24 January 2012 - Mother Russia Calling

It's a long story, but in short I have been asked to spend the remainder of my time in Europe in Russia as acting leader of our practice covering the Commonwealth of Independent States region. This of course has a lot of logistical challenges that I will no doubt be discussing in future posts, but I am excited about the opportunity, not to mention that it may be interesting to be here during the upcoming elections at the beginning of March.

I flew over as soon as I was able to get a double-entry business visa. There is at present a three hour time difference between Moscow and Frankfurt (thanks to a random decision by President Medvedev to not let the time "fall back" at the end of the summer). So the next-to-last flight from Frankfurt leaves at around 18:00 but you land just before midnight in Moscow. Delightful.

As a typical American who grew up during the cold war, the idea of being in Russia and not speaking the language is a bit unsettling when you first approach passport control. Especially after the protests in December regarding allegedly flawed/rigged elections for the Duma were blamed on the U.S. at least in part. But I was allowed in with only a question on where I had flown from.

The firm had arranged for a driver to meet me at the airport, which I was most grateful for at this early hour (it was about 01:00 by the time I was headed out of baggage claim and was not, thank goodness, asked to stop and show the contents of my gigantaur Rimowa suitcase that was brimming with things like snow boots and sweaters to keep me warm and clothed for over a week). I had been warned that the taxi drivers at the airport and around the city are not as regulated, shall we say, as in many other international cities (see also the blog posting on taxis in Frankfurt) and may not always employ meters - you just bargain for the amount you're willing to pay to go someplace, which would be difficult if you don't know where you're going and don't speak Russian. I apparently have "target" or "not from here" written on my forehead because as soon as I emerged from baggage claim I was immediately assailed by taxi drivers urging rather forcefully that I was waiting for them. Um, no, not so much. I was sooooo pleased to see a guy standing with a sign with our logo. Whew!

The guy didn't really speak much English but following him was a no-brainer. Until we got outside, where it's snowing, wickedly cold, and he's leading me across a large area that I thought was a parking lot but was in fact a road, which I learned as a few cars came driving straight at us! We finally got to the car, which was not exactly what I was expecting. Perhaps I have spent too much time in Germany, but I guess I had been expecting a small Mercedes or BMW. No, I believe this was a Toyota Corolla that seemed more like it was a personal vehicle than one used to transport strangers on a regular basis. But somehow its trunk managed to accommodate the large suitcase and off we went. It took nearly an hour for us to get to the hotel, which I guess is amazing time compared to what it takes during the day when traffic is insane. What wasn't quite clear to me, though, was whether or not I was supposed to pay the driver or whether it was being billed to the firm. He pushed a form to me written in Russian and indicated I should sign. Okay.... Also not clear whether I was supposed to add a tip. But since I had no Rubles on me, I didn't have to think about that one very long.

Until my corporate apartment is ready, I am staying at the Swissotel, which is across a main road (more like a highway) from our office and is technically on an island between the Moskva River and a channel/canal (the purpose and history of which I do not know but intend to learn). It's a very nice property and rather high, thus affording some amazing views. I am typing this from the executive lounge on the 19th floor and have a beautiful view of the Kremlin from here, which was also part of the view from my room on that first night here, though I had no idea what exactly I was looking at, only that there were an awful lot of lights out there and the canal that was frozen over looked awfully cold. But with the difference in time that first night, I was wired. So I could not help but take a couple pictures of the Sarah Palin action figure with that view - this most assuredly was not the Russia one might see from one's kitchen window in Wasila (though I realize she never actually said that - but come on, you could easily hear her making such a statement, right?).

The next morning, one of my new colleagues picked me up at the hotel in his car and we drove over to the office, which I thought was a very nice, welcoming gesture. It was a busy but productive day. Towards the end, though, the young woman from our Mobility group in Russia (I will call her Katya) called to ask if I knew how to get back to the hotel. Well, it's just right across the highway - how difficult can it be? But she volunteered to walk me back that evening to make sure that I found it because it might be a bit tricky the first time. And she was right. First, we had to navigate our way out of the maze of connected buildings of the firm (it took me about a week to figure out where I was and which entrance was the one with the ATM). Then you walk along the canal for a couple blocks, then cross the canal. About half a block after you cross the canal, you descend down some stairs and then take a tunnel underneath the highway. At the other side, you repeat the procedure - stairway back up to the surface, cross back across the canal, and then about a block later you are at the hotel.

But it was in the tunnel where things were a bit more interesting. When you reach the bottom of the stairs, there is a little kiosk that is little more than a closet - maybe about half the size of one of those old Fotomat kiosks there used to be in the US in random parking lots at strip malls (how much am I dating myself here?!). Visible within the glass/plastic portions are various baked goods - rolls, bread and the like. AND there are also baking capabilities inside. So there's this bizarre smell of baked goods mixed with the dank (if that can be a scent), wet smell of the tunnel.

