International Travel

After I (Trace) took a detour for a few days to make a trip to my company's facility in Scotland, I returned to Kiev yesterday after a full day of international travel delays, planes, trains, and automobiles. Upon arrival, and after my 1 1/2 hours going through security, passport review, and customs, I finally retrieved my luggage. It was now time, by myself without Megan, our 13-year-old wonder Russian translator, to find a taxi and somehow figure out how to tell him where to take me, and negotiate a rate that would not blow our weekly budget. When you get to the other side of baggage claim, you are bombarded by taxi drivers and a thousand other guys speaking Russian 100 miles an hour and wondering why you do not answer their questions and suggestions. The first taxi guy that approached me spoke some English, and after realizing that I spoke zero Russian, asked if I wanted a cab. I asked him how much to "the closest Metro (Ukranian subway) stop". He said 200 grievnas ($40 USD). I laughed at him and said no thanks, as I had read that the standard fare from the airport should be less than that. I then exchanged some $$ into grievnas, so my family could eat something that night, and he proceeded to follow me through the airport, again asking if I wanted a taxi ride. He then offered 150 grievnas, and in my most polite, American negotiation manner I again laughed and said no. He apparently did not understand the English word no, as he continued to follow me through the airport. I began asking other taxi drivers how much for a ride, and he appeared to get very anxious and raised his voice in some unknown Russian dialogue, and said they would ask for 200 grievnas. I then said I would pay him 100 grievnas, and we settled on 120 grivenas ($24 USD). Feeling very good about my Russian negotiation session, I then followed him as he sprinted with my luggage out the airport, across the parking lot, and to a small outside office, where he said something to the lady there, and she pointed him to a car and driver a few hundred feet away. Turns out this guy is not a driver at all-he is the guy that tries to gouge unknowing American travelers for a taxi ride, then turns him over to a young 20-or-so year old driver, tells him how much American money he just stole from the unknowing crazy American, and tells him where to take me. He said 120 grievna --"Kloski Metro", which sounded like what I had asked him, so I proceeded to sit in the back seat, and seconds later, as the Russian car stereo had blown 150 decibel Russian rock and roll through my eardrums, he shifted his compact "taxi" into fourth gear in less than three seconds and we were off.

I soon realized, as we traveled about 20 kilometers or so, over the river that splits Kiev in half, and through downtown Kiev, that he was not in fact transporting me to the "closest Metro", but rather "Kloski Metro". Oh well, since he was driving down the Ukrainian expressway at well over 100 miles an hour, and my eardrums were destroyed from the base of the Ukranian AC/DC vibrating through my body in the backseat, I just smiled and tried to watch the scenery, however blurred it was traveling at the speed of light. Soon we exited the expressway, decelerated from 120 to 25 miles an hour in about two seconds and we were stuck in a Kiev rush-hour traffic jam, with cars as far as the eyes could see ahead of us. Well, about 30 minutes later, as we had rolled some five blocks forward in that time, I called our 13-year-old super-Translator Megan on the cellphone, and asked her to tell the driver that really any Metro stop he could take me to would be just fine. I proceeded to hand the phone to my driver, and somehow over the Ukranian Aerosmith that was blaring through the car, he was able to have a conversation with Megan, of which of course I understood none. He then handed the phone back to me, and I asked Megan what they said. She said that he could not get to any other Metro stop, he was stuck in this traffic, and was apparently not happy about it, as it was eating into his "screw-the-American out of as much money as possible taking them to places they have no desire to go" time. Another 1o minutes or so, after moving forward another 150 feet, he screamed into the right lane, split between two cars that we had three inches of clearance between, and in Jeff Gorden-like style sped through a couple back roads and stopped at what appeared to be a Kiev Metro stop which I had never seen before. He took my suitcase out of the car, held out his hand, and after I paid him, he was gone into the night.

