Arrival in Tver

Well--my travels to Russia were quite interesting. There was a scare on my first flight--about halfway through the pilot announced that due to weather conditions in NY we would be about an hour late. Since I only had 50 minutes between flights that looked to be "problematic", but somehow the pilot managed to get us there on time after all and I made my connection. The flight to Atlanta was uneventful. The flight from Atlanta to Moscow was a nightmare, though. I was fortunate enough to get a seat on the aisle with no one sitting next to me, but there my luck ended. There was no leg room at all, the man in front of me kept his seat fully reclined the entire flight, and it was extremely noisy the entire flight. The route we flew took us around the northern edge of darkness, so it was daylight the entire (excruciatingly long) 10.5 hour flight and everyone seemed to be in party mode--walking the aisles, talking and laughing loudly, etc. It seemed no one but me wanted to sleep. I managed about an hour or so, but that was it. I was exhausted by the time we landed in Moscow at 11 a.m. local time (8 a.m. at home.)

Passport control was no problem other than having to wait in line a bit, but it wasn't too long. My luggage was waiting when I cleared there, so no problems there, either. Luba, my translator, arrived just a couple minutes after I cleared the crowd of people waiting on arrivals and we left immediately with Alexey, my driver and facilitator to drive to the Hotel Osnabruck in Tver--about two and a half hours.

The drive to Tver was nice and passed quickly. Luba loves American films and we talked movies and actors for most of the trip. Luba, like me, is a big fan of Johnny Depp. She and Alexey were also interested in hearing about my previous travels in Russia and seemed surprised to hear that I had stayed in private homes and travelled so extensively in their country. They also encouraged me to practice my Russian and only laughed at my pronunciations a couple of times.

We arrived at the hotel in good time and Alexey went over our schedule for tomorrow. I'm to meet them in the hotel lobby at 9 a.m. to go to the Ministry office and then to the orphanage. My daughter is in Villy Vishnu (sp) which is about 2 hours away from the hotel. Alexey couldn't tell me much about my daughter other than to warn me that I most likely wouldn't be able to get much information about her birthparents. He did say that I would be able to find out her birthdate and Russian name (if she has one, he added) at the Ministry office and that I should ask all my questions regarding her birth family there as the orphanage staff likely would have no information on them.

Let's see... the hotel is very nice. My room is small, but clean and has a nice view of the street. There seems to be a lot of pedestrian activity in the evenings. It's 9:45 p.m. right now and still very light outside. I think sunset is around 11:30 or midnight. I had a terrific dinner at the hotel restaurant--grilled salmon with fried potatoes, onions and mushrooms. It was quite yummy. The hotel and restaurant staff are all very pleasant and speak English.

The town of Tver is a study in contrasts. The hotel I'm at is very modern, but immediately across the street I've been watching the local residents come to a well/fountain to get buckets of water for their homes. I'm not sure if it's for drinking or washing--I'll have to ask. I'm too tired to do much exploring today, but I plan to get out tomorrow evening for a bit and see what I can see. Until tomorrow...

~ Jeana