Tag: airtravel

Maybe It’s Just Me, But..

On one of the last year’s trips, I had to check in my carry-on red Samsonite (yes, I had two, both gifts from Boris, both weight virtually nothing, and both cost a fortune). It came back with the broken zipper lock. It broke because I didn’t secure the ends of that zipper. And I didn’t secure the ends because I had trouble unlocking them a couple of times. Boris always insisted that I should lock them in because that’s what they are for, and I was always afraid I wouldn’t be able to unlock them. That time last year, I didn’t plan to check in this luggage, so I didn’t bother, and as a result, the entire lock was gone. I was still able to close the zipper with my fingers all the way, but I lost the flexibility of being able to do it from the middle. So, everything still worked but was inconvenient, and I started to think that I needed a new carry-on. 

The Samsonite holiday sale was on, and this exact model, which was not sold in the US before, showed up. After joining EDB, I decided I could give myself a gift and purchased it.

When the luggage arrived, I kept it in the closet and didn’t even look at it – I knew exactly how it looked inside and out. And then, before my trip to Milwaukee, I pulled it out and realized that it was locked! The lock was slightly different from the previous luggage, and I had no idea how to open it! Finally, I managed to open it by trial and error, and guess what I found?! The instructions on how to open were inside!

November 8

I finally read the new guidelines for entering the USA for foreign tourists, which are going into effect the following Monday. I like that there are no more per country considerations, and the requirements are uniform across the globe. That is a huge plus. I am slightly upset that we still have to take a COVD test before returning to the US, but once again, that applies to both citizens and visitors, so I can’t complain. Besides, I completely understand the rationale behind this requirement.

The thing which I was upset about was the exclusion of Sputnik from the list of approved vaccines. Formally speaking, it is not targeted vaccine discrimination; it’s just that Sputnik is not approved by WHO yet. But the thing is that people in Russia who are doing the right thing and getting vaccinated still won’t be able to travel to the US.

And I am not talking about tourists. I am talking about people such as my mom’s friend whose daughter was working on her green card, and her interview in the embassy was scheduled for March 20, 2020… And I am not even talking about people from many other countries, including Mexico, that purchased Sputnik.

Mom Went To Saint Petersburg

Mom went to Saint-Petersburg. Her flight was on Thursday evening. I did not want her to go, but there were some things which she had to do in person, and I found too late that there were ways to avoid the trip. I think that I won’t be able to stop her in any case, and if she decided she needed to go, she would still insist on going there.

I already told all my friends why I worried so much about this trip. In Russia, the vaccination rate is very low (twenty-something percent), and we do not know how many vaccinations are fake. The transmission rate is high; people do not wear masks unless they are forced to do so. For example, they would put the mask on when they enter the subway but take it off immediately after they are in. Or they would be without a mask in the store and pull it on during checkout.


Mom does not wear a mask properly. When I am together with her, I fix it all the time. It is not so important here: she is vaccinated; our vaccination rate is close to 70%; the transmission rate is less than one, and the overwhelming majority of people wear masks and wear them properly. If she goes to Morse Market, I am not overly concerned with her not wearing the mask properly, but it is a different story in Russia.


In addition, there is a lot of paperwork associated with the trips to and from Russia these days. I had to sign her up for two COVID tests, on entrance and on exist, register her at the government website to fill in the form for returning citizens, and fill in several other paper forms, some in Russian, some in English.
I requested a wheelchair for her for the whole trip, but I only managed to get her in it in O’Hare. As she reported, she “didn’t find” it in Helsinki. Having that they wait right on exit from the plane, I agree with Boris that you have to try very hard not to find them… but what can I do?


My friend met her at the airport in Saint -Petersburg, and they went home. For three weeks prior to the trip, I tried to explain to mom that it is dangerous to take public transportation in Saint-Petersburg and that I wanted her to take a cab all the time. Boris gave us a number of a very reliable cab company and asked her to use their services. She resisted for a very long time. I asked my friends in Saint-Petersburg to make sure that she called the cab (she has been doing it for a day and a half now :))


When they came home, they found out that the heating in her apartment was still not turned on. Also, one of the water pipes was leaking (the plumber will only come on Monday), and she could not turn on her electric stove.


And she refused to stay with my friend for the next couple of days… Also, although she is supposed to wait for the test result in Saint -Petersburg, she is going everywhere because nobody is checking.
I want these two weeks to be over (and actually, there are only twelve days left)

***

Boris flew in on Friday, and it took him almost two hours to get through the immigration. He said there were just two agents for several hundred people. Then, we made a mistake. Or rather, I let this mistake happen.

