Travel, Travel, Travel-Day 99-April 19th, 2018

My Alarm went off around 4:15 this morning and I begrudgingly got up to start my day. My mom had sent me a text saying that it would probably be best for me to fly home tomorrow and I decided to figure out my flights while on the train this morning. I got dressed in my dark hostel room and brushed my teeth and what not. The manager told me yesterday that I only had to leave my swipe card on the desk before I left. I stole two packaged croissants from my hostel yesterday morning to have for breakfast today. I am the type of person who can’t skip breakfast and there aren’t many options at 4:30 AM.

I quickly made it to the train station, but the electronic screens were blank and I had a hard time figuring out which one was my train. There were two trains at the moment and I saw some people walking to one. Outside the train, I saw someone who was wearing what looked like a conductor’s uniform and asked if this was the right train while showing my ticket. He said yes and I grabbed an empty four-seater on the train.

I had planned a bunch of flights last week, but the one I found for today and tomorrow changed times and now really weren’t an option. This was okay because I knew I had a lot of time to figure this out on the train. My plan was sleep in Caltabellotta tonight as planned, then take an early flight from Palermo the next day.

I was going to planned until I made two discoveries. There really was only one flight that worked for tomorrow where I would have to fly to Istanbul for a short layover, then fly to the US. This flight was fine, except for one problem. Since Caltabellotta is pretty remote and in the mountains, there was no way I could get to Palermo in time for the flight. There was a single bus that made the trip and its earliest time wouldn’t get me there until it was too late.

Finding this out made me think about the possibility of flying home instead today. I could just skip Caltabellotta and take the train to Palermo. I was already on the way towards the city anyway. When I had done some flight research last week, I wasn’t able to find any flights on the Friday that worked either. Since Thursday no longer worked because of issues with getting to the airport, if I wanted to go back to the US, it would have to be today.

This is where I made my second fatal discovery; I was on the wrong train. I checked google maps and I had been going north for an hour and a half rather than west like planned.

I realized this may be better for my situation, as I could just take the train back to Catania and fly out of there. I found a really good flight that was pretty cheap too. I would just hop off the train at the next stop, and change directions to go back in the opposite discovery. The flight I thought about taking was at 9:05 AM and it currently was 6:30. I should have more than enough time.

I was wrong about this one too. I checked the train schedules and realized I couldn’t just hop off and change directions. The only station where that was possible was a Messina, which was the last stop and at the very top of the island. From there, the first train back to Catania would get me back at 8:40. There would be no way to catch the 9:05 flight.
Despite being a bit distraught, I had faith in my flight searching skills. I had a forty-five minute train ride to Messina and an hour and a half ride back to find flights back to the US. Since there are no direct flights from Sicily to the US, I had to first find flights from Sicily to Rome, Paris, Berlin, and etc. then find a second flight from there to the US. I wanted to be smart with my searching and systematic. Using google flights, I found out every nonstop flight to a major European city from Catania. I tried to find ones under a $100 since the second flight to the US would be pricier. I found decent flights to Rome, Naples, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam. My next goal was to find flights from those locations to the US. Once I found one, I would check the time details of the first flight and see if it was possible to get to the second flight on time. This searching took a while and I was getting a bit nervous since I wasn’t finding any ways to get back to the US besides my initial 9:05 flight that no longer worked for me. I tried looking at every priced flight at a bunch of times, but most were around 30+ hours of travel. Yikes.

By the time I was about thirty minutes away from Catania, I had found two options. Both were pretty brutal. The first was:

Catania>Istanbul (8 HR layover overnight) > JFK.

The second option was Catania>Rome>Moscow>JFK

I had been looking up flights for about two hours and these were legitimately my only options. I looked into every possibility from Palermo and other airports in mainland Italy. If I didn’t take one of these flights, I wouldn’t be able to leave until Saturday which would be too late.

Not really wanting an eight hour layover in Turkey, I opted for the second flight. I went to the book the tickets as I was pulling into Catania and planned to head straight to the airport. This is the part where my already building stress hit some new peaks.

When I tried to book using both my parent’s cards, the website brought me to an additional security site where I had to enter a special pin since I was the transaction probably looked suspicious. To get the pin, it would send something to my mom or dad’s email or phone number. I usually know my parents email information for scenarios like this, but the listed emails were both outdated and not usable. The website didn’t take Discover either, so I couldn’t use my own credit card. I started to panic because I knew I had a very short window to book the flights and head to the airport.

