Muse back!
July 14, 2008 / Monday
SFO -> FRA -> LED
Woke up and had a tasty pancake breakfast with Aaron. He did all the cooking and cleaning up and helped me clear the fridge of perishables while I got ready to leave. It made for a very pleasant morning, right up until I had to say goodbye to him. Two weeks is a long time! Waah.
Got to the airport on schedule and found my way to the Lufthansa ticket counter. There was no one in line. Hooray! Unfortunately, even though it was a codeshare flight, I was told I needed to check in with United. I made my way over there and found a giant line. No matter, I had planned a check-in wait into my schedule anyhow. A lot of the other people in line, however, hadn't, and as their departure time approached they were expedited to the front of the line so they wouldn't miss their flight.
Let me pause here and scream.
People. Travelers. You are adults. Why are you unable to arrive at the airport for an international flight on time? And why does the airline tolerate this? They not only tolerate it, they actually reward it by shortening the wait for people who show up late. If I ruled the world, those people would be either sleeping at the airport or swimming to freakin' London. I hope their luggage is waterproof.
Next up: Security Theater. Makes my blood boil every time. But let it be said here that I am always very nice to the TSA agents. They don't make the ridiculous rules, and their job is shitty enough as it is.
Bought some water, ate some food, and boarded the plane. The company travel agent lady scored me a sweet bulkhead-ish aisle seat. Lots of leg room. I was pleased.
On the plane, I gave my St. Petersburg guide an end-to-end read. Whaddaya know, they have Pizza Hut and Baskin Robbins there. That, and a lot of sushi and Indian restaurants. Sounds like home. Made a mental list of places to visit and got a better feel for city layout.
5:45 PM PDT - Got to borrow Aaron's MP3 player (Danke! Spasibo!) so I put some music on and nodded off a wee bit.
6:45 PM PDT - Commotion across the aisle. Water was dripping from the baggage compartment above. A bunch of flight attendants came by and soaked it up with piles of paper towels. They claimed it was condensation but couldn't figure out why there was so much. It dripped a bit on the guy at the front end of the compartment, which was in business class. He was displeased. The economy cabin folks, who had a small stream of water coming down on them, helped clean up and laughed about it.
7:00 PM PDT - Hungry. Time for pancakes! :-)
7:02 PM PDT - Mmm, pancakes were good! Thanks Aaron for packing them for me!
[ Oh boy. Typing this during my layover in Frankfurt. Really slowing down. Need sleep! ]
I put the St. Petersburg guide away and started in on my Russian phrasebook. I have "hello", "goodbye", "excuse me", "thank you", and "please/you're welcome" down, but I wanted to be able to ask questions along the lines of "Where... ?", "Do you have... ?", and "How much?" I also learned important words like "water", "milk", and "hockey".
9:30 PM PDT - The map on the monitor showed us flying by Iceland.
10:45 PM PDT - Breakfast arrived in the form of little paper boxes dropped on our tray tables. Its contents: a fruit cup (hoorays) and a semi-frozen turkey and cheese sandwich wrapped like a baked potato that tasted like nothing I'd ever like to taste again.
11:00 PM PDT - Watched as trayfuls of tastiness were delivered to the business class passengers one row in front of me.
Our flight arrived at Frankfurt early, around midnight PDT, or 9:00 AM local time. I was pretty stoked when our plane touched down. I've never been to Europe before, so even though I wouldn't be leaving the airport, this was something of a first for me.
I was tired, but I looked forward to wandering the airport. Then I entered the airport and looked forward to leaving. FRA is a dump! The women's restrooms are small and smelly. The men's restroom looks larger, but I only know that because the door was propped open. There I was, walking down the hall, when I looked up and saw a guy peeing. *blink blink*
Security here was less theaterish. I got to keep my shoes on, but I had to empty my pockets. Something on me made the big metal detector beep, which resulted in the most thorough frisking in my life... by a wand-wielding German woman barking orders I didn't understand. Whoa, lady, are you supposed to touch me there?!
Made it to the "food court", where I saw tuna pizza on one of the menus. I decided I didn't need to try it.
The coolest thing about this airport was the Johnny Walker "Winners Always Stay in Control" booth, which played off an F1 theme and had a BATAK machine for people to try. I took a turn and scored 25 hits in 18.8 seconds, about a second higher than their top 10 list, which had times ranging from ~12 seconds to ~17 seconds. I watched a bunch of other people (all guys) try and they were all scoring in the 20's. The ones who went after me were sad because they couldn't beat a girl and their friends made fun of them. Bwahahahaha.
[ Coffee isn't kicking in. All it did was make me feel nauseated. Blech. ]
[ Okay, now I'm writing from St. Petersburg. ]
After the coffee, I successfully ordered a meal in German. I was ridiculously proud of myself. Granted, it was only McDonald's, but the server found my attempt at German good enough that he spoke back in German. Even more amazing was that I understood what he was saying and could reply. My first real German conversation. McDonald's, uniting the world one wannabe German speaker at a time.
Despite my being ridiculously proud of myself, I ate only a small portion of my meal because I was dead tired, and my stomach had decided to shut down. No more anything, it said. Damn you, stomach, we're not on a mountaintop anymore!
Gathered in the jankiest lower lower level gate, got bussed out to a faraway location on the tarmac, and boarded the plane up the rear flight of stairs. Even though it was only a 2 hour 20 minute flight, Lufthansa served us lunch. Compared to the domestic airplane food I'm used to, this was pretty tasty and healthy. Too bad I couldn't eat more than a few bites.
I tried hard to nap, but I am totally unable to sleep on planes. By the time we got to Pulkovo (the airport in St. Petersburg), I was feeling really weak. And then, just my luck, the passport lines shut down for some unknown reason for 45 minutes. Finally, they reopened, I got my bag, and met the company driver. He zipped through and around traffic to the company apartment.
The building looks run down from the outside, but the apartment itself is fairly nice. It's a big one bedroom with faux leopard print couches located about a block from Nevsky Prospekt. There's a 24 hour pharmacy and a 24 hour (I think) mini-mart across the street. I'll have to check that out tomorrow morning.
July 14, 2008 01:51 AM | St. Petersburg