Everything for the first time

From the airplane cabin

Austrian Airlines, flight Minsk-Vienna, Vienna-New York. 1.5 hours to Vienna, a layover, and another 8.5 hours of flight to get there, across the ocean. Everything was new to me – after all, it was my first time flying in my life. The flight was not easy for me. I arrived in Vienna looking really red, as if I had just spent two hours in a steam room. I didn't expect it to be so nerve-wracking for me. I managed to pull myself together in two hours. During the long flight to the States, I thought about my future job at a restaurant, about what and how I would have to do, and if they would fire me if I did something wrong. In short, there were only questions to which I (alas) could not yet give answers. Upon arriving at JFK airport in New York, we (I was flying with a friend) had to go through passport control. And so, after standing in line for about an hour (there were a lot of people), our turn finally came, and we headed to the officer. We greeted him calmly, gave him the necessary documents, but that's when our adventures began.

During the flight, we were offered to fill out a declaration, which is MANDATORY when entering the USA (a lot is written about this on the Internet), but we didn't attach any importance to it. A big mistake. We stood there not knowing what to do. There was a long line behind us. But we were lucky. The customs officer handed us the declaration and asked us to fill it out right there on the spot. I am grateful to that man for not sending us to the back of the line. Having finally passed passport control, we quickly rushed to get our suitcases, as time was running out and we might miss our bus.

NY city

We knew how to get to the bus station because two of our friends had arrived a week earlier. Using the AirTrain (they have them in Moscow too), we reached the necessary station and transferred to the subway. After about 40 minutes, we were coming out of the underground passage, and there it was before me, that very same, real New York that I had only seen in movies. An endless stream of cars, crowds of people, steam from the sewers – this is exactly how I imagined it. We were hugely impressed by the real New York, but there was no time to admire it, as we were in a hurry to get to the bus station. And we got lucky – we made it to the last bus to Cape May (New Jersey), which was our final destination. It took more than 4 hours to get to Cape May with one transfer. On the way to Cape May, we made a stop in one of the largest cities in NJ – Atlantic City. Late at night, we finally reached Cape May, exhausted and so tired that we almost missed the stop where we needed to get off.

We got off. 2 a.m. An unfamiliar country, an unfamiliar city. No connection at all. No transport running. We are standing there with our suitcases. What the hell are we supposed to do, where are we going? We only had the address of the house. A few minutes later, a car pulls up, a man gets out and says: "Roman?" My friend answers: "Yes." And I thought, finally...