I prepared for the trip without to much anticipation. I don't think that the whole thing seemed real to me. I know that I didn't realise the gravity of what I was about to face living away from home for the first time. In addition, it wasn't as if I was just moving out or going to a different city, I would have no option to go home for a long weekend or for them to come and visit me. I was going to a different continent and would be living in a foreign country for 4 months. Fortunately, as it turned out, I actually over-prepared for the trip in many regards. I must say that Dalhousie's booklet was excellent in this regard. I think much of this was due to the material being somewhat out of date in some respects (although for Russia this goes without saying). The booklet really gave the impression that finding common items would be a completely random while there, and not to be relied upon.
Because of this material, I packed a large amount of stuff. I started "packing" for the trip just around after christmas. I didn't actually pack my bags at that time but I got a box together where I threw anything I thought I might need into. However, as can be imagined, over a month of doing this, you get a large pile of stuff to go through (none of this stuff was clothes either). I somehow managed to stuff most of this into a large internal frame backpack, my suitcase, and my carry-on bag. A lot of the stuff I took was really basic stuff like food, dishes, and toilet paper. In retrospect, I really didn't need any of it though it was handy to have. Once I got there, I told a lot of people that I only brought the food because my mother had bought it for me, so each food item I brought was one less meal I had to pay for (this was pretty much true).
When I got to the airport I had a good shock though, my carry-on bag was too big. It didn't fit in the box thing they use to determine if your bag is the right size. I wasn't the only one in this predicament either though. Leanne, as it turns out, also had a bag that was too big. She was really in a state worried about what she was going to do (we had both already checked our other luggage so we didn't have any option to jam anything else in our luggage (not that I'd have had the room). Luckily, I had my backpack in my carry-on bag. I had thought that I was only allowed one piece of carry-on so I hadn't used it but I wanted it for a day-pack and for carrying my school stuff. I also had my camera bag in the carry-on as well (I didn't dare check it). Now if you're ever in a situation where you're thinking of packing one bag inside another, take my advice and don't do it. You'll waste so much space it's not funny. Anyways, by removing these 2 bags out I was able to get my carry-on bag to fit in the box, and it turned out I was allowed 2 items if they both fit in the box. As it turned out my camera bag fit in the box too so I was set. I loaned my backpack to Leanne who was able to re-pack her things into the two bags and get that to work as well.
After the luggage "crisis" was handled we were all able to relax a bit more and enjoy the bit of time we had before I had to leave. I would definitely say that my family was far more excited about the whole thing than I was. It's not that I was worried or anything, just that I didn't seem real to me. Of course, that's the worse thing about doing anything like this is that your friends and family don't really help you out any with this. Asking someone if they're excited to go usually only gets them more excited, which doesn't do you any good while you're still waiting to go. I remained calm throughout the whole wait for my flight to leave. To this day, I'm not sure if I had already accepted and prepared for what I was going to do or if I was in denial. Considering that most people don't realise that they are in denial, it's difficult for me to be able to say for certain.
So my departure from Halifax was pretty easy. On arriving in Toronto (for a 6 hour lay-over, ugh) I found myself in the middle of another "luggage crisis". It turned out that about half of us were told that our luggage would be checked right through in Toronto and that we wouldn't see it again until we arrived in St. Petersburg. The other half weren't told anything about the luggage being checked through and their luggage was only tagged as going to Toronto (whereas mine and the other bunch had tags for Toronto, Frankfurt, and St. Petersburg). At first we just tossed this up to different people at the ticket booths. Our Toronto leg was on one ticket and the rest was on the next page (basically, the ticket was really Halifax to Toronto round trip, and Toronto to St. Petersburg round-trip) so we just figured that they hadn't checked that on their tickets and we were lucky. When we go to Toronto we found out how "lucky" we really were. Those that had their baggage just checked to Toronto picked up their luggage and we made our way to the Lufthansa booth to get our boarding passes. When we got there the people asked us why some of us didn't have any luggage other than our carry-on. We told them what we had been told, that it would be checked through. They told us that this wasn't the case as Canadian (who we had flown with to Toronto) didn't have any agreements with Lufthansa so the luggage wouldn't be transferred.
