How to survive Moscow on less than $50 a day

Moscow is expensive. Maybe not quite as expensive as Oslo, but in Oslo I had a free place to stay and my mom to help out with the bills. Here, I've just got some random guys I met in the hostel and unfortunately they are not bankrolling my trip. Because of my fated standby disaster out of Amsterdam and the resulting $1000 plane ticket, I am significantly above my budget for the six month trip. When I was home I also had to spend some money on essentials like a dentist appointment (hopefully being reimbursed by PC) and contact lenses. Luckily when I was home l didn't have to spend too much on food since some of my great friends treated me to much needed Mexican food.

Anyway, it turns out that Moscow on the cheap is a bit hard. I wasn't able to couchsurf here since I didn't know when I would arrive, so right away $15 goes to the hostel every day (and that is a steal, believe me!). Food gets a bit pricey, even stuff in the grocery store blew my mind ($14 for a block of Parmesan cheese! Crazy!). But with good shopping, it can be done. It is also possible to eat reasonably out if you stick to mostly fast/street food and cafeteria style places, but figure at least $20 a day (unless you want to eat more than one full meal, then you might be talking $30).

The most expensive things in Moscow, really though, are of course the things it is hard to pass up as a foreign tourist and they know it! The museums, churches and souvenirs are crazy. Today I paid about $35 to get into the Kremlin (cathedrals and armory). It was impressive, but it sure made me long for a free Saturday at the DAM.

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America- for reals this time

So what is the most surreal thing that you can think of doing a few hours after landing at home for the first time in over two years? How about your 10 year high school reunion? Yeah, that would be pretty strange.

I was on the ground less than 24 hours when I headed to the West side for a blast from the past. A year ago, I didn't even think that the reunion would happen much less that I would be home for it. When I got the invitation in February, I was surprised. As far as I know, no West High class has had an official reunion since a least 2003, and I didn't really have faith that the class of 2000 would pull it out. But wonders never cease and our intrepid head girl got all organized and put it together- from Texas no less. I was hoping to have a couple of days to rest, but because of our travel delays, I ended up with less than 24 hours in Denver before the reunion. As a consequence I was in a bit o' shock and a bit o' jet lag.

The reunion itself was nice. There were not too many people there, since there is an a bit of a catch 22 involved in event planning- the more people that come, the cheaper the tickets, but since the tickets were going to be expensive less people came . . . Anyway, it was not super well attended (maybe 30 people out of a class of 300), but it was nice nonetheless. Many of the people there had been following me on facebook and so knew some of what I had been doing, but it was really the first time I got to go through the 20 questions about my last two years (with a few more for the other 8 since graduation).

With the reunion out of the way, I got ready for the main event, the real reason I came home and another totally surreal experience Nichole's wedding.

Regular readers may remember in my pre-PC days (there was a time before Albania?!?!?) that I lived with my friend Nichole for two years. We had been best friends since high school and when she finished college and moved home, we decided to move in with each other. For most of the two years, things were great and we had a great time. Right at the end, things sort of fell apart and we had a bit of a falling out- I won't go in to details, but just say that it took us some time to get back to ok. But we did, get back to ok that is. And when she announce her wedding plans, I decided that this was an event that I didn't want to miss. I know that she would have understood- I was going to be in Russia or some such place, but I didn't want to miss it. I have missed a lot of things in the lives of people I care about since I left, including about a million weddings (or at least 8) and several babies being born. I didn't want to miss this one and I
also hadn't been home in two years- I missed America.

The wedding was actually about four days of different celebrations- bachlorette party, rehearsal BBQ, ceremony and reception. This wasn't really a traditional wedding in some ways- like the rehearsal BBQ and the fact that the reception was at a brew-pub on a Thursday. The ceremony was very Nichole with lots of singing and readings and her and Daryn (that would be her husband) who are both religious scholars obviously had a lot to do with the ceremony. I was not a bridesmaid, which was probably for the best since her colors were yellow and red and I don't look good in yellow- instead I wore a purple dress that I found while my mom and I were stuck in Amsterdam.