Since we moved to the city, Boris said that now we do not need to take Uber to the airport because we can take L. I told him it would be a very long trip because you need to get into the city and get out again. Last time, I called Uber because we were fixing things until the last minute.

Now he mentioned it again, and I said – let’s.

Because the inner airport train is still not operating, it took us 30 minutes to get Terminal 5 to Terminal 2. And then – another two hours with all the waits! I told him – at least, it was on the way from the airport, not the other way 🙂

I hope that one experiment was enough 🙂

Traveling In The Opposite Direction

Because I was so absorbed with my move, I didn’t even tell anybody about Boris’s visit – the first time after November 2019.

He technically could come through all that time as a spouse of a US citizen. But first, there were no flights. Then, it was really bad here, and I didn’t want him to come and sit inside for a week. Later, it became possible for me to travel, and you know the rest. Boris said he didn’t want to get sick outside Finland, which I could understand.

Long story short, he felt comfortable traveling after his first dose (In Finland, due to the vaccine shortage, they have a twelve weeks interval between two doses).
Like when I traveled to Finland, he has to present the papers twice more than the number of borders he crossed. But unlike with me, one situation became very serious.

He checked -in for both flights on the way to Chicago, but just when he was about to board the plane in Frankfurt, they didn’t let him on. An official told him that B1 travelers from the Schengen zone are not allowed, and “if he were traveling from Russia, it would be fine.” Boris pleaded with him that in his case, he could travel, and in the end, they reissued him a boarding pass, and he boarded – the last passenger on the flight.

He had no problems passing the border control here, and the officer, as it often happens, was amused with our family arrangements :).

He also had to take the test on the way back, and it turned out that the only way he could do this was to come to the airport yet another hour earlier. It all worked fine, and there were no more issues. However, Boris is still bitter that the Biden administration didn’t do anything with this ridiculous situation when people can’t travel from the Schengen countries but can travel from Russia. And I agree 🙂

A Flight Back

I have only one more thing to tell you about my trip to Helsinki, that is about the flight back.

During my pandemic travels, I learned that I need to plan whether I am going to eat on each of the flights. My flight from Helsinki departed at 7-20 AM, which means we left the house at 5 AM, and I didn’t have breakfast. When I was checking in, they told me that the flight is “almost full” (and for that reason, they checked my luggage, even though I had the “light” fair). That meant that I didn’t want to take my mask off on the plane, so I bought my breakfast at the airport and ate it in the far corner of the cafe.

It turned out that it was the right call to go back to the medical center and ask to fix the typos in my name: the certificate was checked at least four times! And each time, whoever checked it, verified my name on the certificate against my passport.

Continue reading “A Flight Back” →

Flying Again, And New Rules Again

Lufthansa rules. They are making sure people do not sit together if they are not related. And this is way more important than having three different choices of meals (Lufthansa still has pasta with carrots:)). They allow only surgical masks on the flight and during onboarding/disembarkment. I am happy that this time, I checked that it is LH, not United! 

Remembering my last time experience, I decided to prepay for the seats (the ticket price was insane already, in any case). When I was choosing the seats, I felt a little bit nervous when I saw that almost all the seats are open, but it turned out that they are closing the seats adjoined to the selected seats. And they changed my preselected seat on the second flight to make sure people are set sparsely, even in the smaller plain. Good for them!!!

For the long flight, I chose the aisle seat in the middle section. I was taking notes during my previous flights, and I observed that there are higher chances that the will be no more people in the row if I sit in the middle section. It worked perfectly. There was one more lady in the same section (s seat apart from me), but she switched to the other empty section, so I had three seats for myself. In combination with the fact that there was no good internet connectivity, this extra space allowed me to have several hours of sleep. 

All the procedures changed again. It feels like each time I am flying I have to present my marriage certificate one more time. This time, it was four times: at the Lufthansa check-in in O’Hare, when crossing the border in Frankfurt, when boarding the plane in Frankfurt to Helsinki and in Helsinki. There is an additional makeshift border control point at terminal 2, right when you get off the bus. Also, they do not do a free COVID test in the airport; instead, they require you to have the negative test with you when you arrive, and then they ask you to take the test three days after arrival. 

There is no way to take it for free, as I found out, so I will only take the test to be allowed to board my flight back. 

But the good news are that I am here :).