Inbound

I sat in the airport and munched on my subway sandwich, the last subway sandwich upon which I would munch for some time. A man in a suit sat on a seat facing mine. He was tall and blond, and looked like he wasn't paying attention to much. His suit looked too nice for the flight, a disheveled bunch of returning Mongolians, tired international travelers and hyperactive Korean tourists.
I decided to chance it.
"Hi" I said. "Are you going to U.B.?"
He stared at me. "Hmmm?" he said. The sound seemed to come not from him, but from around him. His accent was vaguely British, but not quite. It is the kind of accent that you get when someone learns to speak British english, starting from some other European language. I decided to think of him as Danish.
"Are you going to Ulaanbaatar?" I asked.
"yes" he said.
"I'm curious" I said. "Why would someone going to Ulaanbaatar be wearing a nice suit? What are your plans there?"
"Oh, I'm coming straight from the office" he said. "I'll look like you after I get to the hotel and change. I'm just checking out the country for a few days."
"Oh" I said.
He got up and left. He seemed perturbed by the whole exchange. I found this odd, since it seemed perfectly natural for two English speaking people headed for Mongolia to... speak English. Perhaps that norm had changed.

"Excuse me, you are going to Ulaanbaatar?" asked a Mongolian woman across from me.
"Yes" I said, cautiously.
She proved to be much more friendly, asking me questions and telling me about her travels. She had been a student in France, and was now working there. She too had a vaguely European accent.

Dang.

The flight took off at 8:30, soaring into the darkness and taking a wide arc to avoid North Korean airspace. Tensions had been relatively high over the past week, and planes were being cautious.
The Danish / English guy sat in front of me, oddly enough. Over the course of the next hour he proceeded to consume large quantities of every liquid imaginable. I watched as he downed two glasses of orange juice, three glasses of water, two beers and a large glass of wine.
Holy cow, I thought. How big is this guy's bladder?
The flight attendants came by with meals. "Seafood or pork?" they asked. "Seafood" I said, hoping that "seafood" didn't mean shrimp. It did. She then turned and asked the same question to the lady next to me in Mongolian, and I understood it! Well, sort of. All I really understood was "Elder sister (garbled) -unidentified possessive noun-'s meat (garbled) pig's meat -question tag-? But hey, it's better than Korea.
Around ten, as the interwoven harmonies of Supertramp's "Goodbye Stranger" played on my CD player, we crossed into Mongolia. Looking out the window I saw a solitary light in the darkness below.
'What in the name of ramen noodles is that?' I thought. How much has this country changed? We're over the eastern gobi.... there shouldn't be lights out there.
At that moment Danish guy's bladder finally got to him, ruining the moment.

As we descended over U.B. an unfamiliar scene met my eyes. Neon lights blinked from amid a tangled web of streets. A vast sea of smaller lights coated the valley. The lights seemed to be one clearly defined thing, as if someone had taken glow in the dark paint and splattered it along the length of the valley. It's edges were crisp and bright.
As the plane landed I realized that what people had told me was true after all. This really wasn't the country of my youth any more. Riding to the school that would be my home for the next several months we passed forests of billboards, supermarkets with signs in english, and brightly flashing neon lights. The city had grown beyond it's original bounds to an absolutely astounding degree, swallowing up the places where my family had once picnicked on Sabbath afternoons.

Gone were the solitary old men in traditional dress, walking with their hands clasped behind their backs. Gone were the small roadside shops. Gone were the dilapidated Russian cars. Gone were the smells.

That's the saddest part. What has a place become when it has lost it's smell? I came here to escape America... and it has followed me.

Oh well. I suppose if there's no where for me to hide from my fears, I'll just have to face them.

-writing from an internet cafe, I'll post later, but I'm going to return to the 'write first in notebook' system to save time-