TRAVEL JINX or what can go wrong will go wrong

Never have we been on a trip with so many "challenges". Murphy's law was truly at work on this trip, almost anything that could go wrong, went wrong. The only days we, Thank the good Lord, that we did not have to face these challenges were the days we were with the girls in Bratsk. So here is a recap of traveling with the Travel Jinx-that would be me (Wanda) since it appears these things only happened when I was around.
1. Our trip to Irkutsk on July 16th-We get to the airport and have to pay $70 overage for the extra weight of our suitcases, but this was expected since we packed for a month and for the girls. We fly to Irkutsk on Aeroflot in a very old plane on absolutely the worst flight and most uncomfortable seat I have ever had on a flight with less leg room then our planes and the seat back had a odd angle to it...and yes (for those of you who have read the blogs from our trip in November) this plane was worse than the Siberian Urine smelling plane. The flight was full and Rich and I did not have seats together; Rich graciously gave me the ticket for the front of the plane where I had to sit in the middle seat next to some smelly guy who decide he couldn't sleep unless he used part of my seat. Thank goodness for a very good book (and thanks to Janice for lending it too me) since I did not get any sleep at all. We arrive at 5 am and no one is there to pick us up. but Serguey is with us and call Alex. Calling Alex becomes the running theme of all our problems, having a really good facilitator can really make a difference when traveling in Russia and Alex was always available for us.
2. Alex arrives to pick us up and we find out that our apartment is not available because the families that were supposed to leave are still there due to issues with the judge. So we go to the Hotel Ankursk. We get to hotel only to be told that it is sold out. Who would even imagine that this small corner of the world is a vacation destination. Serguey called other hotels and they were sold out. So Serguey called Alex who was able to finagle us a room 2 hour later at this hotel through his contacts. (But the front desk people were not very happy with this)
3. Monday morning on the way to breakfast, the hall monitor (the lady that checks your key to see if you really are staying on the floor) told us we had to check out at 9 am even though we had been told we had the room until noon. Now the problem with this is our appt. with the judge is at 2pm and we have no place to leave our luggage. Call Alex (are you beginning to see the theme here?) again, he was able to get our rooms until 3 pm for a fee of 300 rubles(about $9). The floor monitor did not look very happy with us either. We get back from breakfast and our card/key to our rooms did not work-go figure! We did not need Alex for this though, Rich just had to wait in line for 45 minutes in the lobby to get them re-activated.
4. We had written out what we wanted to say to the judge, when Rich went to the internet cafe he could not get the laptop to link with their printers or computers and had to rewrite the whole think in order to print it. Then we go to our meeting with the Judge which I wrote about in post dated July 18.
5. Can you believe when we got to Bratsk they didn't have any hotel rooms at the price we wanted - but this turned out OK, we got a lower costing room, which really did not look that much different than the other rooms. Maybe the cost difference was that these rooms were on the back of the hotel without a view-which was great since we know from experience that the rooms in the front of the hotel are subject to a lot of noise from all the people hanging out in the courtyard in front of the hotel till really late at night. So I guess this one does not really count. The next three days were great, only challenges we faced were language barriers since no one in this region speaks English.
6. We return to Irkutsk, Alex set us up in an apartment that he does not own in downtown Irkutsk, it is great and we are rooming with the Wells (another adopting family), but there is no hot water because the lines were cut during road construction. (All water and heat come from
central location) You don't know what cold water is until you have taken a shower in water from the deepest lake in the world. See Rich's pictures on the link to the left.
7. Since we are not going leaving early we have to change our airline tickets. We go to Aeroflot office to change our tickets to fly to Moscow and the electricity was off. They told Serguey they would change our tickets when computer came back up and to call them later.
8. Aeroflot told Serguey tickets were ready, so we back go to their office.
When we got there they told Serguey they only had one ticket and could not do the other one
as the computers were down. Serguey got into it with them because they refused to call Moscow office as they were getting off in 10 minutes and for us to come back the next day.
