When I got selected as a referee for WRTC 2010, which was to be held in Moscow, I decided I would try to ‘tick off’ as many remaining European DXFC points as possible en route. My plan involved travel by air, bus and train, and would take me through some of the rarer DXFC entities.
My first leg was an uneventful BMI flight from Aberdeen to Birmingham. This was followed by a slightly more eventful Ryan Air flight to Gdansk. As I had to carry a kilt, my sleep apnoea pump and quite a lot of contingency clothing my bag weighed 19.3kg - this is a heavy bag for a seven-day trip - and boy, were Ryan Air pleased about that! I was 4 (not 3.3) kilos over weight, and at £20 per kilo, they were going to charge me £80. The original ticket had cost about £9.99! I was sent back from check-in to the Ryan Air ticket desk. I winged and whined about having to carry medical equipment, and how that would account for about 4kg (which was true), but the would have none of it. However, the buy did let me off with £50, re-designating my bag as over-size rather than over-weight. This was my first Ryan Air flight, and I expect it will be the last. I can understand what the company is trying to do (make money), but the way the customers are treated is awful; literally herded and shouted at, like a bunch of animals. I wonder how many people rebel – I mean, would you? Would you risk not getting to board? I doubt it. So they can get away with just about anything, and I expect they will try more ways as time passes. There are advantages to being an independent lone traveller - I was happy to take an aisle seat in row 2! A seat I would consider pretty desirable on any other air journey. A seat which was obviously ignored by those who wanted a window beside their friend. I did not push, but was pushed, and I did not rush. We took off (almost) on time, and arrived a little early. This was DXFC #119.
At Gdansk I had to wait until the very end of the luggage before my case came through the portal – I was beginning to panic. I didn’t want it to go wrong at the first hurdle. It was mid-evening and I couldn’t work out where to get a taxi (I know – it’s an airport, so what was going on there?), but I could see signs to the bus stop. I had some Polish money, so decided to take the bus into town. I asked someone at the bus stop which bus I needed and they helpfully told me the number. The bus arrived a few minutes later, I bought my ticket, stowed my case in the luggage area and took a seat. I simply sat there watching the town get busier as we approached what must have been the city centre, and got off when I could see that we were at the railway station. I immediately got a taxi to take me to my hotel, the Mercure Hevelius. It was a two-minute ride away. I knew it was, but wasn’t going to start navigating my way across wide main streets with a wheeled suitcase in tow. I’ll give the Mercure 4 out of 5 - in fact my only complaint is the small size of the room. It’s a nice clean, (refurbished I’d guess) high-rise hotel in the city centre, with a decent bar. I watched one of the world cup football matches on the TV there, and had a beer.
The following morning I was up at 5.15am – I wanted to get to the bus station in plenty of time. The receptionist at the hotel front desk very kindly got me a taxi and explained to the driver which bus station I wanted. I had a Google map printout with the hotel, the railway station and the bus station marked. I arrived at the bus station around 0600 and immediately found bus number 248 for Kaliningrad parked in the large parking area. It’s a Russian bus. It was already quite a still, hot morning as I waited for the driver to appear – he was away getting some drinking water for the bus coffee machine. He put my case into the hold. He didn’t speak much English at all, but I tried to explain that I needed a ticket. He pointed to the main building, so off I went. No one in that building understood a word I said. Each time I said the word Kaliningrad they pointed at the bus out in the yard. I went back to the bus. I figured that eventually the driver would ask me for a ticket, at which point HE would have to explain how to buy one. I tried to ask him if he would be stopping anywhere, as I needed some breakfast. For the first time since I bought it 5 years ago I used my “Point-It” book. This is a book full of pictures of everything under the sun, which is a sort-of multi-lingual phrase book. It works too! You point at a plate of breakfast type food on a plate, and yes, a picture speaks a thousand words. The driver made signs as if to say he would sort it out, and pointed to my seat. I then tried to find out when the bus was leaving. I pointed at the numbers on the clock in the bus, and established that the bus was leaving at 0700. This was what it said in the time-table on the web site, so it made sense. What made no sense was him starting the bus at 0625 and heading off towards the station building - he pulled up to the kerb and four or five folk got on board (and gave him tickets). Then he pointed at me, and pointed at a door in the station building. Ah, I thought, this is where and when I buy my ticket. I ran off through the door, and down a flight of stairs. The basement opened out into a large tiled area (almost) bursting with people, and sure enough, there was a ticket sales window in the far corner. I said to the woman behind the glass, “Kaliningrad one way”. At this she completely lost the plot, and started jabbering and gesturing at me, to such a violent extent that she knocked a pile of what looked like souvenir toy buses off her counter. Then she pointed at the clock. By now I didn’t care – I didn’t buy a ticket. I went over to the kiosk and bought an apple, a bottle of water and some biscuits. I climbed the stairs and boarded the waiting bus. I avoided the driver’s gaze and returned to my seat, because now I didn’t have a ticket. So now, the driver calmly gets up, approaches me and tells me in broken English how much a ticket will cost. I say “Roubles?” (we are in Poland after all) and he says “Da”. I hand over some cash, he gives me a ticket, climbs into his seat and we leave Gdansk bus station. Strange! It occurred to me afterwards that he had meant for me to buy some food at the kiosk – not buy a ticket. After all, he had indicated that he would sort it out later.
