Well, I made it to Russia in one piece. My flights were good… although, I was reminded again why I don’t like the O’hare airport. It took one hour to get through the Security line for my international flight, and then we sat on the runway for one hour before we could actually take off. The flight to Poland was pretty uneventful, although lots of people tried to speak Polish to me, and I have no idea what they were saying. It did make me happy because I guess, I must not scream American! I must’ve slept for awhile on the flight, which was really good.. and also means that there’s a first time for everything!
Our flight made it to Warsaw on time, and then I had to wait in another security line to get to the gate to fly to Kaliningrad. By the time I got to the gate, I didn’t have much time to spare, so I went ahead and figured out possible registrations for the competition. As we were waiting to board the bus to take us to our plane (it was one of those like famous people use- that you have to walk up the steps to- bad explanation but that’s all I can come up with right now!), I stuck up a conversation with guy who spoke English. Turns out, he graduated from Ohio State and is coming to Kaliningrad on a Fulbright to teach at the University here. So, on the bus, we had a nice conversation about football. The flight to Kaliningrad was short and sweet, and I was afraid we were going to land in the Baltic sea, but we didn’t. It was nice to have my Ohio friend to go through passport control with once we got here.. after my visa saga, I wasn’t sure what this would be like. I made it through passport control just fine, and found a wonderful girl named Alex holding a sign “organ competition” so I knew she was there for me. She had a friend with her that likes to get pictures with famous people, so she wanted her picture taken with me…. So that was really funny. We got in a car and came to the hotel where I had a few hours to spare before my only practice time of two hours.
I then decided to go over to the mall and wander around, and try to find free wifi. It was at about that point that I started to feel like an alien or something. I don’t look too different than people here.. but there’s not a lot of people that speak good English. My dinner last night was an adventure- at the food court there were various McDonald like options, and a little pizza restaurant whose name was written in pink letters.. so because of that I decided on going there. The first thing I asked was if anyone spoke English, and the host shook her head, but got me a waitress that could speak a little English… so, they brought the menu and luckily there were lots of pictures. I’m still not sure what I had to eat.. but, it was a “trio” pizza. It wasn’t bad- whew!
Then my assistant Alex came to the hotel and met me, and we went to the Philharmonic hall for my practice time. We took a bus to get closer, and then walked quite aways. I’m glad I was sort of with it last night to have a fairly productive practice session. The action is fairly heavy (for the non organists- that means that it’s harder to push down the keys), and it’s just an interesting situation. We will see how this all goes. Typically, unpredictable events like this freak me out, but I still feel confident in the music, and things will hopefully go well. Her dad came and picked us up and brought us back to the hotel.
When I got back to the hotel, I met up with Simon and Nicole, who are the other competitors from the U.S. and also know English- yay! Simon is also from KU. So, we went out for coffee/food/whatever. There’s a cute little place really close to our hotel with free wi-fi and last night after looking at the menu and wanting to point to stuff, she asked if we wanted an English menu- so there’s hope! Yay!
Last night I slept really well.. even with cars driving by, and people partying and my window open (highly unusual for me). This morning, Simon and I walked down to two more malls, and experienced McDonalds for lunch. Other than everything being in Russian, it wasn’t much different than the U.S. I’m now hanging out at the hotel for a while.. before my next adventure- which is venturing to this restaurant called “Titanic” that apparently has some of the best Russian food in the area.. we’ll see. I haven’t seen street names here, yet, so hopefully Simon’s map he drew will make it easy to get there.
Stay tuned for the next installment of my adventures in Russia! I’m guessing I’m going to have lots of stories to tell when I get home!
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