After 30 hours of flying, and clearing the Russian border
without being drafted,
... well, I'm actually here now.
I made it after a long day, I'm in Moscow.
Alex is within hours of meeting his birth mother.
Until now, his only glimpse of her life, a quick post on
YouTube for his 21st birthday. Just weeks after he'd found her.
I've always thought to myself maybe she's tried to get in
touch with me but being in her situation, I don't think she
would know how or where to start.
He's come so far to meet her. From Auckland's, Northshore to
Seoul then Moscow and now a bleak six hour drive north to
the Arctic Circle.
Yea, it's a different world you look outside, it's just, it's
dark. It's very dark. It didn't get light till, you know, 10 in
the morning between 10 and 11.
And finally to Rybinsk on the Volga River, where a post Soviet
chills sits in the landscape, the buildings and in the
backseat of a rental.
As Alex waits for his mother to emerge
from her apartment. Oh my god is that her there?
I think that's her. Okay. That's her.
Oh my heart just started beating. I was so nervous.
I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to say.
It's 19 years since she left him at the orphanage. Alex is unsure
what to expect.
I was thinking, what does she want me to ask her? What? How am
I going to have a conversation the whole time? Got to keep on
thinking of questions to ask her.
Hello.
Good. Good. being real, real busy. Traveling all across the
world, all the way from New Zealand.
So nervous, he begins to unwrap his gift for her.
This is for you.
My hands were just shaking the whole time. And then she's like,
No, not now later later later.
Okay, okay, I'll leave it in the box now.
Was it awkward?
At the start, very awkward. I mean, it was just very, just
standing there. It's like two people just not being speak the same language.
Different, New Zealand's completely different,
different people, different...
40 year old Tatiana, a waitress, lives in a tiny apartment, just
20 square metres.
She shares it with her new husband Andrei.
When I walked in and I saw her, I saw her bed in the lounge. And
I just, it made me wonder what her life's been like.
When Alex was born, she gave him to the orphanage.
Did you ask about that? Why she did that?
I asked her. She said, you know, she said, um, it was more of a,
like the norm thing to do. You know, it was, in the situation
that they're in at the time, it wouldn't have been easy as well.
Oh my god.
They had just a few hours to get to know each other. With no
shared language, no history, and little but their smiles in common.
She's just very nervous. If I spent longer with her I would
have developed a better, a better bond with her I would say,
Yeah. Is she sad? I think, I think she is, Yeah. I want to
make her feel happier because I think her lifestyle, she gets
really upset quite, quite easily and she's had a rough
upbringing.
Her welcome may have been awkward. But Tatiana gave Alex a
priceless gift. The answer to the second half of the puzzle,
the identity of his birth father. She recently tracked
down the former soldier, Alex's Dad in Saint Petersburg.
See you later.
For Alex, there was only one option.
I'll be back.
Carry on to Saint Petersburg 800 kilometers away.
I think she got a bit. She got a bit teary.
I just kept on smiling the whole time. I didn't want to say
goodbye. It was quite hard to say goodbye.
Next.
Finally, the connection Alex has traveled the world for and the
baby sister he didn't know he had. Yes, Yes
Hi again. Alex Gilbert went to Russia hoping to find a connection.
He found his mother. But what he found when he met
his father is extraordinary.
At Moscow airport, 21 year old Alex is about to make another
leap into the unknown.
A few hours later, outside his birth
father's apartment in St. Petersburg.
Hello. Hello.
Mihail Kovkov has learned only a few months ago, he fathered a baby
in 1994. But you'd hardly know father and son have lived their
lives apart.
He lifted me up and I couldn't breathe for a second and grab my
hair, he's like, Oh, yeah.
Misha, 44, has a comfortable lifestyle as a trolley bus driver.
Oh. Oh Meg, Yes. He's like, this is for your flatmate Meg, this
is for your friend Mig, this is for Aaron, this is for Emily.
Wow. Thank you.
He married Liana two years ago, and they have a baby girl.
Sophia.
Can I, can I show you what I brought?
Alex's eight month old sister.
For Sophia.
It was funny. They didn't really know what it was.