The first few days home were a bit crazy and now are a bit of a blur. I guess I had a little culture shock- big moments I remember are seeing my sisters daughters (who have started to become like real people!) and driving again and then coffee, coffee, coffee (and also food, food, food-kind of like Albania when you come to think of it). For a good week, I avoided grocery stores of any kind- and when I finally went in one I had a clear mission- chicken, which actually was hard- do you know how many kinds of chicken there are?!?! But besides these kind of physical shocks, it
was kind of an awkward amount of time- three weeks. It was enough time that I started to get used to things again and got to see most of my friends. It was enough time to eat chipotle, to see a bad movie in 3-D and to have a few days to relax. It wasn't enough time to feel quite normal again. I wasn't working and at some point you hit a wall about what to do everyday. I of course left getting ready for Russia and Asia until the last minute. I was busy, but there was no routine, so I know that it's not like normal. Before I had too much time to get bored though, I was getting on a plane for Moscow- and I made it on the first flight out- no getting stuck in DC!

America! Almost . . . (stuck in an airport or two)

As you may know, my mom works for Skywest, which is one of the small, regional airlines that flies United Express and Delta Connect. If you don't know anything about the airport business (like me) it is all rather confusing. There are all these small airlines (some with only a few planes) that contract to do flights for the big guys out of all the small airports like Rapid City and Aspen. So my mom works for one of these companies out of Denver. They do all of the United Express flights out of DIA- to places like Rapid City and Aspen . . . She is a gate agent and I think that she loves her job. She gets to talk to people all day and meet all sorts of different folks, which makes her happy. Occasionally (like with any job) things get tough, especially when there is a blizzard in Denver. But unlike her former profession (middle school math teacher) the stress only lasts for a few minutes or hours and the upset people get on planes and out of her hair- she doesn't have to take work home with her. Plus, the benefits are pretty good- as a United Express carrier, Skywest employees have United flight benefits, although with some restrictions (we'll get to that later). Since my mom started working for Skywest a few years ago my parents have been able to take a few good trips including a visit to me in Albania last year.

The biggest issue with employee flight benefits is that you have to fly standby or space available- basically, you don't know if you have a seat until usually a few minutes before the plane is ready to take off, since you can only get a seat if the flight is not sold out or people miss the plane. This can be stressful and sometimes on busy routes you can end up waiting for several flights until you get on. I have spent a night in an airport more than once because I didn't get on a flight. But usually, you eventually make it to your destination.

I'm telling you all this because when my mom decided to meet me in Norway, it was of course understood that we would fly back to America together on her passes. Since I am no longer her dependent (too old, :-( ) I can only fly on companion or "buddy" passes. These passes have some restrictions. First, I can only fly on United, where my mom and dad can fly on United plus several other airlines that they have agreements on. Second, since my mom works for Skywest, she is technically not a United employee and therefore is considered "other airline employee" even when flying on United. Third, there are occasionally embargoes and blackouts for unaccompanied companions and employees of other airlines.

Originally, we planned on flying to Frankfurt from Oslo since as the biggest United hub in Europe it has the most daily flights back to the US. I even bought a ticket to get to Germany. So much for my planning ahead, United placed an embargo on Frankfurt and several other cities for the month of August- exactly when we wanted to fly. I took the Frankfurt ticket as a loss and got a ticket to Amsterdam, the closest city not under the embargo.

We had no problem getting to Amsterdam- I had a ticket and my mom got on the same flight with plenty of seats. The flights didn't look good out of Amsterdam, but there was nothing to do but go and see what would happen. We didn't get on either flight out the first day. We got a hotel room for the night and went into town, ready to return to the airport in the morning and see if we would have better luck.

In the airport the next morning, we met the standby crew- nearly 40 people waiting to get on the two flights out. The flights were heavily oversold and with the embargo, everyone was trying to get out of Amsterdam. We had not met all these people the day before since when we arrived from Oslo we went directly to the gate- they were still all outside in the check-in area and they would only let people go through security if it seemed like they might get on the flight. It didn't look good. We were on the bottom half of the list (the list is arranged based on seniority) and some people higher than us had been waiting for several days. There was even one mother and son that had been there for nearly two weeks! We weighed our options- my mom needed to be at work on Friday (now Wednesday), a hotel room was $100 a night, plus food and other expenses- a ticket through Iceland was $1000 (cheapest last minute ticket available).

We were going to Iceland.

