Since I first heard stories of the Trans-Siberian Railway, I have wanted to be on it. It is reported to be a truly amazing experience, and riding it had made it onto my bucket list. So imagine my excitement when I realized that by getting a six-week internship in Beijing with Paul Hastings for the summer, I would have the opportunity to press my parents into letting me take the train to work... from Moscow.
Of course, my parents would never sign off on such an awesome trip without being there themselves -- not because they don't trust my travel skills, but that they can't imagine me going to a place like Russia without including them -- so they agreed on the condition that they could join me for the first leg of it. And Brian, my brother, refusing to pass up an opportunity to be stuck on a train with his little brother for 8 solid days -- or at least refusing to let me go on such a trek without his involvement (see reasoning for parents being in Russia above), decided he wanted to come with on the train.
But in a typical display of unpreparedness from the entirety of the Mayer clan, I arrived home on May 10 to find the trip we had been talking about for months in complete and total disarray.
We had:
-4 people on 3 different itineraries
-No visas, for Russia or China
-No train tickets from Moscow to Beijing
-No hotels to stay in in Russia
-No way to get myself or Brian home
-No solid itinerary besides a wish-list of things to do.
But in the past 4 weeks not only did we get two visas to China for Brian and I, but we: jumped through every hoop to get the Russian visas we needed (no small feat -- anyone ever planning a trip to Russia best plan far, far in advance; the Russian visa system alone probably keeps 80% of potential tourists out of the country); booked train tickets to Beijing, with stopovers in Irkutsk, Russia, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Booked hotels in Moscow and St. Petersburg; booked Brian's flight home through Moscow; found places to spend the night in Irkutsk; organized a 2 day safari into the Gobi desert in Mongolia; got a hostel to stay in in Beijing for me; and booked me flights home, with layovers in Abu Dhabi, UAE and Brussels, Belgium. We all (except Brian, who has been gearing up towards Graduation) were working every day to put this trip together, at the last possible moment.
And I even have learned a little Russian.
Phew. And to think it all came through the morning of the day we leave for Brian's graduation from UChicago - Fedex arrived with the passports, each with a Russia and two with a China visa. My Russia visa, and my mom's, came through without issue, but Brian's and my dad's each had a slight error, and they had to be reprocessed through the (former?) Communist bureaucracy that is the Russian Consulate. With 4 days to go until we leave, everything is falling into place.
And yet so much is still unplanned. Brian and I still haven't solidified our excursion into Mongolia, or where we're staying. Four weeks of my time in Beijing I have no place to live yet. I haven't planned any of what I'm going to do or where I will stay in Abu Dhabi or Dubai when I'm there for 5 days at the end of the Summer. I don't have a place to stay in Brussels for the night.... But I'll get to all that later...
Nothing is ever easy.
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