As I forced myself to board the airport shuttle against my will, the radio appropriately began to play Aretha Franklin’s song ‘I Will Survive’. Here I was headed out to 11 countries in 11 months when the only ‘foreign’ places I had ever been were Tijuana, Mexico and Niagara Falls, Canada. I wasn’t even sure where I was headed, but I did know I was going to be away from everything I was familiar with for a long time. Ms. Franklin made sure I stayed calm.
On the plane ride overseas I kept thinking about how I was in a giant steel tube hurdling itself farther and farther from my home, my family, my boyfriend and my comfort zone. I realized this wasn’t a good way to look at things (and maybe a tad melodramatic) so I tried to find a way to sleep while still sitting in the upright position without also making it impossible to move my neck for the next three days.
Airplane food and foreign films seem to be my only memories of the next ten hours or so. My mind was sucked into the travel vortex and all that remained was a hollow shell of a headache.
We landed for layover in Paris. I was struck by how small everything looked out the airplane window, like a little toy city with a toy Eiffel Tower. I would have liked to try and practice my French in the airport, but instead I curled up in a ball and shivered and slept on the cold floor until it was time to board our next flight.
When we finally arrived at Kiev, we immediately went to the central train station to catch our train to Odessa. At the train station we searched for food. The language barrier turned us off at first. But eventually we enjoyed our meal.
At one point a man with a buzzed mullet tossed down his duffel and joined us. We were wary and kept a close eye on him, but began to try and chat while still remaining cautious. He knew very little English and we know even less Ukrainian/Russian. But we waved and gestured and stumbled our way through small talk. At the end, I am not certain whether he thought our names are Texas, South Carolina, Indiana and Florida, or if he understood that is actually where we are from.
Getting on the train was a long and difficult process because we couldn’t read the ticket and all the conductors got mad at us in Russian, but eventually my team-mate Stephanie and I were shoved into a 4-person sleeper cabin. Below us were an attractive blonde girl and a middle aged man. They both spoke little to no English. They did their best to help with train protocol and etiquette by pointing and shaking their heads when we did something wrong and demonstrating what was right to do. It felt like I was in an awkward Wes Anderson movie full of colorful characters and abrupt but meaningful scene changes.
I was relieved to finally get a chance to lie down. As I began to get drowsy, it occurred to me that I would have laughed in the face of anyone who had predicted this scenario for me a year ago. Who would have thought this up? I was letting go of everything I knew in order to venture into the unknown without any knowledge of the cultures I was crashing into and no idea what I was getting myself into. But maybe that’s the fun part in the end? Eh, you only live once: might as well spend part of that life in a sleeper car in the Ukraine… The train rocked and hummed us to sleep and I didn’t wake until a team-mate came to tell me we had reached the station in Odessa.
