It has been a mixed up, crazy, but excitingly confusing past few days for me. Lemme cut to the chase right away. I am in Bogota, Colombia. No, not Moscow, Russia…Bogota. From Moscow turn left when you get to Spain, go south for about 6 hours, then hang a right over French west Africa. Or, better yet, as my itinerary went – go from Moscow to Prague, Prague to Paris, Paris to Newark (have lunch with your sister at Chili’s during your three hour layover in Newark Liberty International) and then take a direct five and half hour flight from Newark to Bogota. Why am here when I was preparing to be in Moscow for about 3 months? Beats me. My best attempt to answer that is that on Thursday night my boss tells me that there has been some reshuffling of teams in the field and that an immediate spot opened up on the team that just started a project in Bogota. Not that she asked me if I wanted to go. It was more like, “you’re going to Colombia tomorrow.” But imagining that I were given the choice I would have said “hhmmm….lemme think about that. As dynamic a city as Moscow is and as comfortable as I am with my routine here of fighting thru the most crowded metro in the world and passing the babushkas on my walk to the office selling everything from fresh garlic to dancing Santa Claus dolls, I will go out on a limb and agree to being transferred to South America where the closest thing I have to snow are the peaks of the Andes mountains surrounding the city.” Yeah, I think that would have been my response.
So the Russian experience has come and gone and I am now back in South America where I actually started the year off. The snow and 20 degree weather of Moscow is but a memory and have been replaced by longer days, sunny skies, and constant 70 degree weather. Bogota, according to Wiki, is the third highest-major city in the world after La Paz and Quito, being situated right in the Andes mountains. So while in a country that sits in Caribbean South America shares a massive region of the tropics with Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela, the weather here in the capital is spring-like year round.
The process getting here was a mess. Friday was one of the most chaotic and haphazard travel experiences of my life. If anyone recalls my arrival story the first time I went to Brazil in 2007 when on my first night I ended up sleeping at a Japanese-Brazilian woman’s house with 7 cats who I met on the plane because of closed airports, canceled flights, and overbooked hotels, Friday rivaled that experience in terms of the number of times I found myself reflecting on just how fu**ed I could possibly be.
Right off the bat I admit that I am not the best at traveling lightly. I carry with me on my treks a big suitcase, a little suitcase, and my backpack. With those three things it’s tough to take the metro to the train station to catch the train to the airport. With the snow in Moscow mixed with the massive massive massive metro crowds it’s far from ideal to take the metro. It will cost you more, but you pay for the peace of mind by calling a cab and being driven directly to the station….so I thought. I left with plenty of time to allow for traffic but the traffic the day I left was insane. Every corner we rounded turned into a parking lot. Add to that, my cab driver basically looked me in the eyes and told me that he was going to screw me over ten ways from Tuesday. He didn’t speak a word of English and me no Russian. There were definitely times when he was driving around in circles to run up the meter. The complete asymmetry of information is like going to a mechanic. They make up things that your car needs and before you know it you’re sitting on a $2,000 invoice. Same deal with the cab driver. I got in the cab at 2:30 and wanted to be on a 3:30 or 4pm train at the latest. But with the traffic and circuitous rout, I was still sitting in the cab at 4:10. Mind you, I am not being driven to the airport, just to the commuter rail station about five miles away. Paranoia had me freaking out that I would miss my train to the airport, therefore miss my flight, and get fired from my job. Miraculously, a large stretch of the road opened up and I arrived at the station at 4:15 with 15 minutes before the next train left. That would get me to the airport at 5pm for a 6:45 international flight. Not ideal, but doable.
Survive and advance.
Having used up the last of my rubles to pay for the cab, I get to the train station and go to pay for my ticket with the same checkcard that I have been using since day 1 in Moscow. Transaction denied. *Gulp* Try with my credit card. Transaction denied. Yikes. I go to the ATM to withdraw cash using my checkcard. Transaction cannot be completed at this time. Holy sh**. The panic button is not only pressed, but the alarm bells are sounding and the sirens are in full swing. I play charades with the info desk people smiling in order to charm but begging inside so as to not cry and explain to them that I have an urgent flight to catch. Please let me on the train. The guy is real nice and in his broken English tells me “Go on train….pay at airport…is OK.” The words “pay at airport” worried me. I don’t blame the guy for not understanding my English when I told him that my bank’s system is acting up and I do not have access to my funds at the moment. So based on the denied transactions I could not conceivably pay upon arrival at the airport. Whatever, he at least said, “it’s OK, get on the train.” So working with that momentum I thanked him profusely and got on the train.
Survive and advance.
I am now on the train to the airport running a little behind schedule with no access to my money and worried that there will be a guard waiting at the other end of the line at the airport demanding payment that I cannot make. It is 4:45 pm Moscow time so 8:45 am EST. Hoping that my mother would still be home, I call NJ and explain the situation to my mom. I give her all my bank info and ask her to kindly call Bank of America and inquire why now of all times my checkcard is not working when the bank has been fully informed of my travel plans, there is money in my account, and I have been using the same card all throughout France, Germany, and Russia. I know full well that the bank will most likely not give her any info since it is not her account, but it can’t hurt to ask.
