First Journal Entry

Well, it's been a while since I put out one of these travel journals. That is not to say I've been sitting home since the last entry, quite to the contrary. In particular, 2006 was a spectacular year for travel both for work and pleasure. I've grown a bit lazy as the gray has started to take hold of my beard. However, a few people prodded me enough when I told them I was bound for Moscow, I figured I should get my butt in gear and write up some reports.

Back in the beginning of 2006, IBM opened a development lab (called the RSTL) in Moscow. Even though my department was not sending any work over, with my background in development and interest in spending time in Moscow, the lab director offered me a position to help get the new folks on board.

Just as I started to make plans for the first stint of the overseas assignment, all organizations across IBM were hit with a "budget challenge" and the RSTL reduced its costs by eliminating the funding for the International Assignee, which put an end to my plans. As it turns out, in the last part of 2006, my department decided to move some work over to the RSTL, and my manager asked if I would be interested in spending 4 weeks in Moscow to help train the people who will work with us. Four weeks in Russia in February, how could I say no? Restraining my excitement about returning to Moscow, I decided not to advertise my impending departure given how suddenly the trip to Russia in 2006 was cancelled. However, I still needed to start the paper work to obtain my visa. Communism might have been swept away, but Bureaucracy is alive and thriving in Russia. Before you can even begin to apply for a visa, you first have to obtain a Letter of Invitation (LOI) from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

Unfortunately, we didn't settle on the dates for this trip until the beginning of 2007, and the Russians were on holiday until January 9th. Plans called for me to be in Moscow for work on February 5th, and I was already cutting it close!

Faxed over the necessary forms to our contact at American Express in Moscow who know how to work the system, and much to my surprise, the Letter of Invitation was en-route to my house by January 12th and arrived several days later on January 17th. (I guess that's why we use American Express in Moscow to get those document for us!). I didn't want to lose any time due to courier delays, so I decided to take off the next day from work and hand delivered my application (including the Letter of Invitation and a list of all the countries I visited in the last 10 years) to a company we use in NYC to handle these requests. CIBT is familiar with the various consulates' peculiarities and quirks, and I figured it would be easier for them to rush the request through the Russian Consulate. As they promised, my passport had the required visa attached by Monday, January 29th and they UPS'ed my passport back to me that afternoon. Things were looking good for my scheduled departure on Thursday, February 1st.

On Tuesday, I tracked the progress of my package, and that afternoon I decided to work from home just in case the document required a signature. The web-site indicated an expected delivery date of January 30th and it also indicated all deliveries are complete by 7pm. At 8pm, I was still without my passport, and the web-site changed the expected delivery date to January 31st. And we had snow in the forecast for that day! Oh, noo!

I had to head into work on Wednesday for some meetings in the morning, but I confirmed with CIBT that the parcel did not require a signature. Just in case, I left a piece of paper taped to my home door asking UPS to accept the sheet as authorization to leave the package without a signature. By noon, I was able to check the web-site from work, and with great relief, learned that UPS made the drop. I also learned why the delivery took so long! I am not making this up; even though CIBT is in NYC across the street from Grand Central Station and I was in Hopewell Junction (about 70 miles almost directly due north), the package took the following path: Manhattan to Long Island City (in Queens), back to Manhattan (where it overnighted), over to Secaucus, NJ, down to Philadelphia, PA up to Kingston, NY to finally make it to my house on Wednesday at 11:30 am! You would think the package was trying to rack up some frequent flier miles.

True to form, even though I knew for weeks I was leaving on Thursday, I waited until Wednesday night to start packing. In my defense, I did have a fair amount of stuff laid out on the bed in the spare room; I just I consider it unlucky to pack too early (yeah, that's my story and I am sticking with it).

Thursday morning finally arrived, and I anxiously awaited the arrival of the driver. Driver? Yes, driver! Since I was going to be out of town for a month, it didn't make sense to leave my car at the airport. And while I'm on the topic of the trip logistics, when booking the flights, the only direct flight I could find was on Aeroflot; not too keen on taking a ride on that airline, the travel agent offered me two other choices: bounce in London or bounce in Helsinki. Trying to save the company some money, I booked a coach ticket, and I thought it would be easier to survive two segments more equal in length then a really long leg and then a short leg. So JFK to LHR it was.
Or almost was. This is another aspect of our arrangements with American Express that baffles me. According to the agent, the lowest airfare she could find was almost $1000. I started poking around and found the same flight for $600 on American Airline's web-site. Even more astounding, I found a similar routing starting from Stewart for the same $600!

Thrilled to not have to drive to and from the city, I thought the extra bounce in Chicago (yeah, I know, the WRONG way) was worth it. It was the same price after all. And transfers costs from my house to Stewart are much lower than to JFK.

OK, back to the driver. He called around 10:15 to inform me he was going to be a bit late and would miss the scheduled 10:30 pick-up by 15 minutes. First leg was scheduled to depart at 1:10, and I wanted to get there at 90 minutes early, but 10:45 was still within tolerance; not as if I had much choice anyway.

Driver arrived as promised, and he made fantastic time over to the Stewart. Unloading the car, the driver commented on the amount of luggage I had: a large bag with wheels, a small bag with wheels, a backpack and my computer bag; in my opinion, not too much for a 30 day stint in Moscow in the winter!

Lugged all my gear to the check-in counter, and was horrified to recognize one of the three clerks behind the desk. This older guy was the one who initially handled my attempt to check-in for a flight to Shanghai back in December, and at some point, he managed to convince the airline reservation system I was a Chinese national; that took so long to straighten out I almost missed my flight.