Now we of course, were now with the question of where our luggage was. Add to this the fact that it was now at least half an hour since we had arrived and we became very concerned. We were told to make our way to the transfer luggage station and pick up our bags there. When we got there though our bags weren't there. The person there was completely useless, he wasn't sure where our bags were or even if they'd already been dropped off. His answer to if the bags could have been stolen was just that it wouldn't happen because he was there keeping an eye on things. How he actually knew who's bag was who's is still a mystery (he basically explained that people don't take other people's bags, yeah right). So he started doing some calling to the people that are contracted to transfer the luggage. But of course, no one there was answering, which really helped out the whole thing. We waited and waited and our bags never showed up. Eventually, we somehow managed to track down that what wasn't supposed to happen had, someone actually saw that the bags were supposed to go to Frankfurt and actually put them with that flight's baggage. This of course took at least 3 to 4 hours to find out and I can't remember if it was the useless transfer luggage guy or the nice Lufthansa guys who actually figured this out in the end. If anyone ever tells me that they've lost luggage in the Toronto airport I will not be surprised as they seem to be completely incapable of tracking it. The more I think about it, it must have been the Lufthansa guys that figured it out as we actually believed it when we heard it had been transferred (at least to a certain extent), if the transfer luggage guy had told us this I don't think we would have been to reassured (anybody who works in an airport and tries to tell you that bags don't get stolen doesn't come across with a whole lot of credibility).
After "luggage crisis 2" was over we actually got a chance to meet up with the rest of the people. It was nice to get a change to get the rest of the group together. We were a pretty tight group before and only 5 of us had left from Halifax (Laura, Lori, Leanne, Anne, and Me) plus David. So in Toronto we met up with Steve, Jay, Denise, and Ten (Natalie had left for St. Petersburg in the beginning of January and Bill and Rob were to meet up with us in Frankfurt). In addition to the people I had already met, 3 more people were just joining the group at this time (having studied at a different university first term). These included Bella, Gisela, and Ursula. I didn't really get a chance to meet any of them then so my impressions will wait until later. We were also missing 2 people it turned out. David tried having them called to the desk and what-not but they were nowhere to be found.
The flight to Frankfurt was the usual long and boring overseas flight. Laura managed to get pretty drunk on the complimentary drinks. At one point, when the attendant asked her if she wanted fish or chicken she replied with, "scotch" (obviously being a bit too drunk to really understand the question and she just assumed it was the drink tray again).
To no great surprise, we arrived late in Frankfurt, which turned our short 1 hr lay-over into a really rushed dash to make our flight. The flight from Frankfurt to St. Petersburg was quite strange. It started off with probably the quickest take-off and ascent I've ever experienced, it seemed as if the pilot just gunned the engine and took us up a quickly as possible. We were all pretty worn out at this point as we had been in transit for almost 24 hours by this point. The plane was very empty and most of us had room to stretch across a whole aisle if we wanted too. Another strange fact was that it was a smoking flight. I think that I'd been on a few smoking flights when I was really young but I haven't since then. It seemed strange to actually be on flight that allowed smoking.
If the take-off was fast then the descent can only be described as a plummet. There was none of the usual circling that you get, we just started to go down, quickly. I got a bit of a chance to see Petersburg but all I could really see was some factories and such, we got down too fast to really get any idea about the city.
Once we landed we got our first experience with a faceless Russian bureaucrat at the passport control. You handed her your passport and visa, she'd quickly glance at you and then stamp your passport and visa. Her rythymn never changed. She wouldn't say anything to you and you wouldn't say anything to her. You got the impression that the only reason she would speak to you would be if there was some kind of problem. So you wouldn't cause "trouble" and actually say anything to her, not even "thanks".
At this point we were all pretty dead and just wanted to get our stuff and head to the dorm. That's when the third luggage crisis hit. To be precise, some of us were missing our luggage. We waited to see if another load was coming, but no more bags came. We of course, immediately feared that the people in Toronto had been wrong and our baggage was still sitting in the Toronto airport. Quickly we began looking for our luggage tags and trying to figure out what was going on. I was too exhausted to even try to speak Russian. Luckily, David took charge (as he should have), and began to try to track down what had happened. It turned out that our luggage had in fact made it to Frankfurt, but because we were late, some of our luggage didn't make it on the plane and wouldn't arrive until the next day.
We were then led into a small room to describe our luggage and give them the tags. I have to say that I was very impressed. In Toronto it took us hours of arguing with people and hassle to find out what had happened to our bags. In Russia, where we were expecting that kind of hassle, it took about 10 minutes for them to track down our baggage.