Season II, Episode 9: Crocodile Tears
We awoke early and were able to finish packing without waking Ashton Beau. Sergei arrived right on time and we carried the bags down and loaded the car. I had paid the hotel bill the night before so all we had to do to check-out was return the key.
We got in the car and started for the Orenburg Airport, about 20 to 25 minutes west of Orenburg center.
In all of the time leading up to this moment I though I would have a mixture of two feelings as we started our journey home with Ashton Beau: (1) eagerness to get on our way and get home and (2) terror at the prospect of traveling thousands of miles with a 13 month old boy. I felt neither; just a melancholy emptiness watching Orenburg go by thinking that I would not see Sergei, Natalia, or Olga for a long time, if ever again.
We arrived at the Orenburg Airport and checked-in at the counter. Because our baggage was over-weight we had to go to the cashier to pay an excess baggage fee. DW got into what was a long queue for the sole security check point while Sergei and I went to the cashier nearby.
The middle-aged surly looking lady in the cashier's booth did not look up or greet Sergei when we approached. She did not even acknowledge our presence. Sergei said something to her in Russian and he translated her reply to me as something like: “I'm in the middle of doing something and when I'm finished I'll deal with you.” We waited until she finished whatever she happened to be doing, slipped several hundred Rubles under the window to pay our excess baggage fee, and the joined DW in the queue for the security check point.
IMHO, the vignette our experience at the cashier epitomizes the difference between Russia and the West. Can any of you image a desk agent for a Western airline making you wait to give her money to pay a bulls**t fee that is pure profit to the airline while she finished some other routine task? Yeah, right!
We said our good byes to Sergei as e approached the check point and he helped us go through. Once through successfully we waved to each other and said good bye one more time. Then he was gone and DW, Ashton Beau, and I made our way to the waiting area.
Luckily for DW and me, Ashton Beau was quietly content in his Baby Bjorn the whole time. We did not wait more than another 20 when someone announced it was time to board the aircraft. We walked out of the terminal and about 150-200 yards across the ramp to our aircraft, ascended the stairs, and found our seats.
I had the window, DW and Ashton Beau, the middle, and a large, perspiring, and malodorous Russian gentleman, the aisle. When Sergei and I were at the ticket office a couple of days before, I asked him to tell the ticket agent that I wanted to buy three tickets. What I should have said was I wanted to buy thee seats. Live and learn. We got lucky when the crew closed the door and there were enough empty seats for our new acquaintance to move. Sitting next to a 13 month old probably didn’t have much appeal for him. I’m sure he was as happy to go as we were to see him leave.
Ashton Beau stayed with me from taxi, take-off, and then for about a 45 minute nap. We had bottles prepared for him for both take-off and landing to help him adjust to the change in cabin pressure. DW took him when he awoke, about the time the cabin crew was serving drinks and something for breakfast. At first we did not realize that Ashton Beau had soiled his diaper. For some reason the aroma of something among the breakfast fare so resembled the smell of baby poop that we could not recognize the what Ashton Beau had recently produced.
DW got up with Ashton Beau to take him to the smoking lounge, oh, I mean lavatory, to change his diaper. I don’t know about other aircraft in Russia, but they didn’t have a changing table in the forward restroom of our Orenburg Airlines Tu-154 that morning. The resourceful mom she is, DW managed to get Ashton Beau’s diaper changed in less than half the time it took the gentlemen before and after her to finish their cigarettes. Moreover, whenever she wants to fend off unsolicited motherhood advice, usually from her MIL, all she has to do is reference her prowess at changing in the Orenburg Airlines lavatory. Just try to top that.
After our aircraft landed in Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, we boarded a bus to the terminal. Exiting the bus we me a gentleman from Alabama who lived in Orenburg and was working there fro John Deere. His wife was Russian, from Omsk if I recall correctly, and they were expecting their first child in a few months. It was good to speak with another American and we joked about how his thick his Russian sounded with a thick southern accent.
We collected our bags and soon met Pasha waiting for us outside of baggage claim. Pasha took us to his car and we left for Ashton Beau’s medical exam. I had e-mailed Pasha a few days before that we would arrive on Friday morning and asked him if we could get Ashton Beau’s medical exam finished just after we arrived. He arranged it and said it was actually on the way into Moscow center from Domodedovo.
