— David @ 1:05 pm

Here’s my first lengthy post, I’ll start at the beginning.

The journey to Heathrow was uneventful, arrived at the airport at half past eight in the morning, only to discover that my main suitcase was 7kg over weight – so I re-packed a few things, so that my hand-luggage weighed a ton.
Got through security to discover that all flights to Moscow had been delayed by an hour. So I had to wait until 11.45 to board the plane. Most of the passengers on the plane were either Russians or Indians on the way to Delhi. The flight took rather a long time, but I had some great views as it was clear most of the way. I worked out that the plane went from Heathrow north east, over stansted, along the coast to I think Great Yarmouth where the plane turned right accross the North Sea to Holland. Holland is unmistakable from the air, lots of dykes, small tidy patchwork like fields – and the plane flew over the Zuiderzeeworks a huge causeway in Holland. The plane then went up following the coast and accross Denmark, and up the Baltic, crossing the southern tip of Finland (another unmistakable place from the air, peppered with lakes) and accross Russia to Moscow Airport.
I arrived at 7pm local time, having taken off at midday – the flight took 4 hours – after circling around Moscow for half an hour for a landing slot.

So I had arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport, in Moscow Russia, and it was now dark. The airport was typically Soviet looking, a large rectangular structure, with red letters lit up on the top of it stating that it was Sheremetyevo 2 – the international terminal.

The planed taxied around the runway, passing a few old relics of the Russian Fleet
It then came to a halt, and i got off the plane, walked down some very precarious steps and straight onto a bus. The bus was not large enough to allow all of the passengers onboard and it was stupidly overcrowded. The driver also seemed to enjoy throwing around his passengers, and drove as if he was in some sort of transit-time-trial. The driver seemed to be going in the complete wrong direction, he went dangerously close to the runway, then turned a full 180 degrees and went straight back in the same direction – whereupon he stopped again to let more people on the allready overcrowded bus.

People were now almost standing upon each other, and i was squeezed into a corner set , holding on to my luggage. Outside of the bus were a possy of pilots, all wearing very smart uniform, smoking and taliking. There was also the same soldiers, also in extremely smart uniform who were standing menacingly when I stepped off the plane.

The bus now sped towards the terminal building, and went around the back of the building to an area that is best described as a cross between a container port and something from a hollywood movie, where the bad guys are making some dodgy deal go down.

We went past a large door, with a lone man standing there holding a M16 Rifle, then another door that was open, and then the bus came to a sudden stop.
The doors opened, nobody really knew what to do – so i just followed the crowd in through a side door (i think it was a fire escape) past some very old and dusty computer systems, up a flight of stairs, and I was into the airport proper. Or at least I thought I was.

I followed the large yellow sign saying ‘TRANSIT PASSENGERS’ up another flight of stairs to three desks and a very large crowd of over 100 people trying to get to the front of the crowd. Nobody was willing to form a queue, so I pushed my way as far forward as i could and waited in the line for 30 mins or so.
After half an hour I was at the front of the crowd, at which point the woman behind the desk, said in very good english ‘ this desk is closed – use the one next to it’ which had a massive queue. I said something like you cant be serious look at the queues, and some Bulgarians behind me started cursing in Russian at the woman.
So I moved to the next queue, waited and waited – then after about 30 mins both of the clerks decided that they would bugger off somewhere else, and leave the 50 or so people stranded in limbo-land, regardless of the fact that some had very imminent flights to catch. Luckliy I still had 4 hours to kill, so I wasn’t getting that worried.

Finally an hour later they all turned up again, and decided to actually do their job – I got my boarding pass and my transut visa, and passed through yet another x ray security and passport check.
I thought, now I can get to the gate I need to be at, and I will wait there for my flight.

However after the passport check, was a huge glass screen, with no visable doors in it and a few other bewildered tourists looking suitably confused. I was bery confused, the airport proper was the other side, but why could we not get through?

I don’t know why, but after about 20 minutes, a soldier in full military gear opened this with a special key and frogmarched us through to the airport proper.

Moscow Airport is a really horrible place to be, there is as an air of hostility to the place, its poorly lit and brown. Of course the gate I wanted was gate number 1, which was right at the other end of the airport. This airport was the first experience I have had of Russia, and it is enough to put me off the country for a long time. The staff were unfriendly and rude – they spoke good english, but thought it better to use Russian all of the time, even when asked a question in English.
There was also lots of quasi-military looking people marching about, infact there was almost as many military as passengers in the airport.

The next installment will follow tomorrow, i’m off to bed – starting teaching at 8am

19/10/2004