culture and customs (the word nerd takes a hammering)

Okay, so now it’s official: my first week in Moscow has, on balance, sucked rather mightily. There have been some great moments (as reported in these pages), and I've been trying hard to concentrate on those, but it’s been something of an uphill climb. Viewed in hindsight, this week has just hurled one painful &/or irritating experience after another straight at me.

Just before I go on with this rant, a word to those of you who were/are worried about me coming here: I’m definitely not drawing any grand conclusions from the above about whether Russia was ‘the right choice’ or a ‘mistake’. Obviously I need to give it some time; I’ve never lived outside of Australia before and I deliberately chose a challenging destination, so I expected some less-than-fun times, especially at the outset. I’m not too worried yet, and nor should you be.

I should also tell you that, when I first arrived in my new neighbourhood of Prazhskaya, my off-the-bat reaction was absolute horror, but within just a week it has started to reveal a softer, more colourful side which I’m rather enjoying. I could even see it being a place I’ll grow quite fond of. 

However, as nice and fluffy as all of that is, none of it detracts from the general suckiness of the week just gone. What clinched it, finally, was the baggage issue.

Let me explain:

I sent two bags ahead of me when I left Sydney, because my stuff was well over the weight limit and QANTAS wanted to charge me a fortune to stow extra luggage on the aircraft. QANTAS and Lufthansa teamed up to get my bags from Kingsford-Smith airport (Sydney) to Sheremetyevo (Moscow), at a cost of about AUD$450 – more than I had expected to pay, but not too unreasonable, I suppose, to have 30 kilograms of miscellany transferred from one side of Earth to the other. And it took me about 20 minutes to arrange this.

The thing is, planning the first 12,000 kilometres of my bags’ travel itinerary turned out to be the easy part. The insanity began when I started to enquire about how to move them the extra 50 kilometres or so between Sheremetyevo airport and my flat in Prazhskaya.

The bags were being transported – or so I believed – to Lufthansa’s customer service counter. Which is why I called their number continually throughout Monday. No answer. My flatmate, Reinhardt, told me not to be concerned about this. “That’s pretty standard for Russia”, he said. But I called again on each subsequent weekday, just in case – by some minor miracle – they decided to answer their ‘customer service line’.

Meanwhile, the school told me that my bags had arrived at Sheremetyevo on Tuesday. On several occasions they offered to help sort out the transportation of said bags to my flat, and I accepted their offer(s). The story changed a little each time, though: first it was me and a staff member who would go to the airport on Wednesday (which didn’t happen); then the staff member would go alone and retrieve the baggage for me on Thursday (which didn’t happen); then a staff member would go on Friday with a driver (whom I would have to pay for), and so on.

Once again, when none of this came to pass, Reinhardt was philosophical. “It’s not a surprise; this is a Russian organisation.”

Finally on Saturday afternoon I decided to go to the airport myself. Two-and-a-half hours later I had successfully traversed nearly the whole of metropolitan Moscow, and I had Sheremetyevo Terminal Two in visual range. The terminal, though, proved to be just the first in a sequence of locations within the airport ‘district’ to which I was re-directed. So it was that, after a further three bus trips, a 20-minute walk along a deserted highway and an accidental visit to an airport vehicle maintenance facility (where a vicious-looking hound signalled its intention to kill me if I tried to enter), I finally found the international cargo centre.

A note here: the building I’d found was not operated by Lufthansa. This was, pure and simple, a customs facility.

So what then? Well, the next step was to make somebody at the information counter acknowledge the presence of a sentient being in their midst. That accomplished (with some difficulty), I was ready to start grinding my cranial bone against the brick wall of Russian bureaucracy.

Here’s how it began: I met a customs agent. I showed her I.D. I had papers stamped. I signed forms. I accumulated duplicates of these forms, along with copies of my own documents now bearing florets of red and blue ink. I attempted (at the agent’s request) to recall every single item in my bags and estimate its monetary value in $USD, then translate this information into Russian.

At the conclusion of this 90-minute session, I was advised: “You will not get your bags today, because it is late. Come back tomorrow.” And so I crossed the city again, arriving home exhausted a little after 11pm, with half of my first weekend in Moscow now in the past.

