Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Minor complications

I got from Dushanbe to Almaty with no problems. Even though I showed up at a hostel unannounced and with no reservation, there was a bed for me to sleep in. I spent the evening watching the sunset from Kok Tube and enjoying a meal at a lovely Kazakh restaurant with two people I approached after overhearing them speak English on the bus. I arrived at the airport the next morning and left for Tbilisi on time. Once in Georgia, I breezed through passport control with no issue. My friends Gloria and Shaun had arrived in Tbilisi the day before and arranged for a taxi to meet me at the airport. I almost missed the man holding a piece of paper with "Emily" written in blue highlighter because I was too busy marveling at the Burger King (Burger King! At the airport! In Tbilisi!), but there he was. Our hostel was a little rundown but clean, and the three of us spent a few days enjoying the city and then headed to Batumi, a town on the coast of the Black Sea, to relax for a couple days before going our separate ways--me to Armenia, Shaun and Gloria to Paris.

Are you feeling an sense of impending dread? Like maybe things have been going too well, and that is just not a sustainable pattern? Are you thinking, "Where are the shoes, and when are they dropping?" Well, my friend, have I got news for you! Your sense of unease and pessimistic outlook have been rewarded! Your prize is that I am posting this entry back at the hostel in Tbilisi when I should actually be halfway through a fifteen hour train ride to Yerevan.

"Why?"

I'm glad you asked!

I bought my ticket from Batumi to Yerevan at the train station in Tbilisi on Sunday. On Wednesday, August 5, at 3:30 pm from Batumi Central--as printed on my ticket--I would board the train and arrive in Yerevan at 7:00 am on the 6th. Perfect! Easy! Comfortable!

This afternoon I said goodbye to Shaun and Gloria around 2:30. "Show me your ticket before you go," Gloria said. "Ok,it's Batumi Central, the new station. If you hear them say Makhinjauri, say no. That's the old station. You don't want to go there."

"Makhinjauri, no. Got it."

"Just show the taxi driver your ticket. He'll know."

I've totally got this!

Fifteen minutes later, I walked into the Batumi Central train station. A sign said that the platform was on the second level, so I went up to take a look.

Empty. Absolutely empty. Well, it is new, I thought. I guess it makes sense that there is nothing and no one here. As I was going back down to the first level, I saw another woman coming up the escalator, obviously also on a reconnaissance mission. I waited to see what she did, and then followed her back down the stairs. She sat next to her husband/boyfriend/partner/travel buddy/whatever, and then I went up to them.

"Hi!" I smiled and waited to hear what language they answered me in.

"Hello," the woman said.

Nice. "Are you guys going to Yerevan, too?"

"Yes, we're going on holiday!"

My new acquaintances and I chatted for a few minutes, and I learned that they were Germans who used to live in Ukraine, and so they also spoke Russian. After that, I found an empty seat among a small number of other people waiting for what I (wrongfully) assumed was the Batumi-Yerevan train and pulled out my Kindle to read about that foolish Lamora boy and kill the remaining half hour until the train.

At 3:28, there was no sign of movement from anyone around me, so I turned to the man beside me. "Hi! Are you going to Yerevan?"

"Nyet, [something something something] Yerevan [something something]," he answered and shook his head.

"No, no, the train does go to Yerevan from here," I insisted. "Here, look at my ticket."

He took it, checked it, and then continued to deny that there was a train going to Yerevan from this station. The woman seated on his other side joined in.

"[words words] Yerevan [words] Makhinjauri [words]."

German Man happened to be coming down the escalator after checking the situation on the second floor and overheard this exchange. He spoke to the man next to me and became visibly distraught. Frack.

"We're at the wrong station," he huffed over his shoulder as he scurried over to where German Woman was still waiting, for a shining moment still happily unaware of our shared major inconvenience.

I hurried after him. "Maybe he's wrong," I pleaded. "Maybe he just doesn't know. We should talk to someone who works here."