We were not the only people to have come up with this plan. It turned out that there were about 6 or 7 of the stand-by crew that were on our flight to New York and I think many more that ended up on the flight to Boston. We were lucky to get the tickets at all and really have to thank the lady at the Iceland Air desk in Amsterdam for her magic fingers that got my mom's ticket. We met our new friends at the gate and went to Reykjavik. Unfortunately, the layover was akwardly timed- 11 hours, but arriving in the middle of the night, so we didn't leave the airport. We found a quiet corner and slept a few hours- by the way, the Reykjavik airport is a great place to have a long layover; they have comfortable benches without armrests, they are not too busy, so there are no announcements late at night and pretty much you can sleep. We woke up to find the airport sacked in with fog, but no worries, our plane was a bit late, but not too bad. We got to New York and then had to work on how to get the rest of the way to Denver.

As we arrived in New York in the afternoon, our options were not very good for getting out. But I had planned ahead and called my good friends Will and Wendi (RPCVs Albania G11) who are now living near Columbia where Wendi is going to grad school. A new found benefit of service is that as people have returned to the States they have spread out to the far corners of this great country and now I have good friends to call on in almost every major city . . . So we headed to Harlem and crashed on the couch (and floor). In the morning we got up early and headed to LaGuardia where we tried again. Because of a canceled flight to Chicago (and it being a weekend) we weren't looking too good. After three flights, we started to look at out options. My mom could try to get on a flight with another company if they had space, but this was harder since she hadn't planned for this (how could you plan for this!) and she was supposed to buy travel vouchers ahead of time to fly on other airlines. We headed over to the other terminal to see what we could gather from Delta, JetBlue and Frontier. It looked like there were seats available on two flights to Denver on JetBlue (direct from JFK and one through Boston). I bought a full fare ticket on the direct flight and my mom got a stand-by voucher for the Boston flight (it had more seats open).

We got home.

Denver at last.

Norway in a nutshell

Let me tell you, Norway has this tourism thing down. We bought a tour called "Norway in a Nutshell" that included train tickets and a boat ride. It was not cheap, and maybe if my mom hadn't come with me, I wouldn't have done it, but it was really nice. On the first day we took the train to Myrdal-on a glacier halfway to Bergen- and then switched to the Flam railway. The Flam line descends several thousand feet very quickly through a series of long tunnels, including one which does a 180 degree corkscrew inside the mountain. This section of the trip is gorgeous- ok every part of the trip was pretty spectacular- with a series of high waterfalls. We arrived in Flam in the early afternoon and went to find our accommodations for the night- a tent in the campground. As this tour is very popular in the summer, it was hard to find places to stay (and especially places we could afford) in Flam, the only hostel was full several weeks ahead- so we
borrowed a tent. Now, over the past few months I have slept in some great place and some not so great; since we also had ground pads and sleeping bags, this was actually not that bad for me. I would even say that I was more comfortable than in the hostel in Kiev (horrible bed!). For my mom though, it was a bit hard. My mom is an experienced camper, but in the past fee years, she has had a camp bed or has slept in our camper-van when we have gone camping. The other problem came when we actually tried to put up the tent. As Tor was using their
tent for a boys weekend, we borrowed an old tent from his family. An old tent with missing poles and no instructions. I've put up a lot of tents, but this one was a puzzle- there was a frost line that we decided to ignore and in better weather we may have ignored the rain fly as well, but since it had been raining off and on we couldn't risk that. We got the main part of the tent up and eventually rigged the rain fly so that it was covering most of the tent and not touching it. It wasn't pretty, but when it did inevitably rain that night we stayed dry. My mom was a bit sore the next day, but I slept great . . .

The morning found us and we packed up for the main event- a ferry ride on a fjord. I had never really known what a fjord was before- I was expecting a sort of craggy outcropping, but what it really is is a sort of finger of ocean that juts inland- like he opposite of a peninsula. Anyway, the boat trip took us from Flam which is at one end of the fjord up and down to another fjord and then we got on a bus to go to Voss.

Voss was a nice town with a pretty church and if I hadn't been raining, a lovely mountain lake to swim in. In fact we did see a few people swimming, but they were crazy- it was cold! In Voss we stayed in a nice hostel and in the morning we caught our train back to Oslo.