Sunday morning – an early start. Out the door at 8:30am and back to Sheremetyevo international cargo. There to meet with another customs agent, who checked my I.D. and stamped my papers and made notes and took copies and asked me to sign things. I didn’t mind; I was becoming acclimatised to this now. Then he says “you must go to the kasa (cashier)”. So off I went, with my growing pile of documents. With great deliberation, and wearing her standard issue “I’m so over this; I could list off the top of my head at least 50 more important things I’d rather be doing” Moscow Face, the woman at the kasa slowly, thoughtfully pressed buttons for about 10 minutes. (Think about that for a second: when was the last time you spent ten whole minutes waiting for a cashier to ring up your purchase?) She then handed me a piece of paper with a price written on it: 5,064 roubles. At today’s exchange rate, that’s AUD$232. I looked up the word for “expensive” in my Russian phrasebook and read it out.

What happened next was the very last thing I had expected: the kasa woman actually smiled at me.

It was an evil smile, though. I’m sure of it.

Her smile said “Yes, you would think that, wouldn’t you? You haven’t been here for long. Don’t worry; you’ll come to expect this kind of treatment. Bwwwwwuuuhhh-HAHAHAHAhahahahaaaaa!!!!!”

Choking back the odd stray tear of despair and disbelief, I paid my 5,064 roubles (which had to come out of my day-to-day living money, because Russian customs doesn’t accept Visa card payments), and was shuffled back to the so-called information counter. Another 20 minutes of stamping, signing etc. Then another kasa where I was charged – get this – a daily storage fee for my luggage! At this time I was also informed that the cashier would be charging me 30 roubles for making the transaction (i.e. for printing out a receipt and taking my money). But she was feeling generous – toward herself, at least – and charged me 60.

Then it was on to the systems department, which was located adjacent to the actual cargo warehouse, for more stamping and signing and – almost unbelievably – an actual physical sighting of my bags. (Fortunately, there was a big iron gate protecting them from their owner.) That was followed by another round at a separate counter whose function I still couldn’t even guess at, but which required me to go back to the information desk again and use their photocopier to make a copy of some documents I’d received earlier. Information sent me back to the mystery counter, who stamped and frowned and sent me back to customs, who stamped and copied and sent me back to systems, who stamped and laser-printed and sent me to another part of customs, who stamped whatever it was systems gave me and sent me to the warehouse, where the big iron gate was opened and – after almost three hours – it seemed as though I may actually be allowed to take my bags.

I estimate that, by this time, there were about 200 people left in the Russian Federation who had not yet checked my passport. Give or take a few.

Once inside the warehouse, a very congenial armed guard – tickled pink, it seemed, to see an Australian person in his workplace – tried out his English at me, gave up, ventured the word “Deutsch” as a question, then proceeded to talk and joke with me in bad phrasebook German. I attempted to respond in my even worse Russian, as I tried to clarify whether or not this was really happening – that is, whether I could now actually leave with my bags. I picked them up. He made noises. I wasn’t sure what he was signalling – was this okay, or not? So I started walking. More indecipherable noises. I thought “Well, I’ll just have to keep going and see if he stops me”.

Phew. He didn’t.

A moment later, I was through the door, my eyes adjusting to the sunshine.

Finally, to cap off what had been an unrelentingly surreal experience, the last thing I heard at Sheremetyevo customs was the voice of the guard, who called out after me in a cheery, fun-to-have-made-your-acquaintance tone, “Auf Wiedersehen!”

“Da Svidaniya!”, I called back.

And so once more across town I went, towing two huge bags behind me – one with its wheels behaving like those of an Australian shopping trolley. Being shouldered out of the way and cut off by endless rude Muscovites. Being muttered at by station attendants, and eyed avariciously by militia men. Taking the train in the wrong direction at the second of three stations where I had to change lines. Generally having a phenomenally awful time.

So. Now the results are in, let’s review:

Final arrival back at Prazhskaya: 4:30pm. Total hours spent retrieving my baggage: 15. Total cost: AUD$738. Reaction to the fact that, on this same day, there was a huge festival in the town celebrating Moscow’s 850th birthday? Erm, somehow, I didn’t feel overly keen to attend.

And there ended my first weekend in Moscow.

I hope you’ve at least drawn a laugh or two from this whole sorry tale. Any good that comes of it will be ... well, will at least be something. Please let my rant be a caution to you if you’re thinking about freighting some excess baggage on an upcoming o/s trip or move. My advice: pay the hideous airline fee up-front, and stick with your bags!