I have been infrequently but now regularly taking trips to the motherland of my russian-speaking town of Odessa in Ukraine. One trip every three years or so. There is always a mixed confusing emotion which creeps up in the few days leading to the trip. It has nothing to do with the joy, excitement, peacefulness, hominess and satisfaction of spending time with my grandfather, cousins, aunts, uncles, childhood friends, an odd classmate here and there; walking down the same streets that I ran through on my way to school; playing in the sands of the beaches and watching out for jellyfish in the Black Sea.
It is something else entirely and it involves one or all of the following emotions: nerves, embarassment, worry and anxiety. The source of the anxious emotions is simply the logistics of the actual trip. The plan ride, the layover in Kiev, the gazillion bags of suitcases, one half of the suitcase of which is actually my clothes with the rest bearing gifts, the customs in Ukraine and of course being surrounded by my fellow countrymen in much bigger numbers than I am accustomed to.
A friend of mine reminded me before the trip, "I try not to worry about things I have no control over." Well, "try" is the key word here, right after "no control." I know its irrational, I know that the hassle, the haggling and the chaos are just a few of the ridiculous pleasures of this aspect of the russian-ukrainian-soviet culture. It is what it is. They are who they are. I am who I am.
So let me explain or elaborate in further detail. The first impression is always the flight attendant crew of the Ukrainian airline. I have not yet met a more sour, unhelpful and often rude air crew bunch. The ancient American flight attendants of a certain American airline have nothing on these guys and girls. Evidently, there are a lot more male attendants (and most likely straight attendants) than what I've seen elsewhere.
I keep telling my mom, "You have to speak English to these people, otherwise they treat you as one of their own." Which expectedly might be a good thing. In this case, being treated as one of their own is not. The better part of me keeps saying that they don't mean to be mean, they're just not used to people smiling, or having/wanting to smile back. Excellent customer service has nothing to do with servicing customers for them. We're just spoiled with this phenomenon in the US. They just don't know any better. You can't be mad at a person for something that they may never have experienced in their life. Finally I realize, that's just the culture.
The layover. Typical stuff, you can get to foreign soil, but need to transfer to a different flight. You know you have to go through customs. You know you need to check-in for your transferring flight. What you don't know is where, how and whether or not your transfering flight has left already because this one was over an hour late.
If only you could ask someone. If only there were signs, instructions, arrival/departure schedule posted. Those thoughts kept running through my head as I tried to quickly maneuver through the chaos of other passengers with other transfers, with may be two staff members trying to service this chaos, not knowing where to go and how long it would take. Imagine the check-in person, a representative of one or who knows how many airlines (noone knew, there were no signs), with about 40 hands pushing their passports in the represenetative's face, with just as many voices trying to ask "Where am I supposed to be going?" or "Did the Warsaw flight leave already?"
15 minutes left to scheduled flight departure. The good thing in Kiev is that this is quite enough time to go through passport control, collect your gazillion bags from baggage claim, befriend a bunch of people that are in the exactly the same situation as you trying to make their transfer flight, go through customs and explain exactly how many electronic products you're carrying with you, get out of the terminal, go on foot to a whole other terminal, check-in with two other countrywomen gently pushing you from the back, go through another security check point and finally arrive at the gate with your tongue literally hanging out of your mouth.
All this could not have been done of course without a bunch of "Please let us through we have a flight in 10 minutes" and strongly taking the staring and the sour faces of those that well, still, let us through. As a former soviet this push and shove attitude quickly comes from the shadows of your don't want to intrude American attitude, and saves the day. Running up and down the stairs and across terminals with various inclines, declines and puddles with over 60kilos of luggage is quite an exercise. (Apparently they don't have such lavish accommodations as an elevator or escalator. Apparently they don't have disabled people in the country. At least not the kind that travel or go outside of their home. Slight tangent here, but worth the mention.)
All of this was worth it, however, to see the smiles of my aunt and cousin as they were impatiently waiting for us, swiftly picking up all the bags and driving home. It was worth the excitement on my grandfather's face as he saw his daughter and granddaughter run out of the car to hug him. This home that I speak of, thousands of miles away from my actual home in NYC, is the home where my mom grew up, where I was born, where I spent most of my summers as a kid. Still same old home, courtyard, streets, trees, cars, pharmacies, bazaar, school, childhood friends and the people. A home that in a glimpse makes me feel like I just came back from a 15 year vacation. The only difference is the sea of outdoor advertising.