9. Saturday morning we go to get breakfast and they don't open till 10:00; last night I felt some small twinges in my stomach, on the way back to the apartment, I got very sick. I spent the rest of the day in bed, sick to my stomach and with chills. How I wish we had hot water for a nice warm shower. We were scheduled to go to Lake Baikal, a trip I have been looking
forward to. This is the largest fresh water lake in the world and is supposed to be beautiful. So Rich and the Wells decide to go to Lake Baikal with out me. The three of them waited downstairs for half an hour, so Rich decided to walk to Aeroflot office while the Wells wait on cab. When the cab drove up the guy only spoke Russian, but he mentioned Alex so the Wells go in the cab and directed him to Aeroflot so they could pick up Rich. Steve goes in and waits with
Rich, as the line is very long while Anissa waits in the cab. Meanwhile when Rich calls Alex for help with our tickets, Alex ask why they did not get on cab. Anissa was setting in
this cab for an hour and it was the wrong cab! They dismissed the cab and walked back to the apartment. Anissa decides not to go to on the trip and Steve and Rich go by themselves. The cab driver had been in the driveway wiping down his car the whole time. Now you might wonder how it is that I, the Travel Jinx, can lay claim to this. Turns out, the cab driver was waiting for 4 people. Steve and Rich had nice day at Lake Baikel without a single problem.
10. Anissa and Steve are on the same flight back to Moscow on Sunday. We have to go in separate cabs to the airport, so Rich and Steve go in the first one to check in our luggage. They took our passports so they could do. Anissa and I follow arrive about 20 minutes after them. When we get in line, we don't see them anywhere and since they were checking passports we got out of line. Anissa went to look for them, while I tried to hold a space near the front of the line and now I am anxious; while she is gone the lady at the desk comes out looking for us, the guys had left the passports with her. Anissa and I get through the passport line, are standing in line to put our carry ons through the Xray machine, I get up to the machine, and it breaks. They spend about 15 minutes trying to figure out what is wrong with it, I am about to panic since we only have about 20 minutesleft beforee our flight-heaven forbid theyshouldd just search the bags. Finally a tech type guy arrived and got the machine going again. So we made the flight. (Of course when Rich told me we were on Row 13, I (accidentally) yelled at Rich "ROW 13, NO WAY."
We did make it back to Moscow, prayerfully we will make it back to Jacksonville in one piece.
11. We get to the Rosayia Hotel and they say we can not check in because the hotel in Bratsk did not register our passports. By Russian law your passports have to be registered within 3 days in every region you travel in, and since we had no registration for 5 days we would have to pay a fine unless we could prove we were in the Bratsk Hotel.Alll or ourreceiptss were packed, but aI did not know where or if I could find them so we sat on the hotel lobby floor tearing open every thing in our suitcases until finally we found them - no fine, and they let us check in.
12. After we get to our room (and take a wonderfully hot shower) , we call Delta to change our tickets and they told us all flights are booked until August 12th, that we would have to call every day to see if there were any seats or pay the $50 cab fair to the airport and try to fly standby. (and then have to pay $50 back to town if we did not get on a flight) It was starting to look like we were stuck in Moscow for a while!!!!
Actually we are not stuck here. We went to Delta office on Monday and had to buy new tickets for the flight on Wednesday because there were no tickets left for the fare that we bought our original tickets for. We did have a bit of luck here though, she quoted us $2300 each for tickets, but Rich was able to get us a military rate at a $1000 savings each and we can use the ticket to return if we travel before the end of October.
13. We arrive at JFK at 3pm Wednesday. Our flight is supposed to be at 6pm. At 9pm we were told the flight was canceled, so we had to spend the night at a low (and I mean low) budget hotel. (It has mirrors on the ceiling, it's a little freaky to wake and see someone starring down at you)
14. Finally, we are back in Jacksonville, and of course it does not end. One of our suitcases does not make it back with us. They did find it Friday and delivered it.
One or two things going wrong is not unusual. But 14 - I don't think anyone out there can say I am not the TRAVEL JINX!