After about an hour we arrived at what I’m pretty sure was the Filitov clinic [Клиника Филитова]. It’s a huge compound of many buildings. We went inside and waited for five to ten minutes before gentleman cam out in surgical scrubs and introduced himself as Dr. Boris. I regret I cannot recall his surname. He put Ashton Beau on a table and spent the next ten minutes examining him. When Ashton Beau gave a little whine and some crying during the examination, Dr. Boris admonished DW when she stepped into comfort him. He said “don’t fall for those crocodile tears; it’s amazing how quickly they learn how to manipulate you.” The exam was brief and Dr. Boris did not identify any problems. I paid his assistant, she gave the certificate for Ashton Beau’s visa application to Pasha, and we left. We were at the clinic for a maximum of 30 minutes.
Our next stop was the photographer’s. Ashton Beau needed color photos for his visa application and the photos of him from our first day in Orenburg were black and white. Pasha took us to a studio on the Leningradsky Prospekt and a gentleman there shot Ashton Beau’s visa application photos for 300 Rubles. By this time Ashton Beau clearly needed to visit a changing table. Luckily we were not far from our final destination, Pasha’s apartment.
We drove to Pasha’s apartment and Pasha took us up and unlocked the door. DW and Ashton Beau went inside to “take care of business” while Pasha and I unloaded the car. I got my exercise that day carrying our bags up to the fourth floor. Then Pasha showed us about the apartment, how the appliances in the kitchen, the washing machine in the bathroom, the television, DVD player, stereo, and computer worked. Pasha also showed me how to lock and unlock the doors to his apartment. This is no mean feat. Each door had multiple locks and I had to turn the key 720 degrees in the right direction to lock or unlock the door. Try doing that with your hands full of 13 month old and groceries.
After finishing the apartment briefing, Pasha took me out to show me the neighborhood. First we drove southwest to the end of Chernayachovskaga Street [ул. Черняховского] to the Airport Galleria [Галерея Аэропорт] mall. We went past the mall to a tunnel under Leningradsky Prospekt. We followed the tunnel until we turned off to the left into the entrance to the Airport Metro station. After the Metro station Pasha took me inside the mall. We passed stores and the food court on the second floor. Then we got to the grocery store on the first floor next to a coffee café. I stowed my bag a in a locker and we went in to shop. I bought fruit, nuts, juice, бифидок, bacon from Holland, tomatoes, and romaine lettuce. As we exited the mall we also passed a little booth selling French candies that Pasha said his wife liked a lot. I made a mental note of that for future reference.
We got back in Pasha’s car and headed back to his apartment. We made one stop at a stand along the street to buy a loaf of bread. Pasha said this was the tastiest and freshest bread in the neighborhood. After buying bread Pasha dropped me off at his apartment and we were on our own.
While DW unpacked and attended to Ashton Beau, I made lunch - BLT sandwiches. That was good, except I forgot to buy mayo at the grocery store. It was still good; we hadn’t had bacon for quite a while (very rare in Russia). We approached the lettuce and tomatoes with some trepidation because travel guides usually recommend not eating the outer parts of fruit while traveling in Russia. They also say don’t use the tap water, even for brushing your teeth. We brushed our teeth with tap water at least twice every day on both trips. We ate the lettuce and tomatoes with no problem too.
A while later all three of us headed back to the mall on foot. It was about a ten minute walk from Pasha’s apartment. We first stopped for coffee at the café and then went into the grocery store. DW knew what she was looking for in the way of baby food so I waited to buy that until my second trip with her. We also loaded up on palmyeni (a sort of Russian ravioli), broth mix, a couple of frozen pizzas, and Coca-Cola Light (Diet Coke).
We returned to Pasha’s apartment and Ashton Beau took a nap while I wrote the earlier episodes of this season on his computer and DW took some time to relax. Then Ashton Beau woke up, we fed him, and then DW and I and supper of palmyeni and vegetable salad composed of olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers, a popular summer dish in Russia. Before we knew it was time for all of us to go to bed.
Sergei, DW, and Ashton Beau by the cashier's booth at the Orenburg Airport.
We got in the car and started for the Orenburg Airport, about 20 to 25 minutes west of Orenburg center.
In all of the time leading up to this moment I though I would have a mixture of two feelings as we started our journey home with Ashton Beau: (1) eagerness to get on our way and get home and (2) terror at the prospect of traveling thousands of miles with a 13 month old boy. I felt neither; just a melancholy emptiness watching Orenburg go by thinking that I would not see Sergei, Natalia, or Olga for a long time, if ever again.