"No, I'm sure he's right," German Man answered, stepping on my desperate hope. "But we should still speak to someone."

The three of us hustled across the floor again and walked up to a lady in a tickety-looking booth. He began speaking to her in Russian, sighed with irritation, and then turned around like he was looking for something.

"Ticket?" I asked and offered the useless piece of paper I still had in my hand.

He grabbed it and handed it over to Booth Lady. While she began examining my ticket, German Man and German Woman rifled through their belongings to find their own. They continued going back and forth, until the German Man pulled me forward and said, "Here, sign this."

"What is it?"

"The back of your ticket. To acknowledge that  you're getting a refund." All is lost. I have no way of getting in touch with Shaun and Gloria. I'll have to sit outside the apartment door and hope they come back early. Or sit in a marshrutka for six hours. Should I wait and take the train tomorrow? What if I lose my hostel in Yerevan because I didn't show up when they were expecting me? Can you get a marshrutka to Yerevan directly from Batumi? I signed the ticket.

As Booth Lady passed back our money, thirty percent of it sacrificed for who knows what cause or reason, we grumbled about needing to go find a ride back to Tbilisi and kicked ourselves for not asking that we were in the right place when we all first arrived--because apparently I was supposed to just know it's the other station? We were turning to go away, our regrettable business here unsatisfactorily accomplished, when Booth Lady spoke again.

"What did she say?"

"There's a train to Tbilisi leaving in an hour, but the only seats left are in first class."

A sinking feeling, followed by a strong aversion to spending the rest of the day in a grimy minibus. "Ok," I sigh. How much?"

It turns out to be twice the cost of a seat in a marshrutka, but I take it. I'm desperate. The money left in my wallet was meant for my return to Georgia in two weeks, but it is what it is. I hand my money over with a wince, and that's that.

I sit with the Germans at the little cafe, and German Man and I complain about our misfortunes and mistakes.

"There is no use whining about it now," German Woman says wisely, and she is right. I pull out my notebook and start working out what this means for my schedule, budget, and next steps. With the helpful Germans translating a page of their guidebook for me, I figure that by taking the train first class to Tbilisi today, paying to stay another night in the hostel, and finding a seat to Yerevan early the next morning, I'm only losing about fifteen additional dollars. This is not the collosal amount that it could have been, so I begin to feel a bit better. If all goes as replanned, I'll arrive in Yerevan tomorrow in late afternoon instead of early morning, thereby still managing to salvage a bit of my first day in Armenia.

The bad news is that I'll still have to take a six hour marshrutka ride. The goods news is that I learned that walking up to someone and saying "hi!" turns out to be an excellent way to start a conversation. What a world!

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Sorry, I'm still Miss O.

Today, English class started as usual. We greeted one another, said how-are-you-I’m-fine, and then someone asked a question.

“Emily, what is the difference between Mrs. and Miss?”

This is a great question! I explain how Mrs. is a title for married women and Miss is used for single women.

Which—of course—yet again opens the floor for discussion of why I am still a Miss and not a Mrs.

Now, this is a very popular topic when speaking to young women of marriageable age. I have this conversation at least once a week. Depending on my mood, I either shrug and move past it as quickly as possible or think to myself, I am so desirable that people literally cannot believe that I’m still on the market.


This all got me pondering the comments various Tajiks—from my very first host family to my current coworkers—have made about the singlehood they seem to find so troubling. Which, in turn, made me wonder, If they were going to create an online dating profile for me, what would it look like? I have used my formidable Photoshop skills (read: MS Paint) to recreate the imaginary profile, using phrases that people have actually said to or about me (see figure 1):

Figure 1


Ok, fine, no one ever said out loud "0/10." They didn't say it with their words, but they said it with their eyes. 

I guess I should just be glad that I haven't let it slip about sliding over the rocks at Suleiman Too—then I'd really be in trouble!

