It's Turkey Lurkey Time!... Almost.

Traveling long distances is as much apart of Thanksgiving for a lot of people, as turkey, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and football. The longest I ever was in a car to see family was an hour tops. This year took a little bit more time, involved multiple modes of transportation, and my cunning.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I impatiently taught, until 12:20 and raced out of school to my apartment to finish packing, change my clothes and then set off from Tbilisi, Georgia to Lviv, Ukraine. I road a public bus, where people tsked my big backpacking backpack to Station Square where I found a marshookah (a van that holds about 15 people) that could take me to Kutaisi. The guy collecting money was very impressed that I could speak Georgian, blushing I told him I could only a little bit and that I was an English teacher here. He sat me next to an older woman who seemed a little unsure about having her seat mate be this odd American in her sports clothes. I was jonesing to leave, but a debate started about a flower arrangement that woman didn’t want to hold for the whole trip and the guy collecting money said that she would have to pay for another seat if she wanted to take up a seat with it. Her excuse was that there was no one sitting there anyway so she shouldn’t have to pay. This debate raged for a good ten minutes. I kept saying, ‘Oh my God’ under my breath in Georgian and the woman next to me exchanged looks with me that we were under mutual agreement that this vehicle needed to move pronto.

We drove for four and a half hours, with one stop, picturesque Soviet towns, and lots of muttering from the woman next to me, until we reached Kutaisi. I had no idea where the airport was and when the driver told us that, this was the Kutaisi stop, two girls in Russian said that they were looking for the airport. I asked a Georgian girl who was sitting near me, who spoke English, what exactly they had said about the airport and she said that they were going and I told her that I needed to too. We left the city and drove through farm land, it was dusk and we seemed to be driving far past where I thought the airport should be. The Georgian girl told me that we would be there in a few minutes and I relaxed a little. The woman sitting next to me helped me into my coat. I’m  sure she just was worried I was going to accidentally smack her in the face, trying to get my arm in the sleeve. 

Low and behold we did reach the newly constructed airport, and by newly constructed I mean still being built. I was there three hours before my flight and there was no wi-fi, shops, or outlets to charge my laptop that was at 63% battery power, so I crossed watching the Hunger Games, again, off the to do list again. That left me with eating, calling people, and watching Georgians check in and go threw security. 

I, myself had to get checked in and pray to God that they would except my backpack as a carry on. I got one checked bag for free, but my plane would land a little after 10pm in Kiev and I would have an hour to go through passport control, get my bag, get to the train station, get my ticket that I had bought online, and find my train and get on it. I needed this bag not to be checked so I could make it, otherwise the chances of me pulling this off looked dismal and would also mean I would be stuck in Kiev for the night. Upon check in, they informed me that it would have to be checked. I tried to explain my situation and they told me that I would have my bag shortly after we landed and not to worry. I reluctantly gave it to them, after they interrogated me about the liquid contents of it. 

Do you have liquids in your bag?

Yes, I just told you that I did and that they were small, like lipgloss small.

So you have no more then five liters of liquid in your bag?

No? 

I was super confused as to why they were so concerned with my capacity in my bag. I travel a lot, and not even the TSA agents have cared. Hell, I’ve gotten a small bottle of hand sanatizer, through multiple international airport securities, not in it’s plastic bag. Tbilisi airport let me bring 200 milliliters of vodka in my carryon once and now I was getting shit in a half built airport in the middle of no where about liquids? (I also saw an hour later someone get approval for two full size bottles of Georgian wine to be brought on the plane. I guess I was just carrying the wrong liquids, because they weren’t Georgian.) The woman who was checking me in also called over her supervisor when she saw I was traveling on an American passport. With the airport only being open for about two months, about 3 flights a day, I’m willing to bet I could have been one of the first Americans traveling through. The supervisor asked me where my visa for Ukraine was, when she couldn’t find one. I politely stated that I’m American and don’t need one. I also explained that it was my fifth time going, so I was probably right. 

I stood in line waiting to go through security, passing the time playing with an obese baby. The woman checking everyone’s tickets and passports looked at them a little longer then I thought necessary and I chalked it up to her wanting to do a good job, as she had probably only had it for a few months. After security, I almost went past passport control, as it was these random cubes in the middle of the floor with people sitting inside of them and no sign or anything. I handed my passport over to a girl who looked like she was eighteen and asked me how I was, after a much too long pause after the hello’s. Sure she had practiced this in her Border Control English 101. 