And maybe something else. As we proceeded through the tunnel, an interesting visual came into view at the other end of the tunnel. (I am kicking myself that I was staring too much to get a photo.) There was an old man there with a little kid. No, not child. Kid, as in goat. A little white one. Okay, odd, to be sure, but it gets better. The kid was wearing a coat. The coat of a human. It seemed to be a reversible quilted down or faux-down thing that was dirty beige (or just dirty) on the outside and (based on the sleeves rolled up around his front knees) a rusty brown on the other side. Totally bizarre. I was trying not to stare, but reminded myself that I was in a different country and that things were different here. And around that time Katya looked at me and, also seeming a bit speechless as well as reading my mind, said, "That's not normal. Even for Russia, that is not normal."

And so began the adventure....

1-2 February 2012 - Domodedovo

("Pennsylvania Polka" by Frankie Yankovic)

Last Wednesday I had a bit more eventful trip back to Frankfurt than I had imagined. I was flying on Lufthansa (natürlich!) out of the Domodedovo airport. I had scheduled to have a taxi pick me up at the office at 16:30, but then a meeting I couldn't really skip (it was, after all, my first real week here in Moscow as the acting leader) came up. I asked my assistant if she could move back the taxi. "Yes, but not if you still want to make your flight." Good point, as I would then be in rush hour traffic, which is more ridiculous here than I can begin to explain. She noted, however, that it would be possible to make it if I took the train. Hmmm..... I had not experimented with non-taxi transit here other than, as a good friend would say, the Ten Toes Express (walking).

One of our managers said it was quite doable and the station from which the airport express (Aeroexpress) train leaves is only a 10 minute walk from the office or so. I had been at that station over the weekend when I was wandering around, but the idea of trying to find the right track, buying a ticket and the fear of everything being in Russian was a bit daunting. Not to worry - he said he'd have one of our interns help me make it. Okay. So off to the meeting I went.

When I returned to my office, the poor intern assigned to escort me was waiting, along with three other staff. They presented me with the most charming gift! They knew that I was working on learning the Cyrillic alphabet, so they had created an alphabet for our team. For each of the Cyrillic characters, there was a key to pronunciation, an example of the letter used in the name of one of our colleagues, and then a picture of said colleague. So with this document, I could both learn the Cyrillic characters, their pronunciation, as well as the names and faces of most of our professionals. I love it and have been showing it off wherever I go!

So off the poor, hapless intern (to protect the innocent, as always, I will call him Ivan, which is not his real name) and I went to the train station. Now, because I had learned the night before that I was going to have to move over my belongings from Frankfurt to Moscow solely via excess baggage, I left the suits and some other things (like the Sarah Palin doll I had with me) in my office.

However, I still had my large Rimowa (again, natürlich!) metal suitcase with me and, smooth roller that it is, it is still a bit large. Especially when dealing with the sometimes icy or snow-packed streets of Moscow. Ivan took one look at the suitcase and took over responsibility for its navigation, despite my protests. He even carried the brute at times when he thought that the sound of the rollers on the paving stones was a bit loud. Great guy. And I was glad to have him with me as we went into a different entrance than I'd seen on the weekend and would have been totally lost.

It turned out that the Aeroexpress ticket kiosks were actually multi-lingual, so I had no issue at all in purchasing a ticket. But after I purchased my ticket, Ivan looked at me quizzically and asked about his ticket. Ummm.... Apparently the manager who was looking out for my interests had told Ivan to go with me all the way to the airport to make sure I made it okay, got checked in, etc. Incredibly kind of both of them. But I told Ivan that since the Aeroexpress went directly to the terminal with no stops, it would be difficult for even me to get lost and I'd navigated my way around airports before and could probably figure that out, too. He needn't spend his evening (it was already 18:30) taking me to

the airport, getting me settled, and then going back into the city. And I was still horrified at the idea that I had become one of "those partners" with someone to literally carry my bag for me! He nevertheless insisted on at least waiting until I boarded the train. Very sweet.

The Aeroexpress was just fine. Nothing luxurious and not really all that fast (as compared to, for example, the Arlanda Express in Stockholm or Heathrow Express in London), but it was certainly faster than the drive from the airport to the city at around 2 AM when I had arrived, so I assumed it was supersonic compared to rush hour traffic.

I arrived in plenty of time for my scheduled departure, only to discover that the flight was delayed by about an hour due to mechanical problems. So I hung out in the Lufthansa lounge (not the Star Alliance Lounge, mind you - for whatever reason Austrian and Swiss both had their own lounges which seems like a bit of a waste of money and redundancy, but what do I know?).