We arrived at the Orenburg Airport and checked-in at the counter. Because our baggage was over-weight we had to go to the cashier to pay an excess baggage fee. DW got into what was a long queue for the sole security check point while Sergei and I went to the cashier nearby.
The middle-aged surly looking lady in the cashier's booth did not look up or greet Sergei when we approached. She did not even acknowledge our presence. Sergei said something to her in Russian and he translated her reply to me as something like: “I'm in the middle of doing something and when I'm finished I'll deal with you.” We waited until she finished whatever she happened to be doing, slipped several hundred Rubles under the window to pay our excess baggage fee, and the joined DW in the queue for the security check point.
IMHO, the vignette our experience at the cashier epitomizes the difference between Russia and the West. Can any of you image a desk agent for a Western airline making you wait to give her money to pay a bulls**t fee that is pure profit to the airline while she finished some other routine task? Yeah, right!
We said our good byes to Sergei as e approached the check point and he helped us go through. Once through successfully we waved to each other and said good bye one more time. Then he was gone and DW, Ashton Beau, and I made our way to the waiting area.
Luckily for DW and me, Ashton Beau was quietly content in his Baby Bjorn the whole time. We did not wait more than another 20 when someone announced it was time to board the aircraft. We walked out of the terminal and about 150-200 yards across the ramp to our aircraft, ascended the stairs, and found our seats.
I had the window, DW and Ashton Beau, the middle, and a large, perspiring, and malodorous Russian gentleman, the aisle. When Sergei and I were at the ticket office a couple of days before, I asked him to tell the ticket agent that I wanted to buy three tickets. What I should have said was I wanted to buy thee seats. Live and learn. We got lucky when the crew closed the door and there were enough empty seats for our new acquaintance to move. Sitting next to a 13 month old probably didn’t have much appeal for him. I’m sure he was as happy to go as we were to see him leave.
Ashton Beau stayed with me from taxi, take-off, and then for about a 45 minute nap. We had bottles prepared for him for both take-off and landing to help him adjust to the change in cabin pressure. DW took him when he awoke, about the time the cabin crew was serving drinks and something for breakfast. At first we did not realize that Ashton Beau had soiled his diaper. For some reason the aroma of something among the breakfast fare so resembled the smell of baby poop that we could not recognize the what Ashton Beau had recently produced.
DW got up with Ashton Beau to take him to the smoking lounge, oh, I mean lavatory, to change his diaper. I don’t know about other aircraft in Russia, but they didn’t have a changing table in the forward restroom of our Orenburg Airlines Tu-154 that morning. The resourceful mom she is, DW managed to get Ashton Beau’s diaper changed in less than half the time it took the gentlemen before and after her to finish their cigarettes. Moreover, whenever she wants to fend off unsolicited motherhood advice, usually from her MIL, all she has to do is reference her prowess at changing in the Orenburg Airlines lavatory. Just try to top that.
After our aircraft landed in Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, we boarded a bus to the terminal. Exiting the bus we me a gentleman from Alabama who lived in Orenburg and was working there fro John Deere. His wife was Russian, from Omsk if I recall correctly, and they were expecting their first child in a few months. It was good to speak with another American and we joked about how his thick his Russian sounded with a thick southern accent.
We collected our bags and soon met Pasha waiting for us outside of baggage claim. Pasha took us to his car and we left for Ashton Beau’s medical exam. I had e-mailed Pasha a few days before that we would arrive on Friday morning and asked him if we could get Ashton Beau’s medical exam finished just after we arrived. He arranged it and said it was actually on the way into Moscow center from Domodedovo.
After about an hour we arrived at what I’m pretty sure was the Filitov clinic [Клиника Филитова]. It’s a huge compound of many buildings. We went inside and waited for five to ten minutes before gentleman cam out in surgical scrubs and introduced himself as Dr. Boris. I regret I cannot recall his surname. He put Ashton Beau on a table and spent the next ten minutes examining him. When Ashton Beau gave a little whine and some crying during the examination, Dr. Boris admonished DW when she stepped into comfort him. He said “don’t fall for those crocodile tears; it’s amazing how quickly they learn how to manipulate you.” The exam was brief and Dr. Boris did not identify any problems. I paid his assistant, she gave the certificate for Ashton Beau’s visa application to Pasha, and we left. We were at the clinic for a maximum of 30 minutes.
Our next stop was the photographer’s. Ashton Beau needed color photos for his visa application and the photos of him from our first day in Orenburg were black and white. Pasha took us to a studio on the Leningradsky Prospekt and a gentleman there shot Ashton Beau’s visa application photos for 300 Rubles. By this time Ashton Beau clearly needed to visit a changing table. Luckily we were not far from our final destination, Pasha’s apartment.
