I AM IN RUSSIA.
I have finally left the continent. And this makes me so happy.
I never thought it would take me twenty-one-and-a-half years to finally get out of North America. But try as I could, I was never able to pull off leaving the continent. (Well, okay, technically I once ventured off the continental shelf on a cruise, but STILL.) But now I’m here, in Europe, and it’s such an amazing feeling to see that little blue blip on the map resting so far away from home.
But oh boy, do I have some stories already.
I haven’t started working yet (not until next week), so I’ve mostly been checking out St. Petersburg and hanging out with random students my host professor keeps setting me up with. But the adventures really start simply with trying to get here in the first place, which included a number of firsts for me. So here goes.
On Saturday night, after spending basically the whole day moving out of East Campus and saying a heartfelt goodbye to my dorm room (I could go on and on about my feels there), I stayed with my mom and grandma in their hotel room and left with them the next morning to the airport. Their flight left two hours before mine, but I took advantage of their ordering a taxi so that I didn’t have to lug my two unwieldy suitcases around all over the T, inevitably forgetting some piece of luggage on the Silver Line’s suitcase rack and frantically having to call around to get it back while managing to miss my flight in the process. (Okay, so somehow that’s actually never happened to me, but I am acutely aware that it is both possible and likely.) After security we immediately sat down at a bar so that my acrophobic mother could begin to mentally prepare herself for the miracle of aviation with four glasses of wine. Then it was time to board, and she gave me a lopsided hug before stumbling away, my grandma in tow.
I headed to my gate and sat down, taking out my computer to try to be maximally productive given the time allotted. That plan failed, of course, because time management is far from one of my strong suits, but while sitting there I did manage to witness my flight get delayed an hour and ten minutes (which my dear grandfather took notice of from 2000 miles away and thought to inform me of via text, Facebook Messenger, AND WhatsApp). I then got to witness as the new boarding time came and went without any plane appearing outside at the gate. I hadn’t really minded before that point, since I was just going to have another several hours at the next airport anyway, but now we seemed to be cutting it pretty potentially close to my next flight. And the time of departure still read 2:30pm, as if they thought that as long as they didn’t update it we wouldn’t even notice that it had been delayed further. I decided to go up to the counter to ask them about an estimated actual time of departure.
“Excuse me—is there an estimate for when the flight to JFK will be leaving?”
She pointed at the screen behind her. “Yes, it will be leaving at 2:30.”
“I—” I resisted the urge to squint in disbelief at her and somehow managed to keep a polite expression. “Yes, but it’s 2:35.”
She shot me an impatient look. “The plane is in the hangar for maintenance. It should be ready soon.”
Ooh, “soon”. Hooray for vaguity. “Do you know what the likelihood is of my missing my 5:40 connection? I think I should be fine so long as it leaves in the next hour or so.”
“We already announced an hour ago that no connections are in danger,” she said, shaking her head, apparently oblivious to the fact that an hour ago they still thought it would be leaving five minutes ago. “Thank you.”
It was around this time when I realized the reason behind an interesting trend I had noticed not too long prior. Essentially, all my life up until mid-college I had thought that plane delays were the norm, and that you were lucky if your plane actually made it to its destination on time. Then, in college, I began flying a lot more in general, and it seemed like we were basically always early, whether by five minutes or even by over half an hour in some cases. The disparity between what I used to think and what I now thought had only occurred to me recently, and I wondered the reason for the difference—were airlines actually getting better at scheduling and maintenance and making it to places on time? Or was I just bizarrely lucky? But now, thinking about what airlines my family usually took and who I was on now, I realized the real answer, in its glorious and simplistic truth:
American Airlines just sucks.
And FiveThirtyEight seems to corroborate this, so I’m not just being needlessly angry here. Time for me to swap out which airlines I’m loyal to.
Whatever the case, by 3:30 we had finally boarded, meaning I’d still have good time at JFK to catch my next flight and even get a quick bite. But then we just waited on the tarmac, and waited, and waited. “More maintenance,” the pilot explained embarrassedly. Yet another half hour later, we were finally on our way, and I was starting to get very worried about catching the flight to Helsinki.