Where was I? Was this a metro stop at all? In the pitch-black of Ukranian night, I really had no idea where on earth I was. I walked down the long steps into a tunnel, at the end of which, to my great joy, was a Metro entrance! I had learned enough in our 2 1/2 weeks here to be able to know how much to pay for a small, plastic Metro token, which gets you onto the Metro. I did so, and asked the elderly Ukranian lady behind the glass where exactly I was on the Metro map. She has no idea what I was asking, and launched into 300-miles-an-hour Russian dialogue that might as well have been Greek to me. I proceeded to walk to the giant Metro map on the wall close to me, and began attempting to ask passing Ukranians where in the world I was on this map, which was of course all in Russian-that Megan has been reading for us all along-but Megan was at the orphanage now enjoying her time with her new brother. After 20-30 people walked by wondering why I was asking them for money or their first newborn Ukranian child, one young lady walked up, and proceeded to jump as high in the air as possible, pointing generally to the Metro map. After pointing to half a dozen stops on the map myself, she nodded and in a polite "Da" (one of the three Russian words I now know-it means yes) I now knew where in the world I was.

Now it was a matter of figuring out how to get from the point I now understood I was standing, on the green line, to the transfer point to the red line. I walked down the steps to the waiting area for the Metro, which at 6:00 PM is something like a standing-room-only Chicago Cubs Wordl Series game after a 99 year abscence, and while still pulling behind me my suitcase and lugging on my shoulder my 80-pound laptop bag, jammed with everything I possibly could have needed for my brief UK trip, I was pushed by the crowd to the place where a Metro train hopefully would arrive before I was trampeled to death and appeared as a statistic on CNN that evening. Soon a Metro train arrived, and I helplessly moved with the mob of people almost to the entrance to the train, when the doors quickly shut, just missing my arm and attached 80-pound laptop bag, and I then waited for the next opportunity to hope that the sway of the crowd would somehow move me in the general direction of the train, so I could experience the inside of the Metro for the first time in three days. Three minutes later I somehow found myself on the train, and we were on our way.

Soon I convinced myself after studying the Russian Metro map of which I can read none, that I was going in the wrong direction. So I lugged my suitcase and 80-pound laptop bag full of everything I could have possibly needed for three days in the UK and rode the wave of Ukranians off the Metro. I then slithered my way across the way to the tracks heading the other direction. I then succeeded to get on the train on my first attempt, and was now heading in the right direction! Two stops later, I convinced myself, again having no idea how to read any of the text for the stops, that I was in fact heading the right direction before, and now was heading the entirely wrong way. So I again slithered my way off the train, across the way to the other tracks, found myself somehow on the Metro heading the other way, and four stops later, believed to be at the stop where I once took the longest-escalator ever half-way out of the ground, I would be at the place where I could switch to the red line, and soon be at my destination to Neivke (which I have no idea how to spell in English or Russian, but that is how you say it). I then found myself in an even more than before mass of Ukranians smashed into a space tighter than Kievian sardines, and after pushing my suitcase, and knocking my 80-pound laptop bag with everything I needed for a 3-day UK visit, 10 minutes or so later I was on the escalator to the sky. I stepped off into a waiting area, and somehow by an act of GOD, found myself on the red line of the Metro heading the right direction. I made my way to Neivke, exited there, waiting in line for about 20 minutes for shuttle bus #719, which would take me from there to a few blocks from the orphanage, and had become a regular ride for me and my family the last 2 1/2 weeks.

Megan has down the Russian phrase for "please stop here shuttle bus driver" when we arrive close to the orphanage, but again, she was already at the orphanage, enjoying time with her new brother and his buddies. I then passed the place that Megan had been successfully stopping the shuttle bus driver, and said in my most redneck Alabamian English -- "please stop and let me off here sir!" The 30 other Ukranians all looked at me in unison as if to say - "what in God's name is this crazy American terrorist saying to our driver"? Then one kind young bus rider said something in Greek to the driver, and he hit his breaks so hard my 80-pound laptop bag containing everything I may need for a 3-day UK visit was firmly planted in the back of my American hard-head. I then was pushed off the bus by 30 Ukranians into the zero degree celcius Ukranian night, as snow flakes fell on my head. I then wandered the familiar couple blocks through the alley to the street the orphanage is on, turned right, and found my way to the orphanage.

When I opened the door, three of the boys were there, who all smiled, yelled someting in Greek or Russian or Slavakian or something, Viktor said something about "Santa Claus", as apparently he had heard I was bearing gifts from Scotland, and he made a "shhhhs" sign over his mouth, telling me to be quiet. He then opened the door, and inside was Sasha, whose face lit up as he gave me a gigantic hug and high-five-and it was then that I forgot about my planes, tranes, and automobiles day from Edinburgh, my nightmare taxi ride through Kiev rush hour, my Metro adventure, and it was all worth it as I was embracing my new son!