming soon…