Thankfully, though, the BOS->JFK flight time is very short, so just an hour later we were touching down. Alright—assuming five minutes of taxiing to the gate, I’d still have five minutes to make it there before boarding even started. No big deal. However, I noticed that the man next to me was clearly very nervous, checking the time and his boarding pass—did he have a connection even before mine? Then I looked around the cabin and saw a lot more nervous people. I was starting to wonder whether everyone was in the same boat, and my question was answered when a woman behind me suddenly said to no one in particular, “Ugh, my flight is literally boarding now,” and half the plane responded, “Me, too!”
That’s about when the pilot made another announcement, stating that we would have to wait another ten minutes before we got to the gate since there were no spots open yet. By that point, everyone just shook their heads and laughed cynically. I don’t think I’d ever felt such camaraderie on a flight before.
Finally we were at the gate, the pilot thanking us for our patience and even closing by saying, “I hope you all have a great rest of your day despite this, uh, experience.” Everyone laughed again. The flight poured out more quickly than anything I’d seen before.
My carry-on in tow, I got out and quickly checked the gate for my flight to Finland, which for some reason I had been unable to find online. To my great joy, I found that it was basically on the other side of the terminal, which turned out to be even larger than I’d thought. Commence my power-walking: we were already five minutes into boarding. I knew I’d probably be fine, but I didn’t want to risk it, and besides, power-walking I could easily do.
Grateful for the signs leading me to my gate, I made my way around corners and down a set of escalators only to find more escalators back up at the end of the long corridor—two of them, in fact, one of which broken and the other filled with stationary people.
I weighed my options for a brief second before making my decision, running to the broken escalator and making my way up, clearly moving much faster than the poor sheep standing on the working one. Ha! Suckers, I thought to myself, laughing smugly under my breath. I’d known that would be the right decision. I watched satisfied as I climbed past everyone, dragging my suitcase along, breath starting to get heavy… and everyone was watching me amusedly. Hmmmm. How much longer was it? That’s when I finally decided to look up.
With horror I saw that I wasn’t even halfway up yet.
Maybe it was me who was the idiot here.
Let’s just say that it was only by some miracle of nature that I somehow managed to get to the top without collapsing and dying. Very quickly I was coughing and sputtering and sweating maniacally, clearly struggling hard to make each next step. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. But I was so amused by my own idiocy that I couldn’t help but laugh at my own predicament, and the onlookers in the elevator next to me, standing there all comfortably and relaxedly, joined in. By the time I made it to the top, all the people I had passed had caught back up to me, so it ended up having been a completely pointless exercise in futility. But hey, at least everyone got a good laugh out of it.
I made it to my gate with time to spare and just collapsed into a chair.
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This next flight was a two-aisle FinnAir flight, and it was to be my longest flight yet. Seven hours and fifty minutes. I had only just done my first six-hour flight (BOS to SEA) a couple of weeks prior, which was itself only slightly longer than many I’d have previously, but this was pretty substantially longer, and I wondered whether I’d manage to keep sane the whole time—especially since it was an overnight, and I am apparently physically incapable of sleeping for more than five minutes at a time on planes. I also knew that on the way back from Russia I’d have a ten-hour flight, so even this would just be training for that. Sigh. But hey, at least I managed to snag a window seat.
Looking at the line of people entering the plane was interesting—a lot of them I could tell were Finns themselves, and there was an even higher proportion of blondes to non-blondes than I was expecting. I ended up sitting next to (it was a 2-4-2 plane) a blonde Finnish businesswoman in her mid-thirties who was so on top of her crap that she was fast asleep long before we even took off, perfectly settled underneath the complimentary blanket and (not-so-complimentary) sound-cancelling headphones.
Meanwhile we moved away from the gate and proceeded to sit on the tarmac for ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. I tried to keep occupied on my phone, but for some reason the signal had disappeared into thin air (or should I say, into FinnAir?). But I didn’t want to start reading anything lest I become bored of it later on the flight, so I just sat there in thought and contemplated moving, being done with college, what it would be like to be in Russia, etc. Finally, after an hour on the tarmac, we were finally off, watching NYC get smaller and smaller beneath us.
And so it began. I sat back into my seat, taking a deep breath just as the small screens on the backs of the seats in front of us lit up with a promo video explaining various things about the flight. It was in English (with a Finnish accent, which I hadn’t known what sounded like until recently) with Finnish subtitles, talking about how apparently there were free movies aboard, and you could even use their wifi free to connect to a special site where you can “get all your shopping out of the way!”
