The Flight - Why not begin at the beginning?

When you fly in the United States, there are strict rules about what you can and cannot do on a flight. And if you cross onto the wrong side they let you know. And people listen. “Do not form a line by the bathroom.” “Take your seats.” Fasten your seatbelt.” “Your carryon is too large, you will have to check it at the gate.”

When a domestic airline flies to Russia the flight attendants are just trying to avoid major conflict and make it through the flight. The woman boarding the flight in front of me had, I think, five carryons including one stuffed shopping bag topped off with a globe. That’s right, a spherical representation of the planet. An odd sized carryon to say the least. (And I’m still confused as to why someone traveling from NYC back to Moscow would think this is a must-have. But whatever.) While I waited patiently for her to get out of the aisle she pushed and prodded all five packages, and a globe, into various overhead bins. No one seemed to find this frustrating; some nice young gentleman just helped her shove it into one of the overhead bins. The stewardess then brought to her seat her four cartons of duty-free Marlboros. She was a snorer for the rest of the flight, except for when she woke up to purchase more goods during the duty-free in-flight shopping portion of the flight.

So you are stuck in a plane, in a small, uncomfortable seat, for 10 hours. I couldn’t think of a better time to just get completely hammered. At least this was the theory of the man sitting next to me. There were a few of them on the flight: his friend in front of me, and two of his friends behind me. He was a jolly fellow to begin with, spoke no English but smiled politely and spoke cordially with the man sitting on the other side. When the flight attendants began the in-flight beverage service he ordered tomato juice, which always makes me think – ‘well what a good, health conscious individual!’ No. They had apparently purchased a large bottle of vodka in the duty free shop before boarding the plane. They all ordered tomato juice and water, quickly drinking the water in order to split the juice between two cups, then passing the cups to the man next to me who would take out this bottle of vodka, stashed under his coat, and fill the rest of the glass and pass it back. Eventually they also broke out the Heineken to supplement their operation because, after all, vodka without beer is like throwing money to the wind.

The announcements on this flight had a distinctively different tone than those on domestic U.S. flights. They went something like this, “Um, please take your seats. Please. In the United States it is illegal to stand and talk in the aisle ways and we would request, if possible, that you observe this rule on this flight as well, please.” This announcement was of course in both English and Russian and was usually followed by some pleading of the flight attendant with the particular chatty kathy who was only trying to pick up a girl or relive the best moments of the trip with a dear friend. All announcements were, of course, ignored.

Sleeping was a joke because the geniuses at Delta put touch screen tvs on the back of the headrests of all the seats. Russians have a really hard time with touch screens. The idea of “touch” is totally lost on them. It is more like poke-with-force screens. Incidentally the technology does not respond to this kind of usage. Usually being smacked repeatedly in the back of the head lulls me right to sleep. I’m not sure what happened here.

Eventually I gave up and joined the Russians for a drink and took the opportunity to practice my Russian. When in Rome…