Kaliningrad Arrival - Finally!

We exit the plane via outside stairs again and find my adoption agency translator immediately. She became known as Natasha #1, because my agency rep was Natasha #2, and our driver was Sasha. (found out later that Natasha #2 and Sasha are brother and sister).


We go to collect our luggage and end up being the last ones there because, you guessed it, one of our bags was lost. Must to her dismay, it was Beth’s food suitcase! My agency people worked diligently with the airport staff but they don’t really have a system for lost luggage so the outcome looked grim. We fell in love with Sasha, the driver. He carried our bags, loaded them into the car and held the car doors open for us. We wanted to adopt him too!

On the 20 minute drive to the hotel, we asked Natasha #1 some questions about things we saw and she gave us some history. She does the adoption translator job when needed and otherwise is a tour guide and teaches people English. It was interesting, they didn’t ask us any questions, weren’t really interested in who we were or what we were about, but if we asked questions, she would willing talk to us. It wasn’t that they weren’t nice, just not interested in us, it’s hard to explain.

We arrive at the boutique hotel that has about 15 rooms, new, cute and nice accommodations for the reasonable price, definitely not what you would get in the US. The desk clerks spoke English so that was a relief. Our room was actually a suite; living room, long hall with full closets, bathroom, large bedroom, refrigerator and flat screen TV. We arrived at 7:30 p.m., got our instructions for the next day and fell into bed.

We were challenged by the electric plug convertor box. We read the instructions about what was to be in HI and what on LO but some things that were to be on LO did not work. So we took a chance and put the curling iron on HI and it worked fine…..that is until I got home and then it quit, guess we burned it up.

I was VERY concerned then about plugging in my laptop so we just did 10 minutes shifts of charging and I am happy to say it is still working after I returned home!

Breakfast was, well, unusual. They gave us a very small glass of orange juice and then coffee or tea. I don’t drink coffee or tea and when I asked for a refill of orange juice I took the waitress of guard, so I guess you don’t do that. We had two slices of cold ham, two slices of some really good soft cheese, two cherry tomatoes, two slices of cucumber. Then they brought us a crepe type of thing that had a strange combination of vegetables inside that we still cannot identify. We also had the Russian version of pancakes that were kind of a thicker doughy crepe. Even though Beth and I are “selective eaters” we did try these last two things but did not care for them. I guess the hotel got the hint because the next morning they asked if we wanted something different. There was no menu, you just got what they had and the only other option was oatmeal….bad texture, not happening. So we stuck with the ham, cheese and got some toast out of them. This has to last us because some days we did not have time for lunch. Can you imagine that? Me missing a meal?!?!?
~Amy