Okay, as a side note, I’ve always wondered: who on earth actually buys things from those airplane catalogues, anyway? And who the hell has “shopping to get done” when it’s not even holiday season? Like, do people actually have this much money where they can spend it on a whim on random overpriced accessories? I mean, sure, yeah, I know the answer is yes, but I guess it’s just always completely mystified me. I’ve spent my whole life not spending money unless I HAVE to, so the whole segment of the video explaining their online shopping platform just seemed completely inane and obnoxious to me. But maybe I’m just being overly judgemental. To be fair, I was the one on an airplane in the first place, which many may consider an inane use of money, but hey, the money wasn’t mine, and whatever the case, I think you’ve gotta draw the line somewhere
But anyway, my favorite part of the video though was when they uttered the magic words, “There will be a hot dinner served shortly, and a light breakfast in the morning.” Oh my god. Did someone say/imply/allude to free food?? My stomach growled. It’d better be free, because I was starving, and due to the quick turnaround time between planes (not counting the hour on the tarmac) I hadn’t gotten the chance to get any food. I did have two granola bars, though, so the next hour essentially consisted of me arguing with myself about whether I should eat one now to appease my stomach or save it for later in case the food was right around the corner. In retrospect, I should have eaten one, because the food was not right around the corner, but after about an hour, the cart finally appeared and started making its way up the aisle, our options announced as either barbeque chicken or some sort of pasta. Excitedly, I made up my mind to get the pasta, but leave it to Murphy that as soon as they got to my row (near the end) there was a sudden turbulence that meant they had to retreat back to their quarters and sit down. My stomach yelled enviously at the man on the other side of the aisle who had just barely managed to get his food, but after some of the most tantalizing ten minutes of my life, it was finally my turn, and I ate the hell out of that pasta. Which, honestly, was surprisingly good; I’d always heard airplane food was awful, but I was quite satisfied by that and the sides (bread, cheese/crackers, and a devastatingly delicious piece of cinnamon coffee cake). Then again, my taste buds are maybe not the most discerning, so I’d probably have been equally satisfied with any level of culinary preparation.
After dinner, I tried reading briefly but found myself much too tired to keep my eyes open. As such, I decided to try to sleep, pulling out my airline-provided pillow with complimentary stains and stuffing it between my head and the window. As usual, sleep only came in one-to-three-minute pockets, but after a miserable two hours and six different neck pains later, I somehow felt well-rested enough to be able to read again.
But now I found myself having to use the bathroom. I looked over at the woman next to me. She was still sound asleep, and had even slept straight through the whole dinner portion. What a bamf. But now how was I supposed to get out? I definitely didn’t want to wake her up. I supposed I could just climb over her, but that seemed too risky, and the way things had been going already that day, I knew that the moment I climbed up over her seat sudden turbulence would send me flying buttfirst into her face.
Ultimately I just decided to try to be semi-unconscious for another half-hour or so so as to not deal with it—surely she’d wake up soon, right?—but zero sleep and lots of consciousness later she was still sleeping soundly. I sighed to myself. Then she sighed back—wait, what? Was she stirring??
I proceeded to basically stare at her for the next fifteen minutes, totally not creepily, getting super excited each time she moved—but her eyes never opened. Drat. Eventually I just gave up and decided to start reading anyway. Surely I could hold it for a bit longer, right?
I got out my TouchPad and began to read more of a Russian grammar I had downloaded. Not even a minute into my reading I heard her move again and just barely managed to catch her eyes open. I guess a watched pot never boils. (But apparently it’ll stir itself? Whatever. Metaphors are hard.)
“Excuse m—excuse me!” Thankfully she heard me through her headphones without my having to tap her shoulder or something, and her eyes opened again. “Um, I need to use the restroom.” She smiled and nodded and folded her blanket down, standing up into the aisle. I got out behind her, tripping over all of my stuff on the ground. “Thank you so much!”
When I got back to my seat, it was just four hours to go. Okay, a normal flight time now. I could do this, no big deal. Just read for a bit, listen to music, and there would even be food that last hour too! I considered also amusing myself with the plane’s live camera feeds on our screens, but that proved much less interesting than I expected since all you could see was clouds anyway. I did take note though that it was now light outside again (most people’s windows were closed for sleep), meaning that we’d basically just flown through the nighttime in a couple of hours. What a strange concept.