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Locked out

There are three ways to lock our apartment door. It can be locked and unlocked using a key from both inside and outside—the nice, normal way. The door can also be bolted from inside, which is also fine. And, get this, it can be bolted from the outside. This is a great way to lock your roommate in so that she has to call her boss and tell him she’ll be late for work because she’s trapped in her apartment and then someone has to leave the office to come to her rescue and she has to twist her arm through the bars on the window that doesn’t open the whole way to toss her keys out to her new coworker and then explain that yes, she actually does know how to use a key, but it’s impossible to unlock that lock from the inside, let me show you.

But that’s all behind us now.

Anyway, this is our situation. Or it was, until this weekend. Here, let me tell you a tale.

On Sunday, upon leaving my apartment, I locked the door with the bolt that cannot be undone from the inside and then went off to go about my business. This was not a problem, since there was no one else inside the apartment. So, I did whatever one does midday on a Sunday, and then returned to my apartment later in the afternoon with the intent of entering it. However, when I inserted the key into the keyhole, the teeth didn’t fit into whatever locking mechanism should have been in there. I wiggled the key in the abyss for a while, and when that didn’t work I called the landlord.

After exchanging pleasantries, I said, “Our lock is broken. I can’t open the door.”

“Ok, I’ll call someone to come help you.”

I’ve been standing in the hall for ten or fifteen minutes when three men walk up to me.

“Hey, are you locked out?” one of them asks.

“Yes.” These guys don't look like locksmiths, but who am I to say?

“Your landlord called us to come help you.”

“Oh, thanks! The lock’s broken.”

All of them tried the key. “It’s broken.”

Thanks, guys. “Ok, so what should we do?”

One of the other neighbors comes up the stairs. “What’s going on here?”

“She’s locked out.”

“Let me try.” The newcomer tries the lock. “It’s broken.”

I’m glad that’s established. “What should we do?” (I keep saying “we” and not “I” because I have no idea how to fix this and want them to know that they’re a part of this with me now. There’s no backing away.)

“Well, just use this lock from now on,” he said, pointing at the bottom lock, the one that can be locked from both sides of the door.

“But this one’s still shut.” I gesture to the upper lock, the one responsible for every problem I’ve ever faced in my life.

“Right.”

“So what should we do?”

Everyone looks into the keyhole again. One of them tells me to turn the flashlight on my phone on.
“My phone doesn’t have a flashlight.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t. Look.”

They pass my phone around and ascertain that it indeed does not have a flashlight. One of them scurries off upstairs and comes back down with a headlamp. They look into the little hole and discover that somehow the place where you insert the key, or whatever you call it, has fallen out of place.

“So what should we do?”

My neighbors stare at the door for a moment, and then one of them gestures to the wall next to the door level to where the keyhole is. “We’ll take out this part of the wall, push it back in, and then you’ll just use the bottom lock from now on.”

I don’t see why not! “Sure, ok!”

Someone dashes off again and comes back a moment later with a hammer and a table knife in his hand. He puts the tip of the knife perpendicular to the wall and then hits the end with the hammer.  Blue flakes of the wall start to collect on the floor.

I can’t help myself. I start to smile, and then I laugh. Now we’re all chuckling as these men, none of whom I’ve ever spoken to before, hack their way into my apartment with a kitchen utensil.
After a couple minutes of slow progress, someone turns up with an actual chisel. From there, the hole expands quickly, they push the bolt back, and the door swings open. Finally!

“Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome. Just use this bottom lock from now on.”

“Of course!”

And off they rode into the sunset.

So, it was a bit of an inconvenience, but the whole ordeal only lasted an hour. I’ve got a great landlord who sends people to help me and four neighbors who didn’t hesitate to come to the aid of a stranger. And bonus—being locked in the apartment is no longer on the table! Another bonus—I now know a pretty easy way to break into people’s homes if I decide to turn to a life of crime!