The next day we got up early and went down to the fourth floor café. There we met up with the spacey Russian guy from the Krishna café and his blonde female friend who spoke English, Russian, and Chinese. Incredibly, she was even more of a space cadet than he was. We had a pretty interesting conversation, I think. He was about 27 (acted about 19) and wanted to be a graphic designer or something. I am having trouble remembering what we talked about, because it was mixed with the girl’s bizarre translations and my very last Russian blini c dzhemom (blini with jam), which I savored like a last meal. I don’t know if any of us got much out of it except confused, but it was amusing in any case.We called for a cab to take us to the airport, and we planned on getting there a full two hours before our flight was scheduled to depart. As much fun as we’d had, we weren’t about to miss the plane out of there. It took us an hour to get to the little airport out in the suburbs. Our cabdriver, as usual, was friendly and talkative. It’s nice when your cabdriver acts as a tour guide along the way. And as usual, he tried to charge us more than we had agreed on over the phone, but we paid him what we knew we were supposed to plus a nice tip. As long as you know your driver is probably going to try to jack you, you just make allowances for it, and everything works out fine.
We got there and had to wait about an hour before the doors opened to let us into the baggage/document/ticket check area. They finally let us in at 2:15, an hour before takeoff. The first thing we had to do was put our baggage through the X-ray machine, and they made me put the Adidas contraption through a second time. They saw the little 12-inch dagger I had bought for my younger sister for 350 rubles ($12.50) at Izmailovsky Park, and I had to unpack the whole bag to get it out since it had settled down to the bottom of everything. And of course by now I had lost the papers authenticating it as a souvenir and not a priceless Soviet heirloom. When the redheaded guard learned I had no papers, he took it from me and showed it to another guard, and they discussed what to do. The other guard shook his head and said, “Nel’zya,” and turned around to leave. The redheaded guard shrugged and pointed at the other guy.
“But,” I said to him in Russian, “I bought it for my little sister. It is her gift. She will get nothing.” He shrugged helplessly. “Pozhaluista,” I pleaded (please). He looked uncomfortable. “Shas,” he finally said (wait a moment), and turned and left. For about five minutes he stood across the room taking the blade out of the scabbard, looking at it, turning it over, and putting it back in. It was very pretty, with intricate silver filigree around the scabbard and a moonstone on the hilt. I really liked it, and I knew my sister would. He carried it around for a while as he did other business. Finally he sighed and walked back to where I was waiting. “Vot,” he said, and handed it to me, not without glancing over his shoulder. I smiled and said, “Spacibo, spacibo bolshoye,” (thanks so much!). He looked down and smiled and shook his head as if embarrassed. I felt like hugging him, but I didn’t know if it was appropriate, so I didn’t.
As I was rummaging around for my documents and cinching up my backpack and repacking my Adidas buggy, Liz walked over to the visa check place. She came back and said, “Don’t worry, there’s a little problem with our documents, our visas expired yesterday, but it shouldn't be a problem.” Well, sure, I thought, surprised. Of course there was no problem. Everyone had told us that as long as the date on our visa was within three days of the actual departure time, there would be no problem.
We found a Mr. Pak whom Mr. Thomas had told us to go to if we had any problems (what problem? I continued to think). He was a young Korean gentleman who spoke Russian and English, and we asked him if such a silly thing as our visas being expired was a problem. He examined our visas and looked quite concerned. He told us to wait and hurried to a nearby telephone to talk with The Man. Liz, being in much less denial than I was, seemed agitated. I felt quite at ease.
He came back 15 minutes later. It was 2:35 now, 40 minutes before our plane was scheduled to leave the ground. “I’m sorry, we can’t let you leave the country right now. You’ll have to get a visa extension.” “Uh… how long will that take?” “Just a few days. Shouldn’t be a problem.” “And when does the next plane out of here leave?” “Saturday.” Today was Tuesday.
This was not good. I had a $700 plane ticket to America waiting for me in Seoul, and I had to catch it on Friday morning. Even if we did somehow get to Seoul by Friday, or get our tickets out of Seoul moved to Saturday, we’d miss our two days exploring South Korea. Not to mention we’d have to spend five more days here while Liz was sick and my parents and friends were waiting for me at home after so many months of travelling. And then there was the cost and bother of finding a place to stay again, finding some way to keep us amused, getting our visas extended, and somehow finding a way to postpone our flight at the last minute. And all this extra time and waste in Russia was just a perverse way of punishing us for staying in Russia a day too long.