We could also track our plane’s trajectory across the Atlantic. I’d noted it earlier when we’d briefly passed over Greenland, and now we were narrowly missing Iceland. Oh, Iceland. I’ll be with you someday. I also at one point glanced briefly over the map and suddenly caught myself thinking about ponies for some strange reason, only to realize that we were flying over the Shetland Islands.
I ended up spending most of the rest of the flight reading and trying not to be annoyed by the person sitting behind me who I at first thought was kicking my seat but who I later realized was just playing some kind of game on his screen which involved excessive forceful tapping.
Eventually, breakfast finally came, a bagel sandwich with lettuce, cucumber, tomato and some gross kind of cheese for everyone. A bit disappointing compared to the dinner to be sure, especially since I picked off everything but the tomato, but I supposed I couldn’t really complain. Looking back at my boarding pass, it looked like we’d arrive even later for my final leg to St. Petersburg, but I wasn’t too worried. Even if I did miss it, which seemed likely, I figured there’d be plenty of other times that one-hour flight would happen today, so at most it’d just give me a couple hours to catch my breath before I was on my way again. However, as the crew announced our descent, they mentioned which connections had been missed, and I was surprised St. Petersburg wasn’t on the list. “However, we will ask passengers on their way to St. Petersburg to hurry to their flight.” Ah, there it was. Still, not bad, especially if they were waiting for us.
About then was when we finally dipped through the clouds low enough to see the land below us, and whoa. Our line of sight was only the trees below since we were about to land, but in all the fog and rain the forests looked so lush and green and strangely different from what I was used to that I just wanted to run through and explore them. Finland looked amazing. And that’s when it hit me: I was in Europe! I was about to take my first steps off of North America! Holy cow! Suddenly the reality of everything I was doing, of going so far away from every place I was used to, hit me full force, and I was more excited for what lay in store than ever before. Now I was extremely glad I hadn’t missed that connection.
I found my next flight fairly easily, marvelling at the airport not only in virtue of it being not North American but also just for being pretty cool. And then I was at the gate, where everyone had already basically boarded, and I showed them my boarding pass and went down the hallway and boarded the… bus? I was on a bus. Now I was very confused, because I saw no Ms. Frizzle and as such had no idea how this thing was going to fly.
As it turned out though, the bus was only there to shuttle us to the actual plane, because we had to board the actual plane via a tiny set of stairs in the side. And not only that, but it was a propeller plane. As in, not a jet engine one.
Obviously, me being me, I was a little bit terrified by this prospect. In my mind, there was no way those tiny propellers could get that thing off the ground, regardless of how relatively small the plane was. I mean, surely there’s a reason they’re not as common anymore, right? But I knew intellectually that obviously hundreds if not thousands of propeller planes fly each day without any real danger, so being afraid of it was silly. I got in my seat next to a very stereotypically Russian-looking man who apparently didn’t speak Russian, and after half an hour of delay (seriously, all three flights?!) we lurched forward as the propellers began to spin. After a second or two, they were moving so fast that they disappeared altogether. In fact, they were so powerful they created huge ripples in the water on the ground beneath us, so I definitely felt much better about them after that.
And then we were off. I wasn’t encouraged by how long we were moving at full speed on the runway for before actually taking off into the air, but before I knew it we were already leaving Helsinki behind (albeit rather slowly). Now I was just mystified by how on earth that managed to work, and I even caught myself marvelling at “modern technology” before realizing that propeller planes were invented over a century ago, long (but not that long) before jet engines.
For the short flight, I mostly just amused myself by looking through the Screenshots folder on my phone, but before I knew it we were once again peeking below the clouds, and I got my first glance at what I knew was St. Petersburg, nestled in the deltas of the Neva river. It was huge and sprawling and beautiful and I couldn’t wait to be in it. Another five minutes later, we had landed, and I took my first-ever steps on Russian soil—er, tarmac.
Once in the airport, I stretched and took my time in walking down to the visa/passport control line, enjoying the freedom of being done with travel and able to walk around again. Then I made my way down to the baggage claim. And that’s where the day started to get ugly.
Okay, holy frap, I have now officially written nearly 4,000 words about being on planes. Why am I like this. The next installment will be much more exciting, I promise, because that’s where the real adventures begin, and they’re definitely not all pretty. Coming soon to an email near you.
Also: the title of this email is named after the Death Cab for Cutie album, which is definitely their best and is something you should listen to.
Hope everyone else’s summers are going awesomely!!
-Sebastian