We trundled through Gdansk – I don’t think he ever exceeded 40mph. We left Gdansk behind after a while, and the road seemed to bowl on through farming land for about an hour. Then the bus pulled into a layby, the driver pointed at me and then pointed at a small shop stuck on the corner of a house. How many breakfasts does he think I need? So, I jumped off the bus, and suddenly everyone else realised that they had a shopping opportunity too, and all piled into the shop behind me, followed by the driver! The shop didn’t sell anything very appetising (or so I thought), so I stuck to my staple biscuits and water. Of course, once I got back to the bus I could see that the driver had managed to buy all sorts of nice things - meat paste, bread rolls – but he could speaka da lingo. When we arrived at the next large town the bus pulled over for about 30 minutes in the town square and the driver made me a cup of coffee, and gave me one of his bread rolls with butter and meat paste! I must have been his favourite passenger. And this was my third breakfast. I took this opportunity to ask him to drop me off at the railway station, which I had established was the penultimate stop on his route. Isn’t Google wonderful?
The border crossing between Poland and Russia at Kaliningrad is like all border crossings – windless, warm, quiet – people in huge military hats doing nothing and others with smaller hats checking passports. I’m genuinely curious to know what more information you can pick up by flicking the pages of a passport again and again and again. In fact we had our passports checked at least three or four times - two I can understand. We finally had to disembark the bus and go though a building check-point similar to an airport, where our passports were really scrutinised. I think I presented them with a slightly unusual visa – a two-entry tourist visa, issued by the Consul in Edinburgh. He said “Where did you get this visa?” and I said “Edinburgh”. He had no idea where this was. Someone in the queue behind me decided to interject “From the consular office in Edinburgh, Scotland”, she shouted, then she said something in Russian. It was news to me that anyone else on the bus spoke English.
“From Edinbugh?” the border guard asked. I said “Yes.”
“I don’t think so” he said, stamped it and gave it back to me. Bizarre!
I think we must have had to hang around that border check point for at least one and a half hours. I could see that the driver was getting the third degree. He kept smiling at the guards, and muttering some remarks to one of the male passengers. It was obvious he was saying something like “Every bloody day, every bloody day…”. They searched the bus hold and all the luggage racks above our heads, and even the engine compartment. The bus runs every day except Sunday, so I could understand where the driver was coming from! Once we pulled away from the border I snoozed until we reached Kaliningrad – DXFC #120. I was ahead of schedule when the driver dropped me (and a few other passengers), as arranged, at the railway station.
