Karkafta at the airport

As reported before, our luggage (including over 500 dollars of refrigerated food) was left in Moscow on Wednesday night.

And what an ordeal. We filed a report, and then came home. Thursday we had people calling them all day, until we found out that I had to fly to Moscow to get our stuff.

We started planning to book a ticket, and even thought about making a short fundraising trip in order to reimburse for the trip and perhaps pay for Chanukah. However, I was really sick (see last post) and not looking forward to the trip. Also, it would mean transferring and lugging 7 huge bags to a different terminal alone.

Firday morning good news came. They might fly our luggage to Min Voda but we'll have to pick it up. When will it arrive? at 2:00 (which leaves 2 hours left til shabbos starts. Min Voda is a 2 hour drive from Stavropol).

I went to the notary to officially give permission for a goy to pick up our stuff (I'm not into taking risks), and he set off for the long drive (which we paid for).

Side note: a sign of Russian bureaucracy was the NINETEEN stamps on the notaries table (I counted them all). She used 5 of them on my document.

Friday night the dude didn't show up with our luggage. At 2 AM our door rang, but no one came upstairs.

Shabbos day to our surprise Viktoria (our secretary, who always has shabbos off), showed up. She told us that we ALL had to go there in person.

By this time we were certain that it was all probably ruined (the meat, cheese and fish).

So Sunday we set off, all 4 of us sick, in 2 cars. One driven by Oleg Bogopolsky, the other by Refoel Khaimov, a mountain Jew (he's a halachic Jew, his wife isn't. And he's the guy who drove me ever yom kippur to the freezing ice cold mikva in the mountain stream I took, which I think I wrote about).

We got to the airport and had to wait for a vet to arrive.

Why a vet?

To throw out the mneat and stuff, since 'we cannot allow this stuff into Russia.'

While we waited I decided to ask Refoel if he ever put on Tefillin. "No" was his answer. So I took out mine, and asked if he was interested in doing it.

"In the street?"

"If you'd like, we can put it on in the car."

"No, I am a proud Jew. Let's do Tefillin outside."

So for my first time in Russia, and first time I have ever seen in Russia, a Jew put on Tefillin in public.

Then we went inside, where we had to open our luggage to be scrutinized by the vet.

He was a big Russian, looked like a Cossack.

He started off by ranting about how we weren't allowed any food into Russia, and we would have to pay a fne.

But Chayale spoke to him, and calmed him down. She explained to him about kosher, and told him to be nice to us.

Surprisingly he agreed, and not only let us take in all the non-rotten meat (which was alot), but also let us get away with no fne whatsoever, even for overwheight luggage.

Most of the food survived and are now in our freezer.