I went and took a seat after this and called some of my friends to pass the time and just people watched. I eventually got bored with that and decided that I should use the bathroom, before I got on my plane. The fact that there was even a bathroom in this half done airport was a miracle, even if it didn’t have soap or toilet paper. Lucky for me, after living in Georgia for almost a year, I just bring my own. The last thing you want is explosive diarrhea, courtesy of Georgia, and no toilet paper.

"King David The Builder" I guess they are trying to keep with the theme.

This is were you wait to get on your plane. 

Maybe one day there will be shops and a restaurant? 

When it was time to bored the plane we were separated into two groups, after the people who paid to reserve their tickets got on, so like 10 people. Wizz Air, a budget European Airline, think South West, loads it’s passengers from the front and the back to speed up the process. I stood impatiently, not caring which seat I got, as long as I got one and made my train. I got to go in through the front of the plane and the airline attendants told me, in English, you could start picking your seat from the third row. The plane was filling up and there was only one girl sitting in the third row. They didn’t have the ‘reserved’ head rest sign on it. I went for it, praying that the other flyers on the plane didn’t understand that I we could sit in the third row, not after. I’m going to assume that this was the case, because no one told me to move. This old man, with his wife and daughter sat across the isle from me. The fight attendants gave the safety information in Russian and then they started giving it in English. The old man started speaking to me in Georgian, laughing and saying something along the lines of, why are they speaking English? No one on this flight speaks it! People who speak English fly in planes out of Tbilisi, not Kutasi! I laughed at this point. Partly because I agreed, I mean really, this airport was a shit show, and partly because he thought I was Georgian. 

The flight was a quick and painless two hours that I spent praying to God that I wouldn’t miss my train and listening to the Hunger Games on audio book to take my mind off missing my train, which didn’t really help, because I was listening to book two, where they are on a train touring Panem for the first bit.

The plane landed safely at Kiev Zhulyany International airport and we were loaded on two buses to take us from the tarmac to the airport door. I stood on the bus looking at some lady’s nails, that were shaped like claws, eyeing the other bus. They got to the doors first. By the time I got in line for passport control there were 15 people in front of me. I stood there watching and calculating the time it would take for it to be my turn and looked at my watch. I started muttering to myself that I would never make it. I then gave myself a mental slap and told myself to grow some balls. I tapped on the shoulder of the couple in front of me and explained that I had to get to a train in 40 minuets and asked if I could go ahead of them. They said yes. I asked the next guy if he spoke English, and he didn’t. I morally couldn’t just cut him, but the couple behind me asked me to explain again what I needed. The man took me to the front of the line and explained to everyone in Russian what I was doing. It didn’t look like anyone could have cared either way.

When I went up to the window I gave the woman my passport and said, “Privet!” She looked a little startled, but flipped through my passport, stamped it and handed it back. I said, “spasibo!” and rushed off to the baggage clam before she had a chance to change her mind about letting me into Ukraine. I not so patently scanned the carousel for my bag. it was no where to be seen, so I went out to where they were coming out and tried to look through the black things, to see if I could see my bag. People weren’t taking bags off the carousel, so they the guys in the back couldn’t easily put more on. I thought of throwing them on ground, in an attempt to get mine sooner, but didn’t want to act too crazy. I also thought about just climbing to the other side and getting my bag off the luggage cart myself and was just about to put this plan into action when they put in on the carousel. I grabbed it and ran to the nearest ATM and got money out and ran outside to the taxi stand. I told the person in charge of it that I needed to get to the central station as soon as possible and he pointed me at a taxi and shouted to the driver where we needed to go.

I explained to him, by doing what was probably the most insane looking motions ever that I needed to get to the train station NOW. He took that to mean that we were filming The Fast and the Furious: Kiev, driving at 130km/h (80mph) through the city. He honked and dodged cars trying to get me there. I crossed myself when we passed a church, just like the good little Georgian Orthodox Christian I have become, also because I needed as much help as I could get from God to make this train. I crossed myself seeing a second church, and then thought, wait, wait I’ve seen this church before, and I’ve only been in Kiev once before, and that was to get a train! I had made it to the train station 20 minuets before it was suppose to leave. I wanted to kiss my taxi driver, instead I stuffed an extra 30UAH ($3.50) in his hand and ran off to the ticket counter.