It’s an unusual fact in Russia, but all trains run on Moscow time, and the clocks in all the railway stations display Moscow time. As I was in Kaliningrad I was one hour behind Moscow time. I was heading for Minsk, my train was due to depart at 1541 local time and it was now 1230. I had tried to buy a ticket for this train from a company who proclaimed on their web site to be able to supply tickets for any Russian train. Any, it turned out, except the one I wanted. They took my money though. It took me nearly a month to get it back. So now I had three hours to buy my ticket – lots of time!! I set about finding out which sales window was the right one. There were about 25 in this part of the station, with others in other parts. The station was huge. I just had to ask people until someone understood what I wanted – “Is this the line for the Minsk/Moscow train?” Thankfully it turned out that the first queue I had joined happened to be the right one. Unfortunately I then spent the next two hours and ten minutes waiting for the fourteen people in front of me to get served. This was a wonderful introduction to queuing Russian-style. It did however, take me to the limit of my patience at times. People would appear from nowhere and simply join the queue in front of me! I really couldn’t handle this. Nobody jumps in front of me in a queue! I kept my cool, and began to realise that these people were already ‘in’ the queue, but had left to attend to some business, and then rejoined the queue. There were about 25 windows with queues of similar length, moving at a similar snail’s pace, and there was a constant interchange of people – some going to the toilet, some going for a coffee, some going for a smoke. It was incredible, and few words were spoken – each person knew what was going on (except me!). Of course, being a Brit, I wasn’t going to leave my place in the queue, so I stoically held out until I reached the window, by which time I was suffering from permanent disfigurement of the spine, and dehydration. As it turned out the lady went for her tea break just before serving the person in front of me. Judging by the (non-) reaction of the queuers this was normal practice and I then realised that the remark she had shouted out the window at the queue a few minutes before had told them of this. They (and I) continued to wait. The sale of a railway ticket is a serious business in Russia; a cash transaction, which is documented on a computer system so old, it obviously cannot be trusted, so each input is also hand written on a form. It used a dot matrix printer, and IT support had to be called twice during the time I queued. Another support person was called because the device used to communicate with the lady through the glass had failed and she could not hear what the customer was saying, and vice versa. It turned out that the volume control had been turned down – strangely this control was on the customer’s side of the glass. I shall never complain about the service at Montrose station ever again.
It was only through good luck that I had sufficient funds to cover the railway ticket really. I had no exact idea what it would cost (although I knew what I had been charged to try to buy it on-line!). If I had not had sufficient funds when I reached the window what would have happened? I dread to think. To the Gulag…? In my plan this was the only point-of-no-return, but it came so close. Once I received my ticket I worked out which platform I needed, and sat in the sunshine and tried to wind down until we were allowed to board. It was plain sailing from now on.
The train left on time (as all Russian trains do) and soon I was getting to know my fellow passenger – not for the first time I was sharing a cabin with a woman. It seems to be the way in Russia. She had been visiting her son and daughter and was returning to Smolensk. When I went to the restaurant car (yes, a restaurant car on a Russian train!) to have a meal she appeared later and joined me, ordered some vodka (it looked like a small carafe of water!) and proceeded to show me how vodka should be drank. They don’t mess about! When the train stopped in Vilnius I stepped out on to the platform. Two feet on the ground in Lithuania is all I needed for DXFC #121! After a few beers (and the vodka) I was able to get some sleep in my bunk, and at 0258 (local time!) arrived in Minsk, feeling a little worse than I had planned.
It was damp and cold when I got out of the rain in Minsk and made my way to the exit. There were more people around than I’d have expected at three in the morning, and there was a small queue of taxis in the rank outside on the street. I simply took the first driver that looked up and said ‘airport’ knowing that that would be enough to make myself understood. I then showed him my Russian money, because I had no Belarus cash, and if I needed it I was going to have to search out the cash machine. My VirtualTourist research had shown that there was a machine on the second floor (the 1st floor in UK terminology) of the railway station, and I had seen the staircase as I’d left. He was happy with my Russian cash and as it turned out took a lot less than I’d expected. I have to confess that the drive to the airport had me a little concerned when, after about 25 minutes we were still driving through a forest and he was turning down roads that had no signposts, let alone a nice picture of an aeroplane silhouette! However, the road began to open out, and in the distance I could see the tails of parked aircraft and a few buildings in the misty darkness. The airport is modern and big (aren’t they all?) and had a smattering of people (mostly back-packers) wandering around. As I had about 4 hours before my flight I found a set of three empty seats and got my head down. I actually slept for a bit too. It was my 56th birthday and I was in Belarus – a new DXFC for me – number 122. The check-in arrangement at Minsk airport is weird. Considering the enormity of the hall in the airport the actual entrance to the check-in area was through a single opaque glass door that was controlled by a gruff woman in a red uniform, and you only got through when she was ready to let you through, and not before! Once through your bags are searched and the usual security scan is made, then you proceed to a check-in desk. I was flying by Air Baltic to Riga, then onward to Moscow, and all went according to plan. My 19.3kg bag passed through without so much as a glance, checked in all the way through to Moscow. I had a wonderful caviar open sandwich and coffee for breakfast in the departure lounge, which probably cost me a fortune, but it was nice!
