Previously on our series: car sharing -> lost documents -> Putilkovo; lost suitcase -> conversation with a "professional"; buying tickets that do not exist -> selling an immortal soul to Stanislavsky’s descendant.
Kaliningrad. Adventures are wrapping up.
After that, things were relatively smooth. I boarded the plane. Texting with Alina. She writes that she forgot the suitcase at the airport. I reply in the spirit of "we are doing great." I had one mission on this trip: do not forget bank card. I forgot it. Alina had one mission: do not forget suitcase. She forgot it. So apparently the most responsible one is Vlad. The moment I send that message, a reply comes: "Vlad lost Zabivaka."
Zabivaka is the wolf mascot of Russian Olympics. A small plush toy that traveled across many places. But we did not get to walk Kaliningrad together with Zabivaka. After landing, I asked every airport employee I saw, but no Zabivaka.
Life starts improving: at 21:30 I receive the rental car from the rental employee, enter "Baltiyskaya 25" in navigator, and go. I quickly leave airport onto a broad high-speed road. Soon navigator tells me to exit and twist through narrow capillaries. I reach Baltiyskaya, and suspicion appears. We had discussed that we live on the 5th floor. On this street I do not see buildings above two floors. I pass an old man with a walker and bottles, park, walk the street again, and confirm: house 25 is a two-floor cottage.
Doubts grow. Navigator query for "Baltiyskaya 25" shows 5 results. Confirmed. I dig full address from chat: we need Solnechnogorsk, not Zelenogradsk where I had arrived. Return trip: from capillary lanes into street vessels and back to highway artery.
Final minor adventure: Alina tries to call while I exit a wild interchange. The call overlays navigator, which I am carefully watching from the corner of my eye, trying not to crash into anything on a dark high-speed road. But that is minor. At 23:30 we reunite, and from there everything goes surprisingly smoothly.
We will write separately about the Dancing Forest, Hoffmann, and the organ concert.
Final bookmark. I wrote earlier that I was wrong to treat the Aeroflot ticket seller as a professional who cared. At outbound control from Kaliningrad, Alina and Vlad got boarding passes, while I was told there was nothing for me. Ironically, at that exact time I worked as a flight analytics specialist at App In The Air and handled multi-leg routes. But somehow I did not know that if one flight in a chain is canceled, all subsequent ones are canceled too. Until that moment.
So we split again. I managed to buy a ticket on the nearest flight to Vnukovo. I got home by Vnukovo express, got off at ZIL platform, and took car sharing. We entered the yard at the same moment: me in car sharing, Alina and Vlad in taxi.