I was a bit surprised by the decor - big wicker chairs with cushions that made you sink down to the point where it is a bit difficult to get up. But it was nice enough. There was some kind of hot buckwheat available as well as an interesting beet root salad and a few other things. Surprisingly, at least for Lufthansa, not a self-service bar for either coffee or adult beverages. I asked for a glass of red wine and was a bit surprised to get a white wine, which was poured out of the bottle using one of those narrow plastic spouts like one might see used for hard liquor at a bar. But I decided not to argue and grabbed a bottle of water for my wait (good call, as it would turn out). Then I returned to my deep wicker chair to stare out the window at the inky blackness broken by falling and blowing snow, but alas not by the sight of the familiar Lufthansa tail.

Our flight finally boarded around 21:45 (18:45 CET). I had managed to score the great exit window seat with now seat in front, so mad wicked legroom (you know, for my long legs and all). This also turned out to have been a good call, because after we pulled out of our gate position the captain announced that there was a different mechanical problem and so we were going to go chill out (literally and figuratively - it was around -20C at this point) somewhere out on the tarmac and the mechanic would meet us out. So I stretched out and read a bit, thinking (this is Lufthansa, after all) that we would soon be on our way. About 15 minutes into this, a woman with children asked what she was supposed to do because she and her family were supposed to catch a connecting flight to Argentina in Frankfurt and if they didn't make their connection, what would happen because they didn't have visas to enter Germany. The flight attendants tried to calm her down, but she was becoming a bit billigerant, as was her husband. Not really anything the flight attendants could do, though I hadn't really thought about that type of situation before in terms of canceled flights because I think all Lufthansa flights I had been on before were either within the EU or US, and obviously within the EU there's not a visa issue. Hmmm....

Probably another 15 minutes later, the captain announced that even if the mechanic arrived soon, there wasn't going to be enough time to make the repairs and get us into Frankfurt by 23:00 CET. Apparently effective 1 January as part of some negotiation for the airport expansion, there was a new noise abatement rule that prohibited flights in or out of Frankfurt between 23:00 and 5:00. WHAT?! He was waiting for more information on our gate back in the terminal.

Phones were still allowed as we waited, so I tried to call our corporate travel agent in Germany to see if they could book me on another flight out either that night or the next morning, either to Frankfurt or to Prague where I was slated to fly first thing the following morning. Just as they answered the phone and I was beginning to explain my situation, the pilot announced that the mechanic had just arrived, so the flight might still be on. Someone behind me said, "I'm going to kill you." I assume she was referring to the pilot and not me, but in any event I rang off to see what the new situation was. As I ended the call, my BlackBerry buzzed. It was a message from Lufthansa saying that my flight had been canceled. The flight attendant next to me asked me to please show it to the purser because none of them had any idea what was really going on.

They brought a bus out to our position on the tarmac to take us back to the terminal. It was a very cold walk down those steps from the flight, let me tell you. No one should be on the tarmac in -22 temps! They drove us to the terminal and let us out at a point where there were about 100 people inside waiting for other flights. Wasn't the gate from which we had departed. There was NO ONE there from Lufthansa. No direction. Nothing. Uhhh.... So I and the other passengers (it was a rather empty flight) started talking amongst ourselves to figure out what to do.

A few of us had been in the lounge together before the flight and so we headed back up to the lounge to see if they could help. When we got there, the attendants said that they do not work for Lufthansa, so they couldn't help us. Uhhh.... So one of the guys called Lufthansa in Germany on his cell phone. They weren't very helpful, either, but told us that we should go to the check-in desk outside of security.

The "outside of security" part of that proved a bit interesting. And I suddenly had a greater appreciation for the arguments that the woman headed for Argentina had voiced. I was traveling on a double-entry business visa and they had closed out and stamped the first entry when I had gone through passport control. So even if we could figure out how to get out of the general terminal area, how does one "undo" the departure and attempt to explain to passport control the next morning how I was leaving the country without having entered.

When you enter the country, you also have to complete an entry form and you keep that with you until you leave, so of course those had also been collected by passport control. Hmmm.... But certainly this happens all the time with canceled flights in Moscow due to weather, etc. (Then again, one might assume that Lufthansa would also be more prepared for a flight cancellation than was apparently the case.)

Somehow we found someone from passport control to assist us. Well, at least I think he was from passport control. We were on the wrong side of passport control and this guy in a uniform motioned all of us (we had a group of about 15 people who just stuck together the entire evening, it was quite nice) to a place off to the side and next to the side wall of one of the passport control booths. We then approached him one at a time, gave him the boarding pass and passport. He studied both, ripped off the luggage sticker from the boarding pass, pocketed the boarding pass, and put a different stamp diagonally across the departure stamp on the visa, and we were permitted back into the area before passport control. It was rather odd.

We then headed to the check-in desk. She said that she couldn't assist us and we should try the ticketing desk. So off we went.

