The Seige of Leningrad

Europe » Russia » Northwest » Saint Petersburg
August 7th 2006

Published: August 7th 2006

Edit Blog Post

Dr Jon

Party1

Here are some of the students I taught this summer. This picture is taken at our party, which was held at Ancient Rome restaurant.

Saturday was my last morning in Yerevan. I was dreaming that I was about to pull a sword out of a stone at some sort of Renaissance Faire. A bleating sheep made the faire seem more authentic, but when I woke up I could still hear the bleating. It took me a minute to realize I actually was awake and there actually was a bleating sheep three floors below my balcony.

Someone had tied a sheep by its hind foot to a tree outside my apartment building. Farm animals aren't a common sight in downtown Yerevan. (They graze on the main streets in Colombo, however.) Probably this sheep was waiting to be sacrificed. A few weeks ago I was surprised to learn that this is still practiced. Some churches even have a special area for it, with a killing table and a hose.

The night before my students threw a Thank you party for me. At first I thought it was going to be a grade grubbing fest, but it wasn't. It really was a sincere and touching gesture. The party was at Ancient Rome, a restaurant one might expect to find at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. We

Party2

Of professor Pearce, won't you please give me an A+? Okay.

sat at a long table and gave lots of toasts with vodka. They said they loved my lectures, that I was a good teacher, and that they learned a lot. A band croaked out Dave Brubeck and I danced with one of my students. I feel like I'm leaving them at a critical moment when they are just beginning to get philosophical about what they do.

Perhaps the sheep's bleating was particularly irritating because I was a little hung over from all the toasting. I needed coffee. But guess what, no gas! I had a lot to do, so I decided to hike up to the university, check my email, and then take the metro down to a nice cafe where I could get a decent cappuccino.

I got to the university but guess what, no Internet! I bumped into a student who told me that Armenia's main route to cyberspace, a thin, frayed wire that runs through Georgia, had been cut. Probably a vengeful sheep gnawed the damned thing in half. Armenia's back up connection is a curry spattered 28K modem in the basement of some Indian restaurant.

We checked a few Internet Cafes. The story

Party3

This picture is just to make my colleagues at SJSU jealous.

was the same everywhere. No Internet or gas for Armenia today.

+++++

The night before last the literary editor of Yerevan magazine asked me to come to her office for a photo shoot. I had written a short piece for them a few weeks ago and now they wanted a photo of me that they could put next to the article. When I got there I learned that they consider their magazine to be a fashion magazine, sort of like Vogue. The photographer took me outside and had me pose against a wall. She wanted me to do lots of poses.

"That's it, now turn your head to the left and throw your hair back. Good. Now give us the pouty face, mama's bad little boy. Good. Now give us a sexy look. Make love to the camera..."

I felt like a total idiot. Of course a big crowd gathered to watch.

+++++

The flight from Yerevan to St. Petersburg was mercifully uneventful. I was surprised. I had been dreading flying Armavia, Armenia's national airline. The day after I bought my ticket one of their planes crashed. In a panic I called my travel

party4

This one too.

agent and asked her if there were any other flights from Yerevan to Petersburg. She read off a list of Russian puddle jumpers. I asked her which one she would choose. "Are you kidding?" She exclaimed, "I wouldn't fly on any of them!"

A few nights ago Vahan, a friend of Jason and Liesel's who owns a successful travel agency, told me it was rumored the Armavia crash had been due to "passenger error." Apparently a little altercation between some passengers got out of hand and yadda, yadda, yadda, the pilot got shot! For some odd reason this made me feel better.

I especially needed reassuring because earlier that day I got a call from AUA saying I was to go at once to Armavia's office. There was a problem with my ticket. When I got there I found a woman behind the counter talking into two phones at the same time. There was a large crowd of unhappy looking people standing around her. The woman looked at my ticket. When there was a lull in her two phone conversations she asked where I had bought the ticket. I told her in the US. She rolled her eyes

party5

Socrates and his pupils.

knowingly. "There's a big problem," she said. I didn't quite catch the gist of the problem over the general hubbub. Either the ticket was too old, or the assigned seat didn't exist, or there was some problem with a number on the ticket. I sat calmly while she screamed in Armenian into her two phones. Her cell phone rang. She fished it out of her purse and was now screaming into three phones. Thirty minutes later she looked up and said the problem was fixed.

