New York
I was impressed with my short stint in NY. I was able to
take the sky train to down town pretty easily. The buildings are so big there.
It reminded me of DC in the city structure but the buildings were so much
taller and there was so much going on. The subway was fun a little smoother and
cleaner than the Moscow and DC subways. This shows how sheltered and how much
of a culturally homogenous area I live in but there were so many black people! I definitely stood out as the tourist white boy where I was. I had to lug all
my bags in which was tough but not too bad. New York was cool you can feel that
competitive not so friendly culture they have. There
is a definitely a different more cold business like attitude to the people of
big cities. I don’t think I necessarily like that. I love traveling and I like
the opportunities the big city has to offer but I think smaller cities of maybe
only a million or so people are more of the flavor and style of where I would
like to ultimately end up.
While in NYC I had lunch with a cool girl named Aubrey. She works for the NBA. It was fun to hear her describe the players, she said Kobe was a total tool, Chris Paul was a sweet heart and that Dwight Howard seemed liked he wasn't all there mentally. She is a hometown friend of my roommate josh. She
was cool and super nice and I liked seeing her. Fun to hear about Josh that
way.
After my foray into NYC. I
boarded the flight to Moscow on TransAero. I’m pretty sure TransAero is a Russian
company because none of the employees spoke English to me. It is also cheap
(this was confirmed to me by the about 30-40 hasidic jews which were on the
plane with me), there are no tvs for each seat and no inflight movies. However, to keep you
placated they feed you three full meals in an 8 hour period plus a snack. They
are trying to put you in food comas and of course you can’t resist it. The
biggest adjustment is getting used to hearing and being expected to respond in
Russian the entire time. There have been a few times when I hear someone and
understand them in Russian but for whatever reason out of habit I’ll say
something back in English. One exchange was like this
Man in Russian: "Hey the bathroom
is broking why can’t those americans fix it?"
Me responding in English: "Yeah
those lazy Americans breaking everything."
Man looking at me confused.
When I landed in Russia I had a Tom Hanks Terminal type moment. I decided not to get a visa to Russia for the day because if I did it would have precluded me from getting a tourist visa when I come back through Moscow after my internship. So thus I was trapped in the airport in Moscow for 12 hours and unable to enter the airport or enter Russia at all. After discussing and talking with the customs officials for a few minutes I had to sit in this tiny waiting room for about 2 hours. Then a woman approached me and said get your stuff you're coming with me. She then led me outside of the airport and pointed to a black van and said get in (I thought this is either good or going to be really bad really fast). I jumped in the van no questions asked and then I was driven all the way to the other side of the airport to the terminal where I would be departing for Almaty. I was then ordered to go to the top of the stairs and enter the terminal. I got in the terminal and ordered to go through security by myself with the one security guard that was there just for me and wait in the empty terminal alone tell my plane came. Bottom line is get your visa to whatever country you're traveling through even if you don't need it.
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