No, I had not been dumb enough to not buy my ticket before hand, but I still had to go to a window and get in printed. I stood in line at one of them, knowing that the lines can be painfully long, looking around in exasperation and saw a window that said, “online reservations” and there was only one person standing in line. Convinced that God truly loved me at this point in time, I went over and waited until it was my turn where I gave the lady, my iPod with the e-mail of the reservation on the screen and she printed out my ticket. I was so happy I didn’t have try to speak to her and I got what I wanted. I walked quickly down the hall, to my platform and found my train car. I gave my ticket to the man outside who asked me something in Russian and I stared blankly at him, so he just waved me in. (I later found out he wanted my ID, but the chances of me stealing another foreigners ticket were probably so small, that he didn’t care. After all I only paid $8 for it. That’s right, an overnight train ride, with a bed was only $8! Слава Україні!) 

I found my bed in the open compartment, which seemed to be filled mostly with university students and looked to see that I had about 10 minuets before the train left. I threw my backpack under a seat, not caring if someone wanted to steal my worn clothes and lipgloss from it, as they would be doing me a favor at this point, and went outside to buy water from a kiosk.

I went up to the window and stopped to think what the word for water was in Ukrainian, thinking it was ‘wasser,’ I asked for it. The woman looked at me like I was crazy. Wrong language I guess. I then tried explaining myself and asking again, this time in Georgian. Know what, Georgian is as useless to know in Ukraine as it is in America. She looked really confused at this point and maybe a little annoyed. I walked away thinking maybe she just didn’t have water, so I circled around the building and found a whole window full of water. I went back to the woman, still speaking to her in Georgian, rather then being a mute, and tapped to the window that had the water in it.  She stuck her head out of a little door, to see what I was going on about and gave me a bottle. I paid her, and as an after thought I asked “gas?” “Da, gas.” “Nyet, gas.” I said sheepishly, trying to act sweet. She traded out the bottles for me and I went back to the train to get settled, glowing in my glory of making it and getting water, even though I made an ass out of myself speaking Georgian.

I made my bed, which was a top bunk on the isle, at the end of the train and stripped down to my tank top and leggings and climbed into bed. My friend hadn’t added money to my Ukrainian SIM card yet, so I had no way of being able to tell him that I had arrived safely. (I also still don’t know my number after having it for a year, so there is no possible way I could add money to it myself.) I put my headphones in and put Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Home on and started to drift off to sleep, when my phone went off. My friend was naturally amazing that I had actually made the train. I suspect, he had friends on stand by waiting to take me in for the night in Kiev, if this was the case. He clearly forgot who he was dealing with. 

After I got off the phone with my friend, I passed out, despite people walking up and down the corridor and the train stopping at different stations in the night, until the next morning when I woke up in a pile of enough drool, that I’m surprised that I didn’t drown in the night. I got up, got dressed, tidied everything up and tried to use the bathroom. It was flooded and in poor condition, I thanked God that I had been smart enough to purposely keep myself dehydrated and out of this situation. I went and sat down across from a Ukrainian women, with too much makeup on and felt like a bum. I looked out the window at the little villages going passed, none of them really looked familiar. The train moved gradually into a city, not being sure if it was Lviv or someplace else, as things are more apt to be late in Ukraine, I had my face pressed to the window looking for something that looked familiar. When I knew it was Lviv and raced to put my backpack on go to the door of the train. I resisted the urge to knock the train porter over in an attempt to get out first. When I got out onto the platform I found my best friend after looking for a few moments and we threw out arms around each other and I yelled HAPPY THANKSGIVING, and everyone just looked at us. I just shrugged. I didn’t care. I had made it home for Thanksgiving with my best friend, who would have to fill in for the rest of my family thousands of miles away. We didn’t have turkey or pie that day. There was no football. No strategies for shopping at midnight, just two best friends catching up, being thankful that we could be together.

Thank goodness for best friends who feel the need to take your picture, just after you've got to town!

Home by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros