i have taken to watching the Sopranos at the gym. this is very un-me. i hate TV normally, and i think this is the first series in years i have actually got addicted to. it started when i was training for bike racing, it was still winter and cold and weekdays i started training on the bikes in the gym, just to build up my endurance. but riding a bike in the gym is boring, so i started downloading the sopranos onto my ipod, and then plugging it into the exercise station. it makes time go faster.
When I signed up with my new company, part of the agreement was I would not be dealing with Russia. I agreed, somewhat sadly and somewhat relieved- I have done well working in Russia, but it is a pain to get things done there, as we all know, and escaping from contracts that require 14 stamps and signatures per page seemed a positive thing.
But liberation from Russian bureaucracy didn’t last long. I got back to the office last week to find there had been a bit of a situation- and how fast did I think I could get to Russia? 15 minutes later I was in a cab, off to the embassy to beg for an emergency visa (which I got, amazingly), and I was on a plane the next morning. British airways was full, so I ended up on good old Aeroflot, for the first time in years.
the next thing i knew, i had "important people" calling me at all hours of the night and numbers whizzing past my head like bullets.
days passed, until they finally said i could go home.
as i had flown in on Aeroflot, it meant i had to fly out from Sheremetevo, the old Soviet era airport. In my memories from childhood, this aeroport certainly deserves a special place, as i would land here several times a year going in and out of the Soviet Union/ Russia. I remember it when it was still nearly empty and felt like a ghost town. In those days, Aeroflot was the only airline that had the right to fly in and out of the Soviet Union, so we would fly on the more comfortable Finnair to Helsinki, the closest Western city, before boarding the required Illyshin or Tupalev to take us the last leg to Moscow. At Sheremetevo, airport officials would board the plane before you were allowed to disembark to enquire if any one was carrying "printed matter". Some years later, in the early 1990s, corruption set in, and bags started vanishing, requiring intensive negotiations to get them released. By the early 2000s, the immigration officials had become a bit more smooth and rarely bothered with poor students like myself, but the tremendous rise in Russians travelling meant the airport had become overcrowded and a total zoo. When Domededevo opened, it provided a much needed relief, and BA started flying there, acknowledging that Sheremetevo was an unmanageable dinosaur. i hadnt been back to SVO in some time, but on this trip, i was pleased to learn that there is now a train that goes directly from Belorusski vokzal to the airport in 30 minutes (as opposed to 2 hours or more by car). The train was fast and efficient, leaving me pleasantly surprised at the advancements in infrastructure taking place....then I got to Sheremetevo. it was 33 degrees outside, the airport is filled with huge glass windows, which in the bright sunshine had turned the place into a greenhouse.....and the air-conditioning was broken. the Russian solution to this was to allow extra beer and ice cream vendors in to stroll around selling their goods. with over an hour to kill, i bought a Baltika, sat down and tried to block out the body odours around me. by the time i actually boarded my flight to Budapest, almost all the passengers were drunk.
Just when I though I was out.....they pull me back in
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