It did take me slightly longer to get out the door than I expected; an ideal departure time would have been 3:30, but I left home at 4pm sharp. My flight to SPB was scheduled to leave Domodedovo Airport at 5:55pm, so I figured that I still had plenty of time - I would take the metro to Paveletsky Station, a straight shot on the green line, in time to get on the 4:30 express train to the airport which would arrive 45 minutes ahead of my flight at 5:10. I made the train with minutes to spare and upon arrival at Domodedovo made my way to the check-in desk for my flight, which was where my troubles began.
Exactly 40 minutes (perhaps even 41 or 42 minutes) before my flight's scheduled take-off, I was told that I had missed check-in by two minutes. The helpful lady at check-in ran off to find the Transaero representative who had literally just left the check-in desk. This was not successful, and I was advised to proceed to Transaero's customer service desk. There I was told rather rudely that with 30 minutes still left before scheduled takeoff there was nothing they could do to get me on the plane; they had new and very strict rules in effect since the two planes that took off from Domodedovo were blown up by suicide bombers last summer. She offered to help me get a seat on the next Transaero flight to St. Petersburg - the following morning.
Next to me at the "service" desk was an older Italian man speaking to the same unhelpful woman in broken English. He became quite exercised, but I encouraged him to calm down - it was clear to me that there was no way we were getting on the plane. The "helpful" Transaero woman directed me to their cashier's desk around the corner, where I was unable to cash in my ticket because it had been purchased through a travel agency. We then decided to see about other flights departing for SPB that evening and went over to the Pulkovo airlines desk. We were told there was a flight at 7:15pm and another at 9:45pm. There was one business-class ticket remaining on the 7:15 flight. I let the old guy buy it in a moment of sympathy for his relative helplessness, a move I would later regret.
At 6:05 when the Pulkovo rep finally showed up at the check-in desk, there were already several other people looking to fly standby on the 7:15 flight, but as it turned out they have no official standby procedure - "What, you think I'm going to keep a list?" was the rep's response to my question about this. At 6:30 one of the other standby dreamers got lucky when he overheard someone mention in the check-in line that he had to turn in a ticket for his buddy, who would not be making the flight. This standby guy corralled the guy with the extra ticket and hounded him into walking together to the ticket desk and making sure the exchanged ticket went to him. About this time I struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler, and together we hopefully stuck out the wait for the very last passengers - in vain, as it turned out. They showed up literally 5 minutes before the flight's scheduled takeoff.
Pulkovo kept its check-in open until 20 minutes before takeoff, and then the Pulkovo rep went to the late check-in desk right by the entrance to the gates (the Transaero people didn't even point out to me that such a desk existed), which led me to only one conclusion: where Pulkovo actually wanted to get its ticketholders on the plane, the Transaero rep had closed check-in at the officially mandated cutoff of 40 minutes before the flight in order to sell my ticket (and my fellow traveler's, as it turned out - he had been stuck on a delayed connecting flight) to people on standby, and then when I showed up they didn't want to hear anything about my desire to get on the plane. I found even more disgusting the fact that to conceal their thieving they referred to new, strict airport procedures supposedly in effect since the terrorist bombings of two planes that took off from Domodedovo earlier in 2004. If I can help it, I will never fly that airline again.
This photo accurately displays how we felt at this point - the exit was there but we couldn't go through it. "No way out at DME" is what I would call this photo if it were a bit higher-quality and deserved a title:
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The fellow traveler and I went over to the airport's train ticket counter to see if there were any remaining tickets on trains later that evening, even as we contemplated waiting for a standby opportunity on Pulkovo's 9:45pm departure. In a stroke of genius (or perhaps helplessness), I called my office and asked if our travel agent could tell me about any other flights departing even later for SPB. To my surprise, I found that Pulkovo had a flight from Sheremetyevo-1 at 11pm and promptly reserved a ticket. My fellow traveler reserved his at the desk at Domodedovo, and we hurried to catch the 7:30pm train back into the city.
On the train, it was time for introductions. Andrey told me he was a 39-year-old former submarine officer who now sells mining equipent for a living. He was on his way back from Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine - at check-in for the flight there, he was asked whether he was for Yushchenko or Yanukovych. He said he didn't care, and inquired as to why they were asking. Apparently the airline had developed a short-term policy of seating Yanukovych supporters toward the front of the plane and Yushchenko supporters toward the back in order to keep them separated and avoid the fights which had been breaking out before this policy was implemented.
