You meet such interesting people traveling...

My flight from Belgrade to Prague, in the Czech Republic, was only two hours long, so I wasn't too surprised when I walked out onto the tarmac and saw my plane: a tiny pond-hopper (as we would say back at home) with propellors in lieu of jet engines. The cabin was only four seats wide, two on each side of a narrow aisle which didn't look nearly wide enough for the drink cart.  Sitting beside me was a middle-aged Russian woman who spoke excellent English and who, I learned, was traveling to Paris with her husband and son for the seven-year-old's international music competition.  Her pianist son (whose name I failed to catch) would be the youngest competitor there, she proudly informed me, having just turned seven within the month.  I could see that the entire family was very well-off, which was explained when she informed me that her husband had been a doctor in the States for many years before they moved to Belgrade, where they now resided.  She confided to me that she natively spoke Russian but could barely communicate in Serbian (apparently they're not as close as I thought) but that her son was fluent in Russian, English, and Serbian.  Truly a wonder child (insert slightly sarcastic tone here).  This woman, upon learning that my final destination was St. Petersburg, politely inquired as to my reason for going there, as well as my occasion for being in Belgrade, since I obviously wasn't Serbian myself.  When I told her that I had been visiting a friend, I was obliged to continue through the usual barrage of questions: no, he isn't my boyfriend; no, he's not American; he was an exchange student at my school; no, I don't speak Serbian; etc.  It is by now a familiar routine, since I receive the same reaction from everyone (whether American, Russian or Serbian) who learns about my journey to Belgrade.  Not that I mind answering these questions.  I am, evidently, an anomaly.  It is merely interesting to note the astounding consistency of the reaction I get.  After I had sufficiently explained the reasons for my point of departure, the conversation turned to my destination and became instantly more interesting.  It turns out that this lady had, when she was in school, had a job as a tour guide at the Hermitage, so she could give me insider's tips on the best exhibits to visit and those which weren't worth the admission fee.  When we had fully exhausted that topic of conversation as well, I was finally left in peace to press my nose to the window and experience Central Europe from the air, which had been my original intent.  :]
This flight, from Belgrade to Prague, was the first place in which I noticed that communication occured primarily in a language other than English.  Every announcement was given in Czech before being repeated in English.  I listened to the Czech language and decided that it sounds like the ugly child of Russian and French (in case anyone's wondering).  On the flight, although it was only two hours long, we were given the standard array of drinks and a breakfast pastry.  If anyone's flying in Europe and wants a fairly cheap airline with decent service, I recommend Czech.
Upon reaching the airport in Prague, we were bussed from the tarmac to the terminal (as it has been for all of my shorter flights: Zurich-Belgrade, Belgrade-Prague, and Prague-St. Pete).  The Prague airport was clean but not too large, and everything was quite expensive.  It didn't take me long to find my gate for the next leg of my flight, but since I had heard so many horror stories about flights being delayed on both ends and travelers racing across the airport to catch their next flight, I had given myself a 90-minute layover in Prague, and so I had plenty of time to wander and explore.  I found the obligatory cheesy souvenir shop (no knives this time, thankfully) and spent a long time deciding between a thoroughly useless magnet, an overpriced keychain, or some nice-looking matroshka dolls and painted eggs.  I finally decided that the stacking dolls and eggs looked too Russian and settled on a small carabiner with an etching of some famous building in Prague on it.  There are about 25 Czech Korunas to the euro, which means 21 to the dollar; a pretty good rate.  However, I had also been warned against exchanging money in Prague (because of the ridiculous rates) and didn't want to go through the hassle, so I was glad when the cashier told me that the souvenir shop took American dollars.
Finally, it was time to go to my gate (unlike American airports, all of the airports I was in abroad have individual security checkpoints for each gate or group of gates, and one is free to roam the rest of the airport).  I went through security and discovered, to my delight, that the agent was speaking in Russian to the woman in front of me, and that I could understand her!  The woman, unfortunately, had bought some shampoo in the airport which hadn't been bagged properly and the security agent was informing her that she would not be able to bring the bottle aboard the plane, at which she was understandably upset.  Now I can see that these sorts of interactions erroneously boosted my confidence level, but at the time I was quite excited and proud to be able to understand natural spoken Russian.  :P
While waiting to board my plane in Prague for the final leg of my journey, I met yet another interesting person.  Somewhat unfortunately, the only people I feel comfortable initiating conversations with are young women around my age, but perhaps this is only wisdom.  In any case, I ended up sitting beside a young lady just a few years older than me, and I noticed that she was reading a French newspaper.  Gathering my courage, I remarked (once she had finished with the paper) that I had noticed this, and asked whether she was French?  When she replied in the affirmative, I continued introducing myself to her and inquiring as to her reason for traveling to St. Petersburg, and we fell into friendly conversation.  I learned that Aude (as I believe her name is spelled) had just finished her studies at university in France and was traveling to Novgorod for the summer to volunteer in an orphanage, and that she spoke no Russian.  Oh, and I should probably mention that this entire exchange took place in French.  Mr. Girodet (and Nikola) would have been proud, I think.  :]  (Although I should add, by way of a disclaimer, that my pronunciation was less than perfect and we hardly said more than could have been managed by a typical second-year French student).  But I was determined, since I could speak her language (or rather, since I had studied her language) that I would not be the arrogant American who insisted that all exchanges take place in English.  Call it stubborn pride.
Once on the airplane, I was given yet another opportunity to test my foreign-language skills.  The young woman in the seat beside me was a Russian teen flying home to St. Petersburg, and I did my best to converse in Russian with her (but as I found even then, and which should have been an early warning sign for me, it wasn't as easy for me to carry on a conversation in Russian as it had been in French...).  I did, however, manage to learn that her name was Ekaterina, and was able to solicit her help with my migration card (which all foreign visitors to Russia are required to fill out before arrival, and which can be requested at any time by the local law enforcement officials).
When I finally reached St. Petersburg, I found to my delight that I was not the only member of my group to have arrived on Friday.  Waiting in the lobby of the airport were several of my fellow PiP-ers: Matthias (a graduate student studying German literature), Anna (spunky little ball of fire), Molly (who is never afraid to speak her mind), Salina (a quiet Asian girl who is - ironically - Molly's roommate for the summer), and Phil (a sophomore chemical engineering student who, since his intense schedule prevented him from taking Russian 101 in the fall semester, audited the class and did all of the work on his own so that he could take Russian 102 in the spring and participate in the program with us).  Several of them had coordinated their flights so that they could travel together from America, which would have been a wise move had I been able to (though not nearly as adventurous ;]).  We were then driven across the city and dropped off at our various summer residences.  We (or should I say rather, I) chattered excitedly the entire way, in English, about our travel experiences, what was going by outside the windows, and what we expected the summer to be like.  At one point Phil remarked, "We know nothing in Russian," which sentiment Matthias promptly agreed with.  I (somewhat conceitedly, to my shame) responded, "Well, sure I do - I got an A in Russian 102."  To which Phil replied, "Yeah, so did I, but that doesn't mean we actually know how to communicate in Russian."  Had I been wise, I would have taken him seriously - as I was about to find out, he was closer to the truth than I would have liked to believe.