“Mr. Pak, how can one number cause that much trouble? Everyone told us that as long as our visa was within about three days of correct, there would be no problem.” His reply was very Russian: “Well, it’s very easy to say it won’t be a problem when you’re not here. But now you’re here, and the date clearly states when your visa expires. And it has expired.”
We were furious with Overseas Studies who, a few months ago back at Stanford, didn’t bother to check the date we planned to leave Russia. They could easily have extended our visa to the New Year. It was a multiple entry visa so it didn’t matter when we left Russia as long as it was before the little date stamped on our visa. And because of their oversight, right now it wasn’t.
Nonetheless, for some unknown reason, I guess because I’m a dumb American who still expects things to make sense, I remained quite calm. Liz, having more sense than I and being sick on top of it all, was crying. I carefully explained our situation to Mr. Pak again: the months of travelling, the illness, the fact that it was Christmas and our families were waiting for us, the fact that a very expensive plane ticket was waiting for me just to the south in Seoul, the fact that we were poor students and didn’t even have the reserves to change our tickets and extend our visas and pay for five more nights in hotels, and the fact that it wasn’t our fault Overseas Studies screwed up our visa date. (Of course, it was our fault that we hadn’t actually looked at our visas and noticed they were a day off. But even if we had, I doubt we would have done anything. We had assurances all over that as long as we were close to correct, we’d be fine.)
He went back to the phones and talked to The Man again for another 20 minutes, and when he came back, the expression on his face caused some of my mask of contentment to dissolve. “I’m sorry,” he said again, “but it’s not very hard to get a visa extension, and you can easily change the date of your plane ticket to Saturday. It will still be good.” The ticket to Seoul was of secondary concern; the main worry was the much more expensive ticket waiting for us in Seoul, which we’d miss if this all went like it looked like it might. By now it was 2:55, 20 minutes before departure. Liz started getting a bit hysterical, but incredulity kept doubts from entering my head even though our baggage had been pulled back off the plane and was sitting ominously by the ticket counter.
I shook my head to ward off such thoughts and asked for my documents back. “I’m just going to go through,” I said, “and maybe immigrations won’t notice.” But of course they noticed, and they began passing my documents around, trying to figure out what to do. I expected it would just end up with Mr. Pak again. I explained to the immigrations lady why it would be absurd to make us stay in Vladivostok five more days and cost us untold money and headaches just because we had already stayed in Russia a day too long. She indicated that she sympathized but shrugged and pointed vaguely upwards. “It’s not my fault,” she said, and passed the blame to an ephemeral being much more powerful than herself sitting somewhere up in the rafters.
It was 3:03 by now. Our flight was leaving in 12 minutes and I was rapidly running out of options. At this point the vision of actually staying here five more days intruded into my mask of hope. All this pointless waste and worry, and all I wanted was to use the tickets I had already bought with my summer earnings and go home and see my family. Tears came to my eyes as my heart sank through the floor. What was left to do?
Then one more idea came to me. Who had she been pointing to? If it was his fault, maybe he should face the crying students trapped on Christmas.
I went up to Mr. Pak. “Who is in charge of this? Who has the final say? I want to talk to that man. In person. Now.” He sighed and shook his head, tired of my demands, but he did call The Man again. At 3:11, four minutes before our plane took off, a man came down to us with a calculator. Things get blurry at this point. I was a little delirious, and everyone was talking at once, but I saw the figure 800 on the calculator. For a moment I thought he wanted 800 dollars from us, which wouldn’t have been unheard of, but I shook my head. He knew we were students. It had to be rubles. “How much is that in dollars?” He punched some buttons, and now the calculator showed 28.78, and he indicated that he wanted that from each of us. Liz ran up and asked what was happening. I told her, and she pulled $60 in cash out of her money belt and threw it at the man. He vaguely asked if we might have rubles instead, but I wasn’t about to go there; lucky enough she had the cash on her. I waved him off, and once they assured us our luggage would be taken care of, we bolted.
We were just in time to hand over our flimsy, and now worthless, pale purple Russian visas and catch the bus that was going to take us to our plane. I was too delirious to notice, but later Liz said the bus turned a quick corner and took us approximately nine feet to our waiting plane. They sure love their protocol.
In a Larisa the Tour Guide voice: “This… was the shortest bus ride… in the world!”
I can’t describe the giddy bliss of walking up the steps to the plane’s cabin, smiling at a bowing Korean flight attendant, hearing ‘Chestnuts Roasting’ playing softly over the airwaves, and finding the plush blue chair with my number on it. As Russia rolled out from under me, another flight attendant put a steaming dish in front of me full of rice and vegetables and mushrooms and a spicy sauce. My feeling of contentment was overwhelming.
Afterword