The Mystery of the Missing Bags

I’m sitting in Moscow Vnukovo airport, waiting for my overnight plane to Krasnoyarsk, and feeling rather bereft. It’s been a smooth trip so far, except for one thing – I am no longer with bags. I am very much without bags. And, at risk of sounding like robot-generated clickbait, you’ll never guess who’s to blame…

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

My wonderful mum got up at 3:30 to drive me to my inhumane flight. The same cannot be said for Pip, who just gave me a soft whimper when I turned the lights on, and then a satisfied grunt when I turned them back off again. She couldn’t even be arsed to climb out of her basket and into the car to see me off at the airport. That was a knife to the heart, ngl.

But I soldiered on. Heathrow was like a shiny ghost town at 4:30, and I think the security people were still too sleepy to be disgruntled and shirty, so the whole process was disconcertingly easy. And another surprise was in store – boarding the plane, I recognised two friendly faces: it was James and Max, fellow Russianists from my university. They were heading out to begin studying at MGU (em-gay-ooh) – Moscow State University.

Taking off, I noticed a plane with the registration G-VSXY(!), which made me chuckle.

Once we were in the air, I nabbed an empty seat next to James and Max, then I read their guidebooks and ate their chocolate. Yay friendship! In one of the guidebooks, I discovered that Krasnoyarsk is just a few kilometres from Russia’s most visited national park. We also found out that there’s an elk farm just outside Moscow, and quickly resolved to go there that afternoon, before my flight to Krasnoyarsk. As if I wasn’t feeling blessed enough that morning, I saw an exit sign on our Polish flight which had a five-letter consonant cluster. It seemed my luck would never end.

But it did. And the turn in my fortune was heralded by an intercom message.

*Ding dong*… ‘muffled talking… muffled talking… Captain… airport… refuel… puppet show… Vice President… so yeah soz bout that guys, looks like we’re all a bit screwed lolz.’

I hopped back over to the empty seat next to James and Max. ‘You get any of that?’

‘Nope.’

A beaming steward rushed over to our aid. And to remind me that the seatbelt sign was still on. ‘The captain just said that the Vice President of the United States is landing in Warsaw right now!!!’ he gushed, through a disarming but, I felt, somewhat unwarranted grin.

‘Huh…’

‘We’re connecting to Moscow in 35 minutes. What exactly does that mean for us?’

‘…’

The steward stared at us uncomprehending, the same unshakeable grin affixed firmly to his face. Then he shrugged and said ‘Oh who cares you selfish git. It’s the VICE PRESIDENT!!!!’ and danced off down the aisle, high on life.

Using our collective knowledge of Russian genitive zero endings, Kievan and Muscovite Rus, and the repercussions of the Inclosure Acts of 1604, the three of us worked out that what was going on was that they’d closed an international airport with no notice because a Wepublican of the highest Rank had turned up unannounced in a fancy ride.

As you can well imagine, this didn’t bother us in the slightest, and we were really happy for Mr Pence’s hard-earned success and super important importance. How lucky we were to be a party to his enlightened state visits!

The plane circled for the best part of an hour, with talk going around of landing elsewhere to refuel, and just falling out the sky because, heck, it was the Vice President! Then the intercom ding-donged again. This time, the sound was crystal clear.

‘Bad news everybody. The Vice President has left, which means we’re gonna have to land only like half an hour late. Our time in the spotlight is over. No more being inconvenienced by the world’s favourite Wepublican Ranker. Maybe some of you will get your connections tho, which is cool, I guess…’

Warsaw seemed nice. Surrounded by rolling fields, and sporting an impressive – but not boastful – skyline. After some careful thought, a parliamentary style debate, and a coin toss, the Three Muscovo-teers opted to sprint for our connection rather than stay there another couple of weeks.

By some miracle, we made it. And in what felt like no time at all, we touched down in Moscow.

The first thing that strikes you when you land in Moscow is that it’s surrounded by a dense barrier of coniferous trees, and a network of lakes and canals. On the margins of both sit orderly rows of what could well be life-sized dolls’ houses, with cutesy awnings and picketed-off yards. These are the famous dachas – holiday cottages where wealthier Muscovites go to retreat from the hubbub of the metropolis. But just a few miles on, the sprawl of this megacity encroaches on suburban bliss, and Moscow proper begins. First, neatly spaced, detached developments in well-planned hamlets, then those brutalist prefab apartment blocks named ‘Khrushchyovkas’ after their Soviet daddy. Next come the high-rise panelled blocks. And finally, a piss-off huge glassy skyline rears out of the scrum. It’s a magnificent approach. Magnificent, but slightly unsettling.

The first word that greets me on my first ever trip to Russia is printed on a huge metal container near the end of the runway. ‘Pochneft’, it appears to say. Russian has a different alphabet to English, and my summer-addled brain had only got round to working out that one letter – the ф of ефт – needed translating. What that Роснефт sign actually said was ROSNEFT – the name of the Russian oil company which owns, well, more or less everything. I’m sure you appreciate the irony on both counts. It was an inauspicious start to Fyodor’s big tour.

And it only got inauspiciouser.

Yep, they lost my bags. I like to think of it as a kind of ‘welcome to your second home’ gift from Mother Russia. Like a somewhat unwelcome big wet sloppy kiss from an aunt, or a very firm slap on the back from a slightly battle-hardened relative, that seemed to say ‘Welcome kiddo. Now shiz gets real.’

In my defence, I used my limited Russian for a good five minutes with the woman at the baggage assistance desk. Then I accidentally called her a pig, and we switched to English. ‘Here’ she said helpfully, ‘fill in these five forms in Russian.’

Then I went to see another woman, who plied my five forms with stamp marks, took one of them for safe-keeping, and sent me to another official. Fourteen stern officials, eleven forms, and three entire pads of ink later, I was relieved of all my paperwork, which I must confess I was starting to get rather attached to. In return, the last assistant gave me a printed receipt, saying ‘Yeah we lost your bags. Mtfu and jog on to Siberia now. Be grateful you get to keep your backpack you wimp.’

So James, Max, and I crammed into a stupendously under-priced cab to Moscow city centre. The driver, a bit of a legend called Bakha from North Ossetia, gave us some words of advice for our time in Russia. Get kebabs, give up on learning Russian (it’s too hard), and don’t use his taxi app again – it’s overpriced.

We navigated Moscow’s wonderful metro system with ease – it’s incredibly opulent, with chandeliers and marble escalators. Then we had a slap-up Georgian meal on the famous Tverskaya Street, where I got my first glimpse of the monolithic red brick of the Kremlin, the fortress in the centre of Moscow.

After the meal, I parted with James and Max (I’ll see James again in March when I move to Moscow, but Max will be in Argentina by then), and headed for the train to the city’s third biggest airport, and my flight to Krasnoyarsk.

On the train I started thinking. It was quite nice not having to lug my cases through Moscow. And this way I could say that I’d already endured a proper русская борьба – a Russian struggle. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Moscow lost my bags.

But then again, it was mean of me to blame Russia for the whole thing. It wasn’t Moscow who had lost my bags – the Polish airline left them in Warsaw.

No. That’s wrong too. I can’t blame them. They were just too smiley. And the ground staff in Warsaw couldn’t be the problem, because it was only the late arrival of my first flight that gave them so little time to get the cases onto my connecting flight.

So whose fault was it that the first flight was late? If only there were one loathsome individual at whose feet I could have no remorse in squarely placing the entire blame for the failure of my baggage to make the journey that I miraculously made!

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Spread the word. Mike Pence stole my bags.