Aeroflop…is this anyway to run an airline?

January 4, 2012 in Travel

Part 1

I was on my way to an environmental meeting in Uzbekistan.

My flight from Moscow to Tashkent was already delayed 4 hours. I was completely annoyed. It wasn’t until I got on the flight that I realized life was much better on the ground.

In one way Aeroflot was ahead of the times. You had to carry your own luggage onto the plane. In fact, you actually boarded into the luggage compartment and stacked your gear there (next to the goat and chickens…and I wish I was making that up). Next you climbed a very steep staircase and turned right or left down an extremely small aisle.

The instructions were in Russian only, but there wasn’t much room for error. Up, turn find a seat, shut up, and sit down.

I scored a window seat. I like to take pictures out of airplane windows. So because I was told it was illegal to do so, I waited for the flight attendant (I use that term lightly, she/he looked like an angry shot-put thrower) was fastened into the jump seat. As soon as we took off I started clicking away. Irate passengers behind me started screaming, motioning for me to stop taking pictures. Wow, so all the 007 movies were correct, everybody was still in the KGB.

From Moscow toTashkent is a long flight so of course we were told lunch would be served. I don’t know what they serve political prisoners in the Gulag, but it is hard to imagine that what appeared before me as being better than prison food. The attendant came down the aisle with a metal push cart on wobbly squeaking wheels…when I say squeaking let me elaborate. The sound was the velocity of several fingernails on a chalkboard amplified at rock concert decibels while large animals caterwauled in syncopated stereo. I was moments away from divulging state secrets, had I known any.

On the cart was a large aluminum pot with its contents sloshing over the brim. A ladle full of broth was emptied into plastic bowls and a boiled knuckle of some creature was gingerly splashed into the middle of this culinary delight. The aroma was somewhere between a 6th grade boy’s gym locker and the latrine at Camp Goldensnot.

The bowls were solemnly passed to each of us. My mind raced back to an episode of Tarzan when he is asked to drink the soup with poison to prove he is innocent. The natives were going to kill him if he didn’t drink it. This is what we would call a lose-lose scenario in business-lingo. I was teetering on setting détente back twenty years. Geez, I would make a lousy spy. I wasn’t suave, clever or coy I was nauseous . My face showed horror which I quickly hid with a sneeze as to not offend our server aka Comrade Attila the Hun. She waited to watch me eat it.

I was suddenly thankful that my mother was a dreadful cook. See how God uses all the events of your life? I was well practiced in force feeding myself. I held my nose, swallowed every bite with three good swigs of water and coaxed it down my throat with fictitious bribes of chocolate. I was rather proud of my accomplishment. All I had to do is keep it down until we landed. I could do this.

Then my plan hit a SNAFU. The young woman with our group sitting next to me was not getting with the program. “I’m not eating this %$#@” she announced loudly enough to cause an international incident. Refusing food in front of people who have not eaten regularly for say five decades, isn’t just rude, it’s incendiary.

“I do not think you understand the balance of power here” I whispered. “If there are limited parachutes do you think the spoiled Americans will have first dibs? Hardy har har. Now be a good girl, drink the swill and we all get to live.” She picked up a fashion magazine and ignored me.

There it was again the shrill wailing of the wheels. Lex Luther-in-drag making sure we all ingested the kryptonite. I panicked. Our warden was collecting empty bowls, I could hear them rattling like bones. Sweat poured down my face. I grabbed her full bowl of sludge on the tray next to me and downed it like a freshman at Yale chugging her first yard of ale. Face plastered up against the cool window for the next three hours I willed myself to think happy thoughts, such as slapping my seat companion silly upon landing.

Part 2

When our flight landed in Tashkent we were hustled out of the plane and told our bags would follow. The baggage area was a large parking lot. I waited and waited, my duffel did not appear. Everyone else had their bags and had hopped onto an awaiting bus. I refused to go without my bag. They left. It was now about 9pm and dark. I stood in the parking lot alone watching lights flicker off all around me. I was finally told, “your bag is in a secure lock up room, but the person with the key has gone home for dinner. You should go now.”

Dosed on knuckle soup I started screaming, “I bet if Gorbachov’s bag was locked up in there you’d figure out how to open the damn door.” Turns out ‘loud’ doesn’t really help when you are screaming in a foreign language. Who knew? My grandmother always turned up her volume when in a strange land confident that louder equaled instant interpretation. It seemed to work for her, “HOTEL GRANDE” always got her to a hotel.

So I screamed. I argued. At last I sat down and cried. In due time (which is five times slower than a teen ager can clean their room) my bag miraculously appeared (miraculous mind you, not as in the Red Sea parting, more like ‘it took 40 years to get the Promised Land’ kind of miracle).

But what was a true miracle is the bag seemed unopened. That was a bit if a relief since we have already established I am not fond of Gulag cuisine. And the fact is I was not a spy but I was a smuggler. My cover was being a participant at conference on the Aral Sea, but my sole purpose for being on the trip was to smuggle in 200 Gospels of John for members of an underground Christian church outside of Tashkent. Not only was it against Russian law, the Sunni Muslims frowned on it as well. The next day I made my drop, mission accomplished. All I had to do after that was avoid the soup.

Sally Franz

Sally Franz is a motivational speaker, corporate trainer and author. Her newest book, about contracting an auto-immune disease (Transverse Myelitis-TM), which threatened to leave her paralyzed is an Amazon Best Seller: “Scrambled Leggs…a snarky tale of hospital hooey”. She is an avid gardener, artist and world traveler. And now she is about to venture out on her 26th move since the age of 20. Next stop? Portland, Oregon.