Heading to Moscow

As soon as I arrived to Buffalo airport I found out that my flight to Moscow has been changed. I made my reservations with Delta and expected to fly with Delta, but when I checked in I was told that there are some changes and that I will fly to Moscow on the Russian airline, Aeroflot. My arrival time to Moscow should be a little latter than my previously scheduled time of 11 am.  I felt that was just perfect because my friend G. was expected to get to Moscow at 4pm, so my time to wait for him would be shorter. After that I had to wait another 4 hours at the airport to catch my flight to JFK airport in New York from where my flight to Moscow would start.  JFK is a huge airport and once there I had to hustle to find the wing where Aeroflot is located. I got there in just in time, but it is interesting how the airport changes depending on what airlines are at a particular wing. Here, the shops and the the eateries were much simpler, the bathrooms less cleaner and the seating areas were shabbier. The check in ladies spoke very little English and on the plane almost everyone spoke only Russian. For me that was good, because I started adjusting myself to the Russian language. We left around 7 pm and since we were flying East the whole flight was mostly night flight. After dinner was served most of us slept almost the entire flight.
The arrival to the Sheremetyevo airport was uneventful, but getting to the customs was a very, very long walk through really clean and bright corridors. This should have been my first clue of  the size of Moscow - how everything is over big and far apart. Once I went through the customs I came to an area where one needs to find  transportation to get to the city, or at least transportation to the nearest Metro station. The city is at least an hour's drive from the airport. As I am an older lady, the taxi drivers were constantly approaching me to offer rides so I started practicing my first Russian: "Net" meaning "No" and "Spasibo" meaning "Thank you". It worked. When my friend G. arrived around 4pm we took care of some business like getting "rubles" and buying our train tickets to Kiev. Then we took the bus number 817 to the nearest Metro station, Planetarnaya,  about forty minutes away. During bus ride we learned that the road signs mean little - if the bus driver, or a any driver wants to pass someone they will get on the sidewalk or in the fields on the side of the road. The young people in Russia are raised to always offer their seats to "pensioners", meaning senior citizens, so right away I got to seat on the bus. Also, on the metros there is a repeating announcement to remember the give up seats to older people.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My birth place, Novi Sad Serbia

Image
I was born in Novi Sad in 1941 in a lovely house on the shores of Danube River,  today Liman I. Most of my early memories are associated with the river and the Strand (the Novi Sad beach). Today, the university campus is on the location where our neighborhood used to be. The campus was created in the late 1950's and early 1960's, and to create it, our house along with all of our neighbors homes were taken away. Some families, including ours, were never compensated for the the loss. Here are a few pictures of me on the Danube that my father took in the summer of 1943. I have no pictures of the house in Novi Sad At the time of my birth my father, Karoly Wissinger, (Karlo Visinger, in Serbian) was working on the interior designs of the Banovina building. The architect of the building was Dragisa Brasovan. Today the building serves as the government offices for Vojvodina Region. My father and samples of his work inside Banovina.   We left the...
Read more

Mid Carolina Run Shop Hop 2012

Image
As I was visiting my family in North Carolina I came across an ad for this shop hop. Although, my Daughter-in-Law is not a quilter, I mentioned this shop hop to her and we got really enthused about the adventure. What is a "shop-hop"?  It is visiting participating quilt shops and collecting a free fabric piece or pattern samples from each shop. Once all the patterns are collected a quilt can be made. In these shops in addition to the patterns they gave away regional recipes as well. There were only seven shops in this group, but it took us a whole day to visit each and every one of them. We had a wonderful time together and it was a beautiful day to travel.   Here are the  quilts made from the blocks given away by the stores. Each store choose their own fabrics and added their creativity while assembling the quilts.
Read more

Some observations of nature

Image
During my travelings, I came across some interesting events that I felt the need to share. The white slug and the mating earthworms were a first for me. Slugs Slugs are standard pests in the gardens of Pacific Northwest, but when I was in Alaska I took pictures of these two. One was all black and the other one was all white. Both were really large, about 8 - 9 inches long. The slugs I have seen in our area are mostly brownish gray with spots and were definitely shorter. This slug was really, really black White slug - or is it albino? Did you ever see a white slug? Mating earthworms While visiting my home in Futog, Serbia I came across this pair of mating earthworms. I never even knew they mate! I am glad I did not step on them. Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning they each have the makings of both sexes: male sperms and female eggs. They fertilize each others eggs, but not during the mating. After they are done mating, they separate and each lays their eggs in a co...
Read more