The Air Baltic flight to Riga was reasonably busy, as was the subsequent one to Moscow. I had a 3-hour layover in Riga (DXFC # 123) but could do nothing other than hang around the airport waiting to leave. I arrived in a hot and sultry Moscow on time and looking forward to a shower and shave!
Sadly my shower and shave were going to have to wait, as no one sporting the WRTC 2010 banner was present at the gate when I arrived (as had been advised). I waited for about half an hour, fending off taxi drivers every 20 seconds, who seemed to think that although I didn’t want a taxi a minute ago, I might have changed my mind and want one now! I thought through the options. I had forgotten to write down the number of Victor, the WRTC transport coordinator. For some reason I had thought that if it was in my email, and I had my laptop with me, I would be able to get to it if I really needed it. So no I had to dig out my laptop, and try to connect to a WiFi hotspot. I thought this would be easy. How wrong. In order to connect to the WiFi you had to send a text message to a 5 digit number and you would get an access code in reply, and your mobile account would be debited with the access charge. I tried, but of course a UK Orange mobile in Moscow will not be sending a 5 digit text code anywhere. Next ploy – I could use my UK Vodaphone dongle and get access to the internet through a telecom provider – might be expensive, but this was becoming an emergency. This almost worked, but for the fact that I believe my entire credit was absorbed in the first screen that I opened! Great. I decided to call someone in the UK and get him to check the WRTC reflector and give me Victor’s number from that. Of course! I’ll call Roger G3SXW, who I knew wasn’t going to Moscow. Sadly he was in the supermarket and the battery on my phone was now below zero – and beeping alarmingly. Now I was getting desperate. I was at the opposite end of Moscow, and had no idea how much a taxi was going to cost for the 2 hour plus trip to the Atlas Park Hotel and my phone was about to expire. Then I remembered that there is a train service between the airports. And then Roger came up with an option – he gave me the numbers of Andy UA3AB and Harry RA3AUU. I called Andy and his phone went to answer-phone, I called Harry and it was engaged. I tried again and again it was engaged. He was a busy guy – he also didn’t need me bothering him with my transportation problems! I took a seat in the coffee bar and tried Harry again. He answered, thank goodness, and at last I got Victor’s number. I called Victor, and he quickly established that I was in the wrong terminal – well, they were in the wrong terminal. As he was telling me to stay put and someone would arrive, my phone went dead. Boy that was close!
And sure enough, about 20 minutes later a chap arrived (with a WRTC 2010 banner!) and he ushered me off through the horde of eager taxi drivers, to a smart air-conditioned car. We circled the airport to get back to the other terminal, and picked up Marios 5B4WN and Stavros 5B4AFM, who were just exiting the arrival hall as we arrived. We greeted each other and began to load the suitcases into the car – this took some time, and a little lateral thinking – these guys had a lot of luggage! Eventually we left the airport and joined a major highway, the Moscow outer ring road, and for a little while we cruised along at reasonable speed - that is until we hit the Moscow evening rush hour. And then we sat in an enormous jam for over an hour. It must have taken nearly three hours to get to the hotel. On arriving I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the hotel, and its quiet country location. I checked in and joined the queue at the WRTC desk to be issued with my pack, my tea shirt and baseball cap. It was good to see lots of familiar faces, and soon the bar and reception area was buzzing with groups of WRTC’ers.
So, I all in all, I had had a fun trip en route to WRTC 2010 with only one stressful event, and five new DXFCs in the bag!
Stewart Cooper GM4AFF