In Oslo, we got an "Oslo pass" one ticket to cover all the attractions in the city (seriously could they make being a tourist any easier?). The highlight was probably the folk museum where we saw a traditional dance performance and a gorgeous wooden church. Another highlight was the Nobel museum with an exhibit on South Africa.

Our week in Norway was over too soon, but I was excited to get on my way to my next destination: HOME! See you in Denver . . .

Climbing the family tree

A few years ago, my good friend Tara moved to Norway after meeting and falling in love with a young Norwegian man (they met at an animal rescue reserve in Bolivia of all places . . . I guess thats how love is sometimes). Anyway, so Tara moved to Norway, got her Masters degree and then a job working in human rights and has been living there for about four years. When I moved to Europe, we sent plenty of messages back and forth about visiting each other or meeting somewhere, but you know how these things go. As I planned my trip though, I decided that Norway isn't really that much out of the way when you are already planning on being in northern Europe and Russia, so I decided to make a detour. In the meantime, Tara was also planning the next stage of her life- law school. As I figured out the dates I would need to travel and decided that I would go home for my friend Nichole's wedding, I let Tara know- perfect, she would be leaving Norway the next week to move home to Colorado. This would be a crazy time, but I was always welcome to a spot on her couch.

My great-grandfather on my mothers side was Norwegian, which makes me 1/8 Norwegian. I have never felt particularly Norwegian as I have more Russian (1/4), Polish (1/4), German (1/4) and because of my curly red hair and freckles people often think that I am Scottish (1/16??) or Irish (0). My mom has always identified more with the Norwegian side of her family as she grew up a "Berg", but she has never visited Norway. When I told her about Tara's invitation she decided that she would meet me there for a week. My mom looked up info that she had about her grandfather's family including a genealogy that some aunt or cousin had put together from a family bible and a letter from her aunt talking about a visit to Norway about 30 years ago. We had a destination, we had the information, Norway ho!!!

Since Tara lives in a small (but very nice) apartment and with my mom coming, the whole sleeping on the floor thing wasn't really going to work. Luckily that Norwegian guy that she was with also had a lovely Norwegian family and his sister was going to be out of town for the week, so we could use her place, perfect! It was also nice to be out of the way since as I mentioned Tara and Tor were getting ready to move back to Denver also and they were packing up their place (including selling off some furniture-there's a funny story about selling their bed, but that's for Tara to tell).

Anyway, I arrived from Kiev and my mom arrived from America (first class on the first flight she tried, flying standby which I will talk more about when I get to the part about going home). Tara made dinner and we went to crash in our gorgeous apartment. The next day, we went on our family searching expedition. Based on the letter from my great-aunt Doris, we knew that we should go to the village of Prestfloss and look for the museum there. We took two buses from Oslo and arrived at the small village museum of the Sigdal and Eggdal valleys. After a few minutes of searching around we found the caretaker of the museum, Sigrid. We told her that we had good reason to believe that our family was from this area and that one of the houses in the museum was from our families farm. I have no idea how Aunt Dorris had found this information, but it turned out to be correct. Sigrid showed us around, including in the "Bergen farm house" a typical farm house from the 1750s donated to the museum by the family, and also a nice exhibit of musical instruments. When we sat down in the museum shop for some waffles and tea, Sigrid went and got "the book," a record of the family genealogies for all of the local farms. On the Bergen farm we found my great-great-great-grandmother Kari who left in 1854 for America with two young kids including Marte my great-great-grandmother. In the book we found that her brother had stayed on the farm and in fact his decedents still owned the farm to this day- we had cousins! Sigrid knew the family (of course) and so she called them up. The farm is run by a bachelor and his sister is married and lives nearby. This brother and sister are my 6th cousins (I think???). The sister's husband (former mayor and history teacher) came to the museum to drive us over to the farm and introduce us to the family. Maybe I'm just dreaming here, but I could see some family resemblance- the farmer looks uncannily like my grandfather- the same thin frame, the same features; they could be cousins. . .

One interesting thing for Americans traveling abroad is explaining to people the "Heinz 57" mix that many Americans are, especially after a few generations. In Albania, I got the question all the time "what is your origin- Albanian?" since one way that they could explain my presence in their country was that I was Albanian originally. When I would answer with my litany of origins they would be amazed. I don't think about my different backgrounds so much and I don't think that most Americans do anymore. This was the first time that I had gone searching for my roots; it was interesting, but I don't know if it made me feel more Norwegian. It was nice to be there with my mom, because she was excited about it and it was fun to see her so happy. And it is kind of cool to know I have family- somewhere out there.

