Airports

After an extremely uncomfortable flight, not much sleep and feeling grungy, we land in the Moscow airport. We had to exit the plane via outside stairs, board a bus and go up stairs in a service entrance into the airport. The airport was under construction so many concessions were being made for normal procedures. We stood in the passport control line for about 15 minutes until we saw some people going rogue and decided to join them. We were in the “foreigners” line and the “citizen” lines were empty. We saw a couple of people tentatively go to those lines and when they waved that it was all clear, airport security would allow us to use those lines, then we jumped on the chance.


We retrieved our luggage, exchanged some money and went to meet our Russian driver, Vitaly. He was nice but a little distant, not warm and welcoming. He did not offer to carry our bags at all, which we were warned about, but it was still odd. Just when you think chivalry is dead, something reminds you that it isn’t and you need to be thankful when it actually does happen to you. Vitaly drove us from the international airport to the domestic airport about 10 minutes away. He helped us get our tickets at the counter and saw us through to the security line.

At this point we were tired and had been lugging our carry-on bags around and decided on this last leg to just check them all. We had 3 ½ hours to wait for our plane, we were miserable and had hit that point of being so tired you’re just kind of in a daze on the borderline of feeling sick. We started to watch another movie on my laptop to pass the time but just didn’t feel like it.

This section of the airport was new and I was taking a few photos. My sister didn’t understand why I wanted photos of the airport but fellow designer understand what compels us to take photos of things that other people don’t see. We were so tired and at this just needed to lay down and sleep. So we found an empty space behind a wall at a gate, spread out our coats on the hard terrazzo floor, wrapped our purses around us and dozed off. When Beth’s cell phone alarm went off, we woke to find quite a few people standing by us at the gate. We would have been embarrassed but figured on one knows us and we were simply too tired to care. Waiting at our gate I saw an older gentlemen with a “man purse”! It looked just like a women’s purse and I couldn’t help but covertly snap a photo.

We boarded the plane for our last 2 hour flight leg and wouldn’t you know it, I get stuck by a bad body odor person again! We dozed off and the lady beside me gives me an elbow jab to my ribs to wake me up for the snack cart. Ok so on one hand that was very kind but her jab was pretty hard. Just caused Beth and I to laugh again, we had to because the food was terrible and of course we were starving. When everyone exited the plane, they do not exit in a polite and orderly manner, like every row goes when it’s their turn. Oh no, whoever gets up first and pushes the hardest, gets off the plane first. I know some friends that would have been very annoyed by this and normally I would have been but was simply numb with exhaustion. We had visions of a nice soft bed in the near future….sigh.
~Amy