Andrey and I became partners in our crazy mission - to get from a distant southern suburb of Moscow to a distant northern suburb of Moscow in less than two and a half hours on a Friday evening. We were both convinced that we would have problems if we got to Sheremetyevo-1 any later than 10pm. By 8:15 we had arrived at Paveletsky station, and we were on the green line metro train to Rechnoi Vokzal (the northern end of the green line) by 8:30. We got off the metro at our interim destination at 9:00 and rushed to find one of the regular minivans running between Rechnoi Vokzal and Sheremetyevo - a marshrutka. Straddling the 3-foot gulf of slush between the curb and the tough-to-open door, we boarded and waited 10 minutes for enough passengers to board the minivan for the driver to think the trip would be worthwhile.
At 9:20, shortly after we had gotten underway toward Sh-1, the marshrutka driver cut the engine and put on the hazard lights. At first I thought he was just going to coast for awhile and then restart the engine on the go, something I've seen done by marshrutka drivers in Chisinau to save gas, but then he stopped the van, got out, lifted up his seat to reveal a plastic jerrycan full of gas, and added a bit to the gas tank. Andrey and I had a nervous but hearty laugh about this additional source of delay, as Murphy's law seemed to be in full effect that evening.
By 9:30 we were in heavy traffic on Leningradskoe Shosse, passing the ever-present working girls and choking on the fumes generated by the free shuttle bus to Ikea in front of us. We arrived at Sh-1 at 9:55 to the biggest mob scene I have seen in an airport since our flight back from Hurghada in August of 2003. I stood in line for 10 minutes at the Pulkovo counter and finally, after one failed attempt (trouble writing in English), the cashier wrote out my ticket (Andrey had gone to another cashier with a similar wait), then told us to bypass the long and immobile line for security that was creating the mob. We were cursed by many as we elbowed our way to the front, but by that time the imprecations of these other travelers bounced off of us completely - we didn't care what anyone thought, we were getting on the flight. We even had time for a cup of coffee in the boarding area at about 10:25, which was a good thing since I hadn't eaten since 1pm.
Boarding and takeoff were uneventful, then sometime before we were to begin our descent the head stewardess came over the loudspeaker and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, in 20 minutess our aircraft will be landing at Sheremetyevo - er, Pulkovo...” I think we both had a brief physical reaction to that.
But 30 minutes later we were being met by Andrey's father-in-law at the airport, who helpfully gave me a ride to the nearest metro station - although as I went down the stairs to the entrance, I saw a cop closing the gate and the station for the evening. "Won't there be one more train?" I ask; his response, "Sure, the next one is tomorrow morning." So I caught a car downtown to meet Bram at Cynic, from where we proceeded to his apartment.
The next evening was more enjoyable and encapsulated why one might go to all the trouble of getting up to SPB for the weekend from Moscow - used-book shopping, followed by coffee, a dinner of shaverma, and dancing all night at Dacha (another link). I couldn't figure out what was going on with the music there at first - it was too amazing for me to believe I was in Russia: you just don't here totally '80's sets including cuts like NWA's " Express Yourself," "It Takes Two" by Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock, and "Centerfold " by the J. Geils Band, interspersed with funk from a slightly earlier era, in this country every day. I had to find the DJ, and it turns out there was a good reason the sets were hitting home with me - a fellow American and child of the '80's was on the turntables. Jennifer Davis, AKA DJ Freakadelka, has been resident in SPB for some time, but she hasn't lost any of her old CD's, for which I was grateful.
Jennifer is actually a truly multi-talented individual. According to a concert announcement from earlier this year in Pulse Magazine:
She's best known as the frontwoman in St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review. Davis also goes by her alias, DJ Freakadelka, when she spins classic funk, soul, disco and eighties pop at venues like Dacha. But she actually started off as a classic jazz singer with Alexei Kanunnikov's Leningrad Dixieland and with performances at the Jazz Philharmonic Hall.
Check out her DJ'ing Monday nights (I think, but she'll correct me if I'm wrong) at Dacha on Dumskaya Ul. off Nevsky.
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