Adventures in France

I left Salt Lake City on Saturday at 4:45 p.m. on Air France, and had one of the great travel adventures of my life. The plane was completely booked. There was not a single free seat on the plane. In fact, our takeoff was delayed for about a half an hour while the captain plead for four passengers to come forward and volunteer to leave the flight and take another one Sunday and a $600 Delta credit. Presently four older gentlemen left, and we were underway. I found that my seat was in the center of the center aisle the second row from the back, near the galley. I was surrounded by what appeared to me to be a Danish or Norwegian ski team—they were speaking some Germanic language (but not German or Dutch) in any event. I had previously set my watch by Kyiv time, and tried to sleep shortly after dinner. I succeeded in getting three or four good hours of sleep. I essentially hunkered down in the midst of my Norse sports team and slept.

All went well as we proceeded across the Atlantic, over Greenland, Iceland, Ireland and England and we had made up all the time we had lost in Salt Lake City on the ground. However, as we crossed the English Channel and flew towards Paris, heavy winds picked up and the pilot instructed the flight attendantds to buckle up. We then went through the wildest flight I have ever experienced. The plane was thrown around like a rag doll, up and down, side to side. The thing creaked and banged, and everyone held their collective breath. I was actually starting to feel a little quesy, and I noticed a similar reaction from other passengers. It got progressively worse, and as we descended the last hundred feet toward the runway, we were being thrown around so violently that I feared a crash. The pilot put the plane down, and the passengers burst into spontaneous applause.

That was just the beginning of the adventures. Next, we taxied to the terminal, but the pilot soon announced that due to winds of 75 to 100 miles per hour, the airport had instructed that it would be unsafe to connect the gangway to the plane. So we sat just outside the terminal for about an hour and a half, the plane shaking violently in the wind. Meanwhile I was alarmed as the time to board my connecting flight to Kyiv came and went. Finally, about five minutes after the scheduled takeoff of my Air France flight to Kyiv, we were given the go ahead to leave the plane. I ran down a long hallway of moving conveyers to the nearest information board, which must have been a quarter of a mile away. There I noticed that the Air France flight to Kyiv was also delayed for a few minutes due to bad weather. I found out the gate and terminal numbers and followed an endless stream of signs. Presently the signes brought me up several levels to a high speed tram station! I boarded the tram and then exited at yet another maze of walkways leading to my departure gate. And there I waited as the departure was pushed back again and again. Finally, about two hours after the original departure time, we were allowed to pass through the boarding station—

But the adventure isn’t over—instead of walking directly out to a plane, we were shown a staircase, which went directly down onto the tarmac, where we were placed in a waiting bus (with no seats). It was freezing, with high winds and blowing snow, and the doors were kept open at least twenty minutes while all of the Kyiv-bound passengers boarded. Then, we drove around the mammoth airport for about twenty minutes—and parked, with the engine running for another ten or twenty minutes. Finally, they opened the bus doors and we were ushered to a little cement tower with about six flights of stairs, which we climbed, luggage and all, and were then ushered into a plane! It was bizarre! But, I am now safely seated in my Air France flight to Kyiv. I hope the rest of the journey is completed without incident.

Travels with Yuri

After I breezed through customs, I passed up a nondescript staircase and hallway into a large lobby packed with people thronging a long roped off walkway, waiting for friends or family to get through customs. I ran the gamut of several hundred people, and presently saw a pleasant looking and very slender man in a leather jacket holding up a sign which read, "Dan Gibbons."

He introduced himself as Yuri Dregolas, (it rhymes with "Legolas," and actually now that I think about it, he kind of looks like a Russian battle elf) and lead me to his late model five speed car in which he drove me the twenty or thirty kilometers into downtown Kyiv, all the while keeping up a cheerful chatter in very good English. He is the son of a scientist, and attended an advanced English speaking school from a very young age, being trained to be a translator. He now works frequently for the property manager from whom the Institute has rented our apartment. On the card he left me, he wrote, "Taxi Driver."

The traffic in Kyiv is OUT OF CONTROL. The flow from the airport was easily 130 to 140 kilometers per hour. In town the traffic was horrendous, and most remarkable by the apparent disregard of all traffic regulations by all drivers. Constant merging, tailgating, driving on the wrong side of the road, driving up and over curbs, driving on sidewalks. But everyone seemed pleasant and amazingly courteous.

On the way into town Yuri played the accomodating tour guide, commenting on Soviet era cars and brand new Lexuses, on the landscape, on the tax laws, on the recent elections, and on the wide variety of buildings. He pointed with especial pride at the "skyscrapers" under construction.

Kyiv is much larger and busier than I ever imagined. Having lived in Europe during my mission, its older neighborhood have a strong European feeling, but there is also a dilapidated, Soviet style decreptitude about other neighborhoods that is very striking. The people appear to be very attractive, happy and positive.

Yuri took me right to our apartment, and upstairs, where we met a girl who had just finished cleaning. (More about the apartment later). I have already arranged for Yuri to drive me back to the airport on November 24th.

From the balcony of the apartment I can see Leo Tolstoy square, one of the main traffic intersections of the city. There is a large, and beautifully renovated building directly across the street, the bottom two floors of which house a glassed-in McDonalds. In front of this building I count this evening easily 40 cars parked on the sidewalk, and there has been a constant din of honking horns (not annoying, but rather oddly pleasant--like Gershwin's "An American in Paris," Annie) all evening.

Vienna to Kyiv

From the time I deboarded the Delta flight from Atlanta in Vienna, I had only about 40 minutes to check in to Austrian Airways, race through the Austrian passport check, and then almost run all the way to the other side of the airport for my flight to Kyiv. As it was, I was about the last one to arrive.

The flight was very interesting, with announcements made by the flight crew in German, Russian and English. Also, they passed out newspapers in both German and Ukrainian. The flight was short, only about 90 minutes, and much of that was spent filling out the Ukrainian "Immigration Card." As we broke the cloud cover and saw the countryside around the airport for the first time, it really struck me that we were here. I have dreamed of this day for thirty years.

The Kyiv Airport is an older building with a very institutional Soviet-era feeling about it. There is no extending gate which would enable the passengers to walk right into the concourse. Instead, we had to walk down an open stairway some considerable distance out on the tarmac (at least two football fields away from the building), and then board a bus without seats (only overhead and side rails to hold onto) in which we were driven to the concourse. We then enter the building past some sinister looking guys in leather coats and radios through a staircase entrance, and go through a maze of passport and customs stations, all manned by uniformed guards. Before customs, there are carousels where the luggage is being disgorged from the arriving plane. I waited for about fifteen minutes, when a woman in a red uniform walked through the throng calling, "Gibbons, Gibbons!" It turns out she was from the airline, and had learned that my suitcase did not make it to the plane in Vienna (unlike me) but would come later tonight. She then rapidly filled out three or four forms, had me sign them and literally walked me through customs, without the slightest by-your-leave from the uniformed guard there. So, I got through customs in about thirty seconds. That may be why I look so happy in this picture taken in front of the airport by my driver. (More about that later). I had been dreading customs more than anything, and it was over like that.

The down side is that I will have to stay awake tonight until ten o'clock or later waiting for my suitcase.

Now I am especially glad that I carried on all of my clothes. I do worry, however, that my incentive gifts for my students will be lost somewhere in central or eastern Europe.