I called my mom who thankfully woke up from my phone call. I felt bad because I was somewhat a wreck while talking to her, but I was able to figure out the special pin using some security questions. I was able to book the flight and immediately headed to the airport. The flight was soon, so I took a taxi that was a bit more expensive than it should have been. While in the car, I booked my second flight from Moscow to New York successively.

I got to the airport with 50 minutes until my flight. Since, I bought the tickets so recently, I could not check in on my phone or at the kiosk. The line for the check in desk was super long and made me afraid I wouldn’t have enough time to get to my flight. One slight heart attack later, I knew I had to take so drastic measures. I went to the front of the line and pretty much begged some old ladies in Italian to let me cut them. Thankfully they were sympathetic and let me go in front. The check in lady was pretty confused why I was going to Russia, but I showed her my second flight and it was fine. I had checked online before booking and learned that you don’t need a visa for Russia if you’re in transit and don’t plan on leaving the airports. I grabbed my boarding pass and hustled to security where there luckily a short line. I got through and ran to gate where they had made the last call for boarding.

I got on the plan and took a deep breath. This may have been the most stressful morning of my life, but the hardest part was over. I just had three more flights to get through and I would be home. If I learned anything from this, never book international flights the day of. You will likely get an aneurysm from stress.

The flight from Rome was short and I used the time to take a brief nap and regain my sanity.

Here’s a selfie from flight number one: Catania => Rome

 

I soon landed in Rome and had an easy hour to make my transfer. When I made it to the gate, I had some similar problems with the “Why is an American going to Russia without a return ticket”. Utilizing some more Italian, I showed them the flight details for my second flight. I also explained the no need for visas thing when in transit. After some confusion, they printed me a new boarding pass for my flight from Moscow to New York. I boarded and luckily had an entire row to myself.

The flight was only about four hours long and not bad. I wrote my blog for yesterday and watched this infamously terrible film from 2003 called The Room.

Here’s a selfie from flight number two: Rome => Moscow

 

I soon landed in Moscow and had a two hour layover at the airport. Going through security was really easy and much easier than the American versions.

This is probably me being overly cautious, but I definitely felt a bit at edge while in Moscow as an American. I made sure not to do anything overly patriotic while sitting in the chair next to my gate.

A snap chat I sent to my friends from the airport.

One interesting observation I made was in the bathroom. The bathroom had American Standard toilets, but the logo said “Ideal Standard” instead.

It make sense from a marketing perspective why they would change the logo in Russia. At the gate next to me, there was a flight to Tokyo. On two separate occasions, someone got to that gate only to find out that boarding had closed. Both these travelers got understandably very angry and yelled at the desk workers. The guy at the desk made a suspicious phone call and I thought the angry traveler might get dragged off by some big men. That didn’t happen fortunately.

The second traveler who was angry knocked over a trash can and stormed off. It was really loud and awkward. I felt bad for the airport worked and picked up the trash can. I had to do my part in helping heal US-Russian relations.

Soon it was time for boarding and I got on the flight. There was a bunch of empty seats on the plane, so I took a different seat that practically had no one else next to it. This gave me much more room to stretch out.

Selfie from flight number 3: Moscow => JFK

This was a pretty typical long hail flight. Aeroflot is a pretty decent airline and gave me free headphones, a sleep mask, a pair of crappy slippers and two meals.

My stylish slippers

 

I spent the first two hours of the flight watching Gladiator, which was really good. I had my first meal which was good for an inflight meal.

I didn’t end up finishing the movie because I was really tired. I donned my sleep mask and slept for a bit. It was an exhausting day, so sleep came easily. The rest of the ten hour flight went pretty quickly. I took a couple multiple hour naps and I ate my second meal in between naps. With two hours left in the flight, I got a coffee and went to type up my massive blog post for today. The coffee was pretty necessary because not counting my crappy naps, I had been up for over twenty-four hours.

When I was filling out my customs form on the plane, it asked for what countries I traveled to since leaving the US.

I thought this was funny because I had to write so many of them.

Soon I arrived in JFK and got through customs pretty easily. My dad was waiting for me in the car outside the terminal. The ride back was quick and there was no traffic. My dad caught me up on all the family gossip. I said hi to my mom when I got home and then went to bed.