thitherward

The only part of the flight attendant’s announcement that I understood was “minus one degrees centigrade”. My first thought was “I’m going to freeze here” and my second thought was “I’m screwed because I can’t understand any Russian and that wasn’t even in Russian”. The flight attendant was speaking in English but had a Russian accent.

I wasn’t feeling any more hopeful about the start of my trip after being turned away at the immigration desk because I had put in the wrong number for my Visa # on the form. Apparently I should have written the number in the top right of my visa and not the number that was shown under “VISA ID”. Go figure. To make me feel more out of place, once I got out of customs, I couldn’t find a working pay phone and I had no idea where I was supposed to meet my couchsurfer hosts. It was a small international terminal so there weren’t many places to look. Standing around outside the terminal exit only attracted random men to me asking if I needed a taxi. I’m assuming that’s what they were asking because the word “taxi” was the only word I understood. Eventually, I got the nerve to try and ask someone if I could borrow their mobile phone to make a local phone call. As I was trying to make one person understand what I needed, another man handed me his phone. Thank you! But looking at the phone, I couldn’t figure out which button on the menu was to make an outbound call. Mental note: look into phone app UI designs later.

Made call, figured out where to wait and then stood outside waiting, amazingly, not feeling cold in my cotton jacket. From then on, everything has been excellent in Vladivostok. My couchsurf hosts, Eugenia and Olga, love their city and drove me around showing the beach and the construction work. Apparently there is going to be a big Asia-wide conference here in 2012 so the whole city is under construction.

After getting to their apartment, we spent hours talking and eating. According to one of my hosts, her favorite thing is to “eat, drink, and gavareet”. I learned quickly that gavareet is to speak. One host speaks English and translated for the other host. It’s hard to explain how thankful I am that they took me into their lives and are making every effort that my introduction to Russia is hospitable, fun, authentic, and memorable. There are behind the scenes stories that I’m going to cherish and will share privately.