Day 1 - The Arrival

Ok, so I'm actually writing this a couple days after my flight, but there's a good reason for that. As it turns out, the European "adapter" that I thought would keep my laptop running isn't really meant for use with things like that, so it burned out after about 20 minutes. Right now I'm borrowing Sharon (Gould)'s adapter until my battery gets recharged.

Anyway, the flight. It was pretty darn bad.

I hadn't flown on an airplane in about ten years or so, and so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I had a window seat, which would have made things easier as far as sleeping is concerned on the flight, but this guy Юрий (Yuri) apparently was unable to get seats for him and his (what appeared to be) 6-year-old daughter to sit together. Being the nice guy that I am, I swapped seats. Good for the soul, bad for the legs.

I spent most of 9+ hours in a cramped seat, next to a fairly large Russian dude, unable to figure out how to recline the damn chair. It was bad. But eventually, as with all great things, it came to an end. But just because we landed, that doesn't mean that we were getting off, oh no. As it turned out, a couple of guys on the plane decided to not listen to the 4 or 5 warnings about not standing up until the plane got to the gate. This delayed our real arrival by about 20 minutes.

Once we did get into the airport, things went pretty smoothly. I didn't really understand a damn thing the girl behind this little toll booth-looking thing at passport control said, but I eventually got that I was supposed to fill out a migration card when I showed my passport. Did that.

I expected customs to be pretty bad. Yeah, right. Literally all I had to do was put my two bags on this little conveyer belt, they x ray them or whatever, and I'm done. Easy peezy.

I moved on to the next room where there were like 8 people just standing there behind a rail. I assumed they were just someone's family or something, until I noticed that almost every one of them was holding a piece of paper with a name on it. Most of them were in marker or crayon. I didn't see my name at first, so I kept walking and found another group behind that group holding more signs. In the middle of them was this guy in a black jacket and blue jeans with a Ron Jeremy mustache and a piece of paper that said:

"Radenhausen
Paul Thomas".

I walked up to him and nodded. He told me something that I didn't understand at first, but soon did as he began zipping up his jacket and putting on his gloves. I was about to experience the cold of Mother Russia for the first time.