Home » Outdoor & Recreation » Traveling on a Budget » Ms Budget Travel's Excellant Russian Adventure . . . (Part 1)

Ms Budget Travel's Excellant Russian Adventure . . . (Part 1)

© Diane Goldberg under the original topic name

Ms Budget Travel admits that the phrase language immersion gives her the giggles. En route to Russia it made her think of drowning in the Cyrillic alphabet, that strange collection of letters that seems on first glance to be deceptively familiar.

For those of you who enjoy cataloguing Ms Budget Travel's myriad stupidities, she should have studied the Cyrillic alphabet en route instead of indulging in her precious little fantasy involving the alphabet and blinis.

For those of you interested in taking a similar trip might I suggest that you get out your Russian phrase book and study the alphabet? The nice people at Language Studies Abroad will doubtless remind you of the need to do so along with helping you get a Visa, reminding you to bring slippers and taking care of a bunch of other details that you don't even know are necessary.

You can reach Language Studies Abroad at 1-800-424-5522 or http://www.languagestudiesabroad.com

Ah, but as usual Ms Budget Travel did it her way . . .

Day One

Ms Travel deplaned after spending the flight talking to a Pakistani medical student who told her St. Petersburg was quite safe despite the rape and murder of an Indian student one maybe two years ago . . . He assured her that she'd be in no danger.

The Aeroflot flight attendants were not overly generous with the veena which forced Ms. Budget Travel to fly uncharacteristically sober. In retrospect this was doubtless a good thing as Ms Budget Travel is used to landing in places she can sort out.

Ms Budget Travel could not then and she cannot now sort out Russia. She is very very grateful to Language Studies Abroad for doing the sorting.

When she deplaned and drifted through customs with her awkward suitcase which being demon possessed decided to take off in a different direction from her legs she discovered that a) people were not smiling at her idiocy b) no one, not the passport scrutinizer nor the customs man, appeared to speak any English.

Fortunately, a representative of the Liden & Denz Language School met Ms. Budget Travel right outside of customs, or she'd still be standing helplessly at the airport. The nice young lady gave me a crash course in Russian culture --- we talked about the press. Ms Budget Travel later found out that the school uses the conversations to get a handle on the students needs. Walter Denz, the multi-talented man who runs the school, explains that, "if nine out of ten of their questions are about security, we know we have a problem." Having spent a week with his remarkable staff, Ms Budget Travel believes that whatever the problem is, they can solve it.

The copyright of the article Ms Budget Travel's Excellant Russian Adventure . . . (Part 1) in Traveling on a Budget is owned by Diane Goldberg under the original topic name. Permission to republish Ms Budget Travel's Excellant Russian Adventure . . . (Part 1) in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.