The $2000 Mistake

So we left Almaty on Sunday morning, 22 December, headed for New York City. Thankfully our flight was not delayed as several co-workers coming from Shymkent the previous night had been delayed in a storm. The itenerary was to fly to St. Petersburg, Russia, transfer to Moscow, then fly on to New York City's JFK airport. We bought the tickets with Aeroflot Airlines because they were one of the cheapest airlines to allow Lulu to travel with us. So, out of Almaty without a hitch, headed to "Amrika."

Upon landing in St. Petersberg everyone was herded onto transport buses that took us to the terminal. When we entered the terminal there was just a lady at a desk directing people to where they needed to be. Levi fought his way through the crowd to ask where we should go. He was told to go to Passport Control. We were confused because we just needed to catch a connecting flight, but we stood in line anyway because there was no where else to go. After about 3 minutes a passport agent approached us from behind and asked about our situation. He told us that if we did not have a visa that we would be fined and sent back to Almaty. Panic began to set in for me - there is no way I wanted to go back, 5.5 hours, to Almaty to start this whole thing over again. We discussed the issue a bit and found that there is no way for Americans to apply for a transit visa right there in the airport, so we had two options. One, pay the fine and fly back to Almaty, or, two, buy tickets to fly out of St. Petersberg to another country.

We were taken back to the entrance of the passport control area to wait for an Aeroflot representative to meet with us about the issue. Neither one of us could figure out how to get internet on our phones, and free internet was not available in the area we were sitting. The rep. came by and we chatted a bit. He told us there was a flight to Paris, Nice, or Prague that we could take; we asked for prices to Paris (I figured it was closer to NYC than the other two). He gave us a quote in Rubles, which didn't help since we had no idea of the exhange. He did bad math in his head and said it would be a total of $6,600 for us to get to Paris!!! I told him that we didn't have that much money. Levi and I tried to discuss it, but after a few minutes he interupted and said he couldn't stay with us all day because he had other work to do. I fiddled around with my phone for a minute and finally got the internet to work over the network (no 3G service here, I used my minutes per MB). I pulled up Orbitz and started a search. Luckily, the representative received a phone call and had to run off. I had enough time to find a flight for $667 a person through Warsaw, Poland [with a 21 hour layover] and onto NYC. It put us a day behind schedule, but it was definetely cheaper than $6,600 for us to just get to Paris.

The original passport control agent that had approached us continued to check in to see what was happening. We were finally able to tell him we were booking the flight to Warsaw. He was awesome - really if it hadn't been for him we would have been flying back to Almaty. We gave him our baggage tags and he hunted down our bags. He came back the first time and told us my bag was lost. I kept it together until he walked away and then I broke down crying, that was the "straw that broke the camel's back." Five minutes later another agent approached to say that he had tracked down my bag and it was in the airport. He went off to retrieve it; that was a relief. So, fully contained, we trekked off with our bags to a different terminal, ready to settle in and wait the extra 4 hours until our flight to Warsaw. We flew with LOT Polish Airlines and they were so understanding and helpful through the whole process.

The terminal had free internet so we were able to do some research on whether or not we could take a dog into the country. Fortunately, their policies covered what we had on her, basically they needed her shot records and to be sure she had a rabies shot. We did a bit of research on the city to figure out some things to check out since we'd be stuck there so long.

The manager for LOT airlines came to visit us closer to check-in time to help us figure out tickets, seats, and checking our luggage. He seemed to bend over backwards for us! It was incredible and I highly recommed using LOT if you're traveling through Europe. He was sure to get us a whole row of seats on the way to Warsaw (so 4 seats to ourselves and the dog); and, to our surprise, he gave us a set of 3 seats together on the way to NYC (in a packed plane nonetheless). The service on both planes was great and the flight attendants were very friendly. Although I never wish to be stuck in Russia like that again, I am very thankful to all the players that helped us to "escape" and made it as bearable as possible.

Overall, we learned our lesson about flying through Russia - GET A VISA!!!