We drove to Pasha’s apartment and Pasha took us up and unlocked the door. DW and Ashton Beau went inside to “take care of business” while Pasha and I unloaded the car. I got my exercise that day carrying our bags up to the fourth floor. Then Pasha showed us about the apartment, how the appliances in the kitchen, the washing machine in the bathroom, the television, DVD player, stereo, and computer worked. Pasha also showed me how to lock and unlock the doors to his apartment. This is no mean feat. Each door had multiple locks and I had to turn the key 720 degrees in the right direction to lock or unlock the door. Try doing that with your hands full of 13 month old and groceries.
After finishing the apartment briefing, Pasha took me out to show me the neighborhood. First we drove southwest to the end of Chernayachovskaga Street [ул. Черняховского] to the Airport Galleria [Галерея Аэропорт] mall. We went past the mall to a tunnel under Leningradsky Prospekt. We followed the tunnel until we turned off to the left into the entrance to the Airport Metro station. After the Metro station Pasha took me inside the mall. We passed stores and the food court on the second floor. Then we got to the grocery store on the first floor next to a coffee café. I stowed my bag a in a locker and we went in to shop. I bought fruit, nuts, juice, бифидок, bacon from Holland, tomatoes, and romaine lettuce. As we exited the mall we also passed a little booth selling French candies that Pasha said his wife liked a lot. I made a mental note of that for future reference.
We got back in Pasha’s car and headed back to his apartment. We made one stop at a stand along the street to buy a loaf of bread. Pasha said this was the tastiest and freshest bread in the neighborhood. After buying bread Pasha dropped me off at his apartment and we were on our own.
While DW unpacked and attended to Ashton Beau, I made lunch - BLT sandwiches. That was good, except I forgot to buy mayo at the grocery store. It was still good; we hadn’t had bacon for quite a while (very rare in Russia). We approached the lettuce and tomatoes with some trepidation because travel guides usually recommend not eating the outer parts of fruit while traveling in Russia. They also say don’t use the tap water, even for brushing your teeth. We brushed our teeth with tap water at least twice every day on both trips. We ate the lettuce and tomatoes with no problem too.
A while later all three of us headed back to the mall on foot. It was about a ten minute walk from Pasha’s apartment. We first stopped for coffee at the café and then went into the grocery store. DW knew what she was looking for in the way of baby food so I waited to buy that until my second trip with her. We also loaded up on palmyeni (a sort of Russian ravioli), broth mix, a couple of frozen pizzas, and Coca-Cola Light (Diet Coke).
We returned to Pasha’s apartment and Ashton Beau took a nap while I wrote the earlier episodes of this season on his computer and DW took some time to relax. Then Ashton Beau woke up, we fed him, and then DW and I and supper of palmyeni and vegetable salad composed of olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers, a popular summer dish in Russia. Before we knew it was time for all of us to go to bed.
Sergei, DW, and Ashton Beau by the cashier's booth at the Orenburg Airport.
DW and Ashton Beau waiting to board our flight to Moscow.
Seating in the Orenburg Airport waiting area just vacated by a throng of pasengers headed to board our flight to Moscow.
Part of the Orenburg Airport departure waiting area.
Vendor selling her wares in the Orenburg Airport departure waiting area.
More of Orenburg Airport departure waiting area.
DW and Ashton Beau exiting the departure waiting area to board our flight to Moscow.
The walk accros the ramp from the Orenburg Airport terminal to our aircraft.
Boarding our aircraft. Note the two stairways to expedite boarding. It makes boarding go a lot faster.
The Orenburg Airport control tower.
Looking back at the Orenburg Airport terminal. Don't try taking photos on the ramp at the airport. I almost got my camera seized for some of these.
Nungesser and Ashton Beau in the air flying to Moscow.
DW and Ashton Beau in the air flying to Moscow.
A view of the ramp from beside our aircraft after disembarking at Domodedovo Airport.
The bus that takes passengers between the terminal and their aircraft at Domodedovo Airport.
DW and Ashton Beau exiting the bus for the terminal.
Dr. Boris examining Ashton Beau.
DW and Ashton Beau leaving the clinic building where Dr. Boris's office was located.
Ashton Beau testing out his playpen/crib at Pasha's.
Ashton Beau approves his playpen/crib.
posted by Nungesser at
11:46 PM
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