There was a rather harried looking woman at the ticketing desk who did not seem at all happy to see us approach her. It probably didn't help when, simultaneously, people started addressing her in Russian, German, English and another Slavic sounding language I didn't recognize, all while the exhausted infant of the Argentina-bound couple began wailing. After a few minutes of this, she got up and walked behind the front area, apparently with no explanation. Uhhh.....

Quite a while passed, but then someone not wearing any sort of Lufthansa branding or badging showed up and we were apparently supposed to follow her to collect our luggage. Okay.... So she takes us to where one exits from baggage claim and, after some words she had with someone at the entrance, we went "in" the "out" door. But we were in, and miraculously our bags were there. What a relief. One minor difficulty - the guy at the exit wanted us to show our boarding passes to exit the area - yes, the same boarding passes that the guy on the wrong side of passport control had pocketed. More exchanges of words in Russian and our attempts in German and English and we and our bags were allowed out.

We went back to the ticketing desk, hopefully something would have magically happened while we were gone. Not exactly miraculous, but at least progress - they had our boarding passes ready for our respective morning flights. Good news as it was approaching midnight and we were a bit tired, not to mention hungry, as we hadn't obviously received our dinner on the flight. The woman at the desk passed out the boarding passes, and then we began asking about the hotel arrangements, etc. Around this time, the woman got very irritated and noted that it was midnight and her shift was over. And she went behind the desk area. Uhhhh.....???

One of the guys called Lufthansa in German again and was telling them in very strong terms that this was, well, bullshit. And we waited a while longer. About 30 minutes later a guy in his 50s approached from behind us (not from behind the desk) wearing a Lufthansa airport badge. And got right to work - albeit at a snail's pace. He let us know that that the restaurant wouldn't be open at our hotel, and there weren't really any other places open at the airport at this hour (we're now past 1 AM), but he'd give us food vouchers anyway. It took him FOR-EVER (foreva eva?) to get the hotel vouchers to us. I was the next to the last one to get mine and waited for the other guy who'd been seated in my row to head to the airport. The Lufthansa guy assured us that there was a hotel shuttle outside. "At 2 AM???!" Yes.

Liar, liar, pants on fire! But they'd be cooling quickly due to the frigid temps. We walked outside and a taxi driver asked if we were looking for Aerotel. Yes, we're looking for the shuttle. "No shuttle. I'll drive you." Now, I've been warned about potentially unscrupulous taxi drivers so who knew whether he was lying about the shuttle or not. But it's -20 outside and neither of us were in the mood to wait outside in the cold for 15 minutes to see if the shuttle showed up.

And our deluxe voucher didn't even contain the address or phone number of the hotel, so we couldn't exactly call them to ask about the shuttle status. So the guy I was with (still don't know his name or the names of the others in our merry band of angry sheep) negotiated transit for us for RUB 500 (over $15) for our transit. Which transit turned out to be about 700 meters. But we were there.

The woman at the desk took care of some paperwork and then handed me the plastic card that in any other situation would be the room key. But this was unlike any other situation. She noted that this was NOT a key, but was for the lights. That my room was open, but lockable from inside, and if I left and shut the door, I would need to have someone f

rom the hotel staff to open it for me.

Ummm, really? Now, I understand the concept of putting the card key into a slot in the wall to turn on the lights. I'm a fan, actually, as I assume this has the potential to really save electricity (though is confounded by hotels that give you two keys and you end up leaving one in the slot the entire time). But when I got to the room, it really was open. As in the door was wide open.

Ummm..... I crept in, having visions of rapists lurking in the closets. Nope. Empty. Of virtually everything. Not even a cheap fake oil painting screwed to the wall. Other than the (very unexpected) presence of a hair dryer, it mostly resembled a type of cell. A rather cold cell. Twin bed with suspect bedspread. No independent temperature controls. And paper-thin walls or floors so I could hear a group of apparently drunk men singing something at the tops of their voices. It was now about 2:30 and I needed to wake up around 5:00, so I attempted to go to sleep. Wearing virtually every scrap of dirty clothing I had (which was all that I had in my suitcase) to keep warm. And every time I felt an itch (often), I was certain it was bed bugs or lice. I tried to comfort myself with the idea that even these creatures must not survive in these inhospitable temperatures. It didn't really help. Relatively sleepless night.

The next morning was literally and figuratively Groundhog's Day. In addition to it being February 2, I found myself back in the Lufthansa lounge. It was still dark. Still cold. Still snowing. I was in the same clothing. Same beetroot salad. Same white-wine pouring person at the bar (I was on coffee this morning). And even the prior day's newspapers (perhaps they arrive on a later incoming flight?). And the same passengers from the previous night, who by now seemed like friends. The only difference was this time, blessedly, the bird actually took off.

But I'm still not ready to forgive Lufthansa for such an incredible lapse in service. Even if this is Russia and things are different here, I expect German organization for contingencies to address situations like this that must happen quite often.