Today began rather early for some of us. If I recall correctly, I remember someone coming home at 4 AM and waking everybody whilst he was getting into bed. Nonetheless, the alarms were set at 7 AM in order to have enough time to get the bags ready. This meant that we went from a mess to a ‘clean’ room in a matter of an hour and a half, since we needed to be outside at 8:45 AM to get into the bus that would take us to the airport. After an impressive display of packing skills, as the duration of our stay had resulted in a mess of dirty clothes and other things, we assembled outside. After a well know “buddycheck” (A system where everyone is assigned two buddies, in order to quickly check if everyone is present) and a group picture, we were ready to get into the bus. Or should I say busses?
As some of you may recognize, sometimes even the simplest of thinking steps are forgotten when you don’t pay attention. This is a fine example of such an error: The travel agency arranged transport to the airport from our hostel. This meant that they had to arrange seats for 30 people in some sort of vehicle(s). This they did excellently! They arranged two vans with each 15 seats, therefore completing the objective of having enough room for 30 travelers. However, they forgot the simple fact that a traveler of our kind takes a big bag or case of around 20 kilos with him or her when he goes to the airport, as he or she wants to go on great adventures in the foreign and unknown world. In short, they arranged transport for the people but forgot room for the bags. Luckily we as students of Thor are not unfamiliar with situations where you need to improvise to make things work. We even have our own word for it: ‘Thorganiseren’, which basically means organizing something last minute while using your very best improvising skills to make it work. So we put our skills to use and a few minutes later we got all the bags in the bus and went our merry way.
At least, one of the busses went its merry way. The other one had a story of its own. After a few kilometers something went wrong. One of the busses got pulled over by the police for a routine check. Now as the kindness of the Russian police is a well known fact, you should not be astounded by the fact that this regular ‘routine check’ took only 15 minutes! As the police found out that the driver was not wearing his seatbelt they decided to lecture this young man in their police car for a quarter of an hour after which the driver payed a big fee to the kind officers, to thank them for their lecture, at least that’s what I think happened. After this short interruption, also this van went its merry way.
Luckily our check-in was way smoother than the rest of that day so far. The only mentionable thing about it was the extremely slow service and the mixup of names that occurred only a few times. Yet however unlikely it may seem, even after giving your passport they are able to mix up names and give you wrong tickets or as we say after two weeks of Russia: “long live the bureaucracy”. Some of you may believe that the Netherlands is good at paperwork, but Russia is 20% Russia and 80% bureaucracy. You need a stamp for everything you can imagine. They somehow managed to mix up Roel and me, I don’t know who of us should be more offended by this, me or Roel, but after informing our guide all was fixed and we went on to the plane.
After racing through multiple time zones we came to Novosibirsk, the hometown of Anton. Anton is one of the members of our faculty which accompanies us during our travel. He has proven to be very useful now and then as he comes from Russia and speaks the language. However when we asked him how he felt about being home, he answered with ‘shitty’. I don’t know if this was a joke or not, but I leave that up to Anton.
Then it was on to our plane to Seoul which left 1:20 hours after our previous plane landed. Which is a short time frame for a transfer with a big group. Mix in some Russian bureaucracy and you have the perfect mix for disaster. Passport checks in Russia take a while as you need at least a few forms, stamps and a stern look from the customs officer. After all of us went through this check and through the metal detector twice, we got on to our nightly flight to Seoul.
Thank you Russia for your hospitality and your very funny way of life (at least we think it is funny) and see you next time, whenever that may be.
From Russia with love,
Rick Voogt