Since last we danced the dance..

Greetings blogosphere, it is time for another glimpse into the lives of the Carda family. When last we left you, trip #1 had just concluded. Since then, a lot has taken place, but only a few items worth noting.

Before we left Moscow, we were given a potential week that we would be heading back to Kirov for our court date. About a week later, we got some additional info, but it didn’t make the trip any clearer. We would have court on a Thursday, Friday, or Monday. After court, there would be a 10 day waiting period. Once that was done, we could finalize our adoptive son’s Russian passport. After we received the passport, we would travel back to Moscow, spend two days filing paperwork with the US embassy, and then back to the US with our new son.

Unfortunately, there were lots of questions still to be answered. Did the 10 day period start on court day or after? Was that business days, or all days? Could we start the paperwork on day 10, or did we have to wait? As we pondered all of these ‘what ifs’, we realized that we were far away from being able to book our travel. Depending on what day we had court, and when the waiting period stopped and started, we would be staying anywhere between 13 and 18 days in Russia. Not quite solid travel plans yet.

Despite this, we decided to cover a ‘worst case’ scenario, and began looking for flights. Since we are located in an old Northwest hub, most options we had went through Delta. We had flown out on Delta, and our experience on their plane wasn’t very good. However, we forged on, figuring that the local carrier would be more sympathetic to our cause. We could not have been any more WRONG.

Our first attempt to book through Delta left us with a travel cost of almost $6000. This was close to double our first trip, and was due solely to requesting that 'A' have his own seat (rather than travelling on our laps). One way Moscow to MN fares are TWICE the price of a round trip ticket (just try to figure that one out). We thought about booking him a round trip ticket, but weren't allowed; he wouldn't be travelling the first part, so they would cancel his ticket. It was possible to book an "adoption fare" on his ticket, but it added almost $1000 to each of our tickets. After struggling for a few weeks, we decided to pull in a travel agent.

Jamie, our travel agent, spent many long hours over the next few days, trying to get a straight story from Delta. Each time Delta changed their story, and the seats got more expensive. We weren’t even allowed to book on Air France and KLM, as many of their flights required an overnight stay in Amsterdam or Paris.

In addition to all of this, we still did not have a court date. Eventually, we received word from Russia, our court date was the Monday option. However, the travel plans were still different from what we were told to expect. We would leave for Russia on a Wednesday; spend Saturday and Sunday visiting our child, with court on a Monday. The waiting period somehow extended a day, which delayed us by 3 days because of a weekend. All told, we would be in Russia a total of 17 days.

With this info in hand, we pushed Jamie to finish our tickets. By this time, we were less than 1 week from our departure date. Jamie made one last push with Delta, and received the bad news: He could NOT book any flights for us, because Delta would require us to show up, in person, with supporting documentation, at the airport to book flights through them.

We were absolutely furious with Delta, so we called up United and said "find us a flight". They found one. Not ideal, but not bad. The United rep was able to set us up with an extra round trip ticket for the same price as ours, and “A” was now considered a lap child (10% of normal fare). This gave us 3 seats each way. Not terribly efficient or cheap, but it worked for us.

Final trip #2 Stats (estimated):
Nights outside the US – 17
Different places to sleep – 8
Moves during the trip – 15
Flights (including transfers) – 6
Train rides – 6
Total miles traveled – 15,000

We were finally booked, quickly set up our hotel accommodations and travel plans, and soon we were off! How would it go from there? Check back soon, as we will be blogging live from Russia the next few weeks!

Das Vidanya!

-- The Project Baby Carda Team