I hang up the phone and take a deep breath when the gentleman sitting next to me who I almost knocked into with my backpack sitting down taps me on the shoulder and asks me in English a question about the terminals and if the terminal we are arriving at is the same one for international departures. He has a trace of an American accent with a funny twist to it. I couldn’t pinpoint where it was from. I ask him whereabouts he hails from and he says “Brazil.” Oh really? What a coincidence. I’ve lived in Brazil on two separate occasions. He’s an interesting guy. He works for the Brazilian embassy in Beijing where he has been living for the past two years and was on his way back to China after vacationing 10 days in Moscow. We chat for about 20 minutes about Brazil, China, Russia, Colombia, and Newark as it is the Portuguese and Brazilian capital of the northeast. Then it dawns on me. In my desperate hour I need to check pride at the door and lay it out on the line. I turn to him and say “excuse me, Ben, this is extremely embarrassing for me…..” I explain the situation with the bank card and having to schmooze my way on to the train and what/who awaits me at the end of the line. He did notice that I was whispering bank info on the phone in English which is why he engaged me in the first place. “Can I please borrow 250 rubles (a little less than $10)??? I say borrow because I will mail cash to the Brazilian embassy in China once I get to Colombia.” He says “yeah no problem. If there is someone waiting there, no problem. If not, I’ll treat you to a cup of coffee at the least. You look like you need it.”
We get to the airport and nothing happens. There is a hoard of people filing out of the train and no one says anything to me. But 10 seconds after thinking I am in the clear a guy in a uniform comes up to me and saying I have to pay and escorts me to the ticket window. Oh boy, so Ben the Brazilian helps me out in a bind and I thank him til the end of time. My God, this guy had to have been a guardian angel. There I was in the middle of Moscow not speaking the language with no access to my money and being demanded payment upon arrival at the airport which I could not make at the moment.
Survive and advance.
5:30pm I get to the check-in counter and give my information to Svetlana for my 6:45pm flight. Svetlana asks me what I am doing here now when my flight from Moscow to Prague is on Tuesday December 22. “Ah, Svetlana, I see the confusion. Before my Colombia plans the 22nd was my original flight out of Moscow. My company has since replaced the reservation and booked me on the flight tonight out of Moscow. I was told to use this same ticket number for the altered flight.” Svetlana tells me that no such confirmation of my flight out of Moscow for tonight exists. There is a pending reservation but that the purchase has not been confirmed by the airlines yet. OH…MY….GOD. Blood pressure rises again. I call my Moscow office and ask them to call the Paris office who made the reservation so that Paris can call me. I get on the phone with Camille from Paris and explain the situation. She jumps on the phone with the airline. 35 minutes I am standing there waiting to find out if I am stranded in Russia with no access to my money and little to no cell phone credit having just called the US. Or, if I am continuing with things as planned and will be in Colombia by Saturday night. Camille gets back to me and says that good ol Czech airlines never updated the system to confirm the revised and purchased itinerary. Go back to the counter and the system should be updated. Indeed, it was. Thank God. I get my boarding pass and it is now 6:05, the official boarding time for my 6:35 flight. I politely ask to cut people in the passport check line and finally have only security to clear. For the first time in my travels I come across at security a procedure where you not only have to take your shoes off, but you have to put these weird, annoying to open sock-shaped plastic bags on your feet. It was just an annoying extra step when time was already not on my side. I get to the gate and board the plane with just enough time to spare.
Survive and advance.
We are delayed 30-35 minutes on the runway. Therefore, when we get to Prague my layover has been reduced to only 40 minutes during which I must go to the next terminal, clear customs as I am now entering the EU, and pass security again in order to catch my connection to Paris. I had time, but I still had to quicken my pace. I arrive at the gate, board the flight and then get a paranoia attack that my luggage didn’t move as fast as me from one flight to the next. If my luggage did not make it onto my plane in the brief 40 minute transfer then I am in a world of trouble. It would arrive in Paris on a Saturday morning with no one to claim it as I will be on an early morning flight to Newark. I arrive in Paris and hold my breath waiting, praying, begging that my luggage made it. SUCCESS, it did! I am now in Paris all in one piece with all luggage in hand.
Survive and advance.
At my hotel I manage to call Bank of America and ask them what went on with my card???? They had no clue. They confirmed that my card is completely open, active, and usable with all the necessary travel warnings and what’s even weirder is that they saw no activity of any denied transactions earlier in the day. Eeerry, creepy, and weird.
The next day (Saturday morning) I fly to Newark and meet up with my sister for lunch during my brief layover. It was bizarre to be so in transit but so close to home. The flight from Newark to Bogota was shorter than Paris to Newark. My buddy Camilo from my study abroad Barcelona program picked me up at the airport and by half past midnight we were enjoying microbrews under the stars of a Bogota night. I haven’t seen that much of the city yet but so far of the little I have seen, I am impressed. The city is a lot more calm, organized, and CLEANER than what I was expecting for a developing country metropolis. Even better, you can drink the tap water! I head back to the US again next week for Christmas break so this current trip is short, sweet, and just whetting my appetite for what’s to come after New Years when I return. This posting is long enough so I’ll cut it here and issue the usual entry which analyzes my thoughts and reactions to the city in the next few days. But safe to say, crazy as the travel was, I am in my new temporary Bogatano home in one piece!
Me and Camilo
Co-workers Mary the Mexican on left. Jessica the French-Portuguese on right
Jessica taking a shot of aguardiente in the street
View from my balcony
Good night and good luck: what a travel day from hell, 17 hour flight, and partying til 8am do to you