I'm sorry

I don't actually know how many people read this blog except my parents (hi mom and dad!) and Chris's mom (hi Arlene!), but if I do have any other fans, then I'm sorry, becaus I have been a slacker lately. If you go by the blog hen you would think I'm still somewhere in Bulgaria even though I'm about 5 countries past that. I totally intended to get caught up when I was home, but between weddings and my gorgeous nieces and mahjong I got even more behind. I have a couple of long train journeys coming up (I'm in Russia by the way) so I willget to use that time to write. I WILL NOT be writing any "catch up posts" in which I try to cram three months of stuff into one entry, bit hopefully over the next few days I will have several posts ready for upload, hopefully even with pictures.

So, again, sorry for the back log. . .

Now entering the former USSR

I crossed into Moldova on an incredibly hot bus, which got better briefly when it started to rain- but then the windows were closed and it got hot again. I could tell immediately when we crossed the border as the road became worse. Heading into Moldova felt a little like coming home- I reminded me a lot of Albania. Similar in size to Albania, Moldova surpassed it a few years ago to become the poorest nation in Europe. Like Albania, Moldova has a large part of the population living abroad working and sending money home and Moldova also has many unfinished buildings. In Moldova I stayed with another RPCV with his HCN wife. I only stayed one night, and I imagine that Moldova has a lot of secret places, again like Albania, that could be explored, but I didn't have time. I needed to get to Kiev by August 3rd for my plane home . . . But I'm getting ahead of myself . . .

I took another incredibly hot bus over the Moldovan border to Odessa, Ukraine. I had to be careful about which bus I took as some of the hisses cross through Trans-Dniester an occasionally volatile break away region of Moldova. It is listed as another one of those "restricted zones" by Peace Corps, and even though I'm no longer a PCV and don't have to follow those rules, I had heard that sometimes foreigners are sometimes asked to pay heavy bribes to cross the border and I just really didn't want that trouble.

So I arrived in Odessa- my last chance for nice beach weather. Something has always seemed really romantic to me about Odessa and it didn't disappoint. It had everything I love in a city: walkable streets, nice parks, a beach and of course falafel. In the states, we are used to a lot of different kinds of food all the time. When people would ask me food I miss from home, my answer would be things like falafel, burritos and real (American) Chinese food. I always love the randomness of ethnic food available in different places. Budapest seemed to have a profusion of sushi places and Odessa had a really amazing falafel stand. The guy who owned the stand was not just a falafel stand owner, he was an artist. Each sandwich took about 10 minutes and was a whole process, but it was worth it. Anyway, as indicated earlier, I finally found a nice day and headed to the beach to swim in the Black Sea. The beach wasn't anything spectacular, but it was nice and wasn't too crowded and so I had a nice relaxing afternoon.

From Odessa I headed west to Ukrainian Ukraine (as opposed to Russian speaking Ukraine) to couchsurf with some PCVs in Lviv. One thing to know about trains in Ukraine- book ahead, especially in summer. I had originally thought that I would try to go to Crimea for a few days, but when I arrived in Odessa I found that Crimea was sold out two weeks in advance. So I headed west instead. When I got to Lviv, I found out that the night I wanted to go to Kiev was also sold out- problem since I had to arrive in Kiev, by a certain day to fly to Norway. No problem, as I could stay an extra night in Lviv and take a day train, which brings me to the second thing you should know about trains in Ukraine in the summer---- HOT!!!! And not in a good way.

Anyway, I arrived in Lviv and met Linnea and Kari, my PCV hosts. Linnea actually lives in a town about 45 minutes outside of Lviv, but came into town to meet me, have some American coffee and sushi and use the Internet, all things which can be done in Lviv, but not in her town. Things that can be done in her town, I found, included eating borsht, shopping in the pazar and swimming in the river. I spent a really relaxing few days with Linnea and one night in Kari's weird apartment attached to her school and then headed to Kiev for my last stop on this "Peace Corps couches" part of my trip.

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