russia, cont.

eventually, i got on the plane to novosibirsk. it was an aeroflot plane, and it was kinda weird. first, you need to go actually outside, onto the tarmac, and then climb up the little stairs to get onto the plane. this puts you on the first floor of the plane, where you can set down your carryon luggage to be strapped in on some shelves. then, up another flight of stairs, and there are the seats. aeroflot planes were designed by midgets. no, no, skinny midgets. with no legs. that's my theory and i'm sticking to it. four more hours, and i was in novosibirsk. down two flights of stairs, outside, through the fence with the pointy barbed wire at the top, and look around.

hmm. no dad. hmm.

so, i looked inside the little building, and found an enormous ad for new york pizza restaurant, but no luggage on the carousel yet, and no dad. hmm.

i'd been up for something like thirty six hours at this point, so i decided that the smart thing to do was a) refuse all offers of taxis, and b) sit down and look for extraordinarily tall people. so, i did. shortly after (maybe twenty minutes or so) i spotted an extraordinarily tall person, and in fact, even the extraordinarily tall person who happens to be my father. hurray! i leapt up, yelled for him, and scooted over to say hello, and to let him be in charge for a while. we hiked out to find the taxi that he took in from the apartment, dropped my carryon luggage into it, and hiked off again, with the taxi driver, to go get my suitcase off the carousel.

you know those little stickers they give you at the airport and they attach part of it to your luggage? in russia, they check those! and if they don't match, you don't get your luggage! don't lose those stickers. mine was cleverly stuck to the back of my return tickets, but they managed to peel it off so they could keep it and i could keep my return tickets.

then, into the taxi. my dad explained to me about russian driving, which kept me from screaming in terror when the driver kept rapidly swerving to avoid potholes, including driving in the left hand lane into oncoming traffic. oh boy that was exciting.

it was about a forty minute drive back to the apartment. we went over the bridge where the ob river becomes the ob sea, and past some churches, and past all sorts of things, into novosibirsk, and then into akademgorodok. we drove down what appeared to be an alley, then what appeared to be a sidewalk, and then parked the car nose to nose with a biiiig khaki sort of suv thing. ta-daaa! here we were, number seventeen morskoy prospect. out of the car, and my dad paid the taxi driver and tipped him (apparently tipped him enough to necessitate naming little russian children after him in the future, but that seems all right), and then into the building.

oh, the building. it is made out of poured concrete. there are no lights, and no windows in the bit of the stairway going up to number 35, where we were staying. the tile floor was chipped and uneven, and the stairs were not of a regular sort of height. quite tricky. but i learned the magic code to get in the front door, and was shown how to unlock the apartment door.

(to be continued...)