Traveling Adventure

I made a trip to Russia during the break to spend the holidays with my girlfriend, Svetlana. I thought I would report about my adventure a little bit. I left here out of GSP on the 23rd of December. I left to go to the airport at 11:30 am. Thanks to Tracy and the kids for picking me up and giving me a ride. I got my boarding pass and checked in my luggage. I went through security. I had no problems or lines at either place. I was siting down at the gate to wait for the flight 12:10. My flight was around 2 pm. The plan was a small commuter plan.

I flew to an airport outside of Washington D.C. and then over to Moscow. We got to the airport and a went to the gate. As I got there they were boarding so I got right in line. I had to show both my boarding pass and passport. The plane was huge. we had three rows of seats. Two sets on either side and four in the middle. I think there was like 20 rows in the economy section. We had a delay because one of the passengers had lost his passport and could not go on. How you loose your passport after you had to show it to get on the plane I don't know. The trip to Moscow was about 10 hours. We had no problems during the flight. It was hard to sleep.

I then got threw customs and to my next gate. That is when I started having trouble. There was heavy fog in Volgograd where I was going. So our flight kept getting delayed. I was suppose to leave a little after 2 pm and get there around 3:45pm on the 24th. That did not happen. Luckily at the airport, signs were in Russian and English. The announcements were also in both languages. The flight as i said kept getting delayed. We even had to change gates. Finally we were ready to go. We had to show our boarding pass and board a bus to go to the plane. We were almost all on the bus but had to get off and wait for another 20 minutes. We finally got on the plane a little after 7:00 pm. We had to wait for a bit to de-ice the plane. We flew to Volgograd and circled and circled. We could not land so they flew back to Moscow.

We had to get off the plane, get our luggage, and get a new boarding pass for the next day. They took us to a hotel that looked like old dorm buildings and rooms. The next day there is still fog and the flight would be late that night if at all. Everyone was upset. I made it back to the airport and got my bag. Some of the passengers were going to take a bus, others a train, and others to find another flight. I went with another passenger and we bought train tickets. I ended up taking a 24 hour train ride from Moscow to Volgograd with another passenger on the flight. I finally got there at 9:30 pm on the 26th. It was a good thing I took the train because their was a huge ice storm that knocked out power all over Moscow including the airport I was at on the 26th. Sveta was waiting for me smiling as I got off the train. It had been hard for her with all my troubles. She so wanted to have me come and then with delays she was sad and worried. We were both so happy that I had finally made it. My hotel was a couple blocks from the train station. We walked to the hotel and I got checked in. We lost two days but had a wonderful time together.