+++++

When we stepped off the plane into the bracing Baltic air the passenger behind me yelled "Oh Russia!" I was excited, too. During the plane trip I read an email sent by my friend, Adele. Her instructions were not to read it until I was in the air. Petersburg is her favorite city. The letter read like a travel guide written by a poet and whetted my appetite to meet this Peter character she loved so much.

There was a mad dash for Passport Control, lots of cutting in line. There must be some subtle tipping point in people's minds when a line ceases to become a line and becomes a

My home

My home in the Petersburg airport transit lounge.

mob instead. Some people must see mob sooner than others, and then it snowballs. When I got to the front of the line the clerk noticed that someone in the Russian embassy back in Yerevan had generously made me four days younger on my $350 visa that took a month to get. I never noticed. I didn't even realize they put your birth date on a visa. "It's a typo," I said to the clerk, "Anyway, what's the big deal?"

I could still hear those words hanging in the air as the immigration officers carried me away.

I found myself in a windowless room with a couple from Florida, Bill and Lynn. They had just returned to Petersburg to rejoin their tour group after a quick side trip to Paris. Apparently no one had ever explained to them the important distinction between single entry and multiple entry visas.

The man in charge explained that our situations were serious and that we would probably have to be deported back to where we came from. In Bill and Lynn's case this meant Paris. In my case it meant Yerevan. I asked if I could be deported to Paris? Nyet.

Let's to the Winter Palace

Ah, The Winter Palace.

To make matters worse, we would have to return on the airlines we came in on. Fortunately for Bill and Lynn there were several Air France flights per day to Paris. As far as I knew I had arrived on the weekly Armavia flight from Yerevan.

I asked if we could call the American Consulate in Petersburg. Nyet. There were no phones in the transit lounge where we would be confined.

I asked if we could hold on to our passports. Nyet. Our passports were being confiscated.

I asked if we could simply get new visas. The man in charge hesitated. He didn't think so. He said that tomorrow, at 11 AM, the Visa Service office in the airport would open and I could ask. It was 11 PM. The man in charge bid us farewell and went home. We looked around us. The transit lounge was empty and dark.

I counted my blessings. I had a granola bar, earplugs, and realizing early on in the crisis that the availability of water would become an issue, I had a half full bottle of drinking water I appropriated from the head man's desk when he wasn't looking.

Palace Square

A lot of Russian history played out in this plaza.

(Petersburg's tap water is notoriously lethal.) My situation could be worse. When Jason and Liesel were in the Peace Corps they went to India without visas. The got deported to Turkmenistan where they spent a week in the airport. To make matters worse the airport required people to sit upright in their seats. No lying down!

I chatted with Bill and Lynn for a while. They asked if I had a family. A son and daughter in San Francisco, I said, leaving the question of the wife hanging awkwardly in the air like a carcass twirling on a meat hook. I was beginning to feel like my life had turned into a cautionary tale. Perhaps I'm the Job of the Twenty First Century, I thought to myself, the wifeless husband who lives in a Russian airport. Bill and Lynn seemed like cardboard cutouts. After five minutes I could predict everything they were going to say.

At 3:30 in the morning some airport employee turned on the TV in the lounge full volume. It woke me up. I asked if he could turn it down. He glared at me malevolently without moving.

At 6:00 AM a woman in

Hermitage

This one's for Rudy.

a uniform woke me up and said, "Please get out." The airport was coming back to life.

At 7:00 AM I saw Bill and Lynn get escorted onto an Air France jet bound for Paris.

At 9:00 AM my patience and good will were finally depleted. I was tired and sweaty. I couldn't stop my mind from cycling through worst-case scenarios. I hated Russia. Adele could keep her stupid Peter. I felt like I would go insane if I had to spend another hour in the airport. Flights were departing for Berlin, Hanover, Düsseldorf, and Copenhagen. I would happily take any of them.

At 10:00 AM a whiff of hope mingled with the scent of stale cigarette smoke and jet fuel. The man in charge returned and said that when the Visa Service office opened at 11:00, they would fix my visa.

At 11:00 AM I realized that it was 10:00 AM. I had forgotten to set my watch back. Still one more hour to go.

At 11:00 AM Petersburg time a woman opened the Visa Service office and issued me a new visa free of charge. It took ten minutes.

At 12:20 PM