I was all prepared to let the person behind me to go ahead of me just so I would get one of the other agents when the other agents opened up; turns out they were working as a pair as one was training the other. Ah - someone capable of training another should know how to process an international flight! I handed over my passport and they clicked away, and in matter of minutes, my two checked bags had their tags (checked all the way to Moscow) and I had my passport back. Relief. After a nice cup of tea in the waiting area, my two carry-on bags and I boarded the plane to Chicago.

Flight to Chicago was uneventful, and I had enough of a layover to enjoy my favorite dish of meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant.

The flight from Chicago to London was crowded but not packed, and I had the end seat of the row of five, and no one was next to me. Not quite luxurious, but comfortable enough. Dozed on and off during the flight, but didn't really get any solid sleep. When we arrived in London (almost 30 minutes early) at 6:30am, I was feeling a bit tired and was more of a zombie than an alert, attentive traveler.

We arrived at Terminal 3, and my next leg was on British Airlines, which has flights out of all four terminals at Heathrow. I had a tough time reading the board with the list of which flights departed from which airlines (all flight to Europe except ... depart from here, flights to those places depart from there and flights to other continents depart from over there). I stopped one of the attendants and asked where I needed to go to get my flight to Moscow. Terminal 4.
Onto the shuttle bus, and 10 minutes later, I was in Terminal 4 with a long queue in front of me. Turns out Heathrow (and I get the feeling, all of the UK) has instituted a new policy - you are only allowed one piece of carry-on luggage. Period. Full-stop. End of story. It doesn't matter that you are only passing through and want to get on the next flight to Moscow; you can only take one piece of luggage through security. Waited a few minutes on the line to check excess bags only to discover I was in the wrong terminal. I didn't need Terminal 4, I needed Terminal 1!
Back onto another shuttle bus, and 10 minute later I was in my third of the four terminals at Heathrow. However, at this terminal, I couldn't just check-in my excess bag. I had to leave the terminal, proceed through passport control and then clear customs to so I could return to the check-in counters and rid myself of my extra bag. At passport control, the agent seemed a bit perplexed as to what I was doing there. A bit frazzled by this point, I (maybe not quite politely) explained that I didn't intend on entering the UK today and the only reason I was entering the country was due to the UK's sudden change in the carry-on allowance. I explained my destination was Moscow and my flight was scheduled to depart in a little over an hour. She started to look through my passport and commented on all the visas and stamps within; I mentioned that I also worked in England for three months at one point, which was a bad move - she started to look for my British working permit! I had to inform her that trip was back in 1995 and the necessary paperwork was in my expired passport!

She finally allowed me to pass through, and I rushed over to the check-in counter. Of course, there was a line of folks ahead of me. With the clock ticking, I started to get a bit nervous about this flight. I've never done this before, but I started to work my way through the line by explaining to the person in front of me that I was in a bit of a hurry and was attempting to make a flight scheduled to depart in less than 50 minutes. Amazingly enough, all 6 groups of people allowed me to inch ahead of them, and I made it to the counter, where I had to explain to the clerk why I was there. (It's a bit difficult to check-in an additional bag mid-way through your journey!) And just to increase the delay, I had to wait for a supervisor to come over and swipe by boarding pass with some special marker so I could make it through the security checkpoint. Rushed through security and saw on the main board that I was to proceed to the gate, which I promptly did. A few minutes later, I was on board the almost completely empty plane for the final leg to Moscow.

On this last leg of the journey, it finally dawned on my that it was almost 25 years to the day that I first entered Russia (well, then the Soviet Union). My 3 traveling companions and I were part of a larger group of American students en-route to Moscow for a semester abroad at the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language. However, the Soviets initially denied the four of us a visa, and after a bit of a delay, we finally obtained permission to enter the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, the rest of the group already departed for Helsinki, where they caught the train to Moscow. We managed to meet up with the larger group in Finland, but we had to enter the Soviet Union on our own as our visas were not valid until two days later.

As the lone set of Americans on the overnight train from Helsinki, we became the focus of the boarder guards attention. As the guards with the guns entered our compartment and sealed the door, we could hear the dogs, urged on by more guards, sniffing around the outside of the carriage. They selected one person, me, and went through all my bags looking for contraband.

Luckily, I had nothing suspicious with me (except for a set of bag pipes, but they weren't exactly what the boarder guards were looking for), except when then frisked me, they uncovered my chain and cross. Unfortunately, I forgot to declare that object on my customs form, and that became quite the sore point with them (especially since it was an Orthodox cross). They wouldn't let me add the item to my form, which in theory meant the guards on the way out could prevent me from leaving the country with it (which luckily did not happen).

Anyway, all these memories started to flash back to me, and I began to get a little nervous about entering Russia on a plane with so few passengers. Sounds odd, but I figured with just 10 people on the plane, the boarder guards would have tons of time to devout to each and every person.
Collected my bags from the carousel, and before I knew what happened, I was through passport control And then a few seconds later, I went through the "Nothing to Declare" lane and the next thing I knew, I was in Russia. Quite different from 25 years ago!

The local IBM contact arranged for a taxi to transport me to the hotel, which I was a bit reluctant to accept; I had originally wanted to try taking public transportation into town, but after three flights and loaded with 4 bags, I was relieved to see the little plaque with "IBM" on it.
The ride to the Renaissance was less than an hour, and even though I could have gone out for a little walk in an attempt to stay awake until 9pm, I opted to go on-line and try to catch up on a bit of work (just in case I suddenly conked out, I wanted to do it in the privacy of my own room).
End of the first journal entry.

Thanks, Stephen