Moscow (airports), baby!

Well, Moscow is nothing like those Cold War espionage films. I haven't, at any point, been asked for my 'papers' by a grim-faced man in a rain coat or a soldier. I'd heard that women in Russia tended to be either stunningly attractive or, shall we say, reminiscent of root vegetables. This proved prescient as Dex and I went to adjoining passport control desks: Dex getting the 'stunna' and me getting the potato. I hope this is not to be the pattern for the week. Anyway, much fiddling and typing later, we were through passport and, lo and behold, there sat two snowboard bags. Thus, my main stress-point for the trip is assuaged. So, we had to stand around for twenty minutes, waiting for the taxi my Moscow-dwelling friend had arranged for us. I figured there'd been a cock-up and was just debating how to order a cab from the desk with absolutely no Russian language skills when a random bloke rushed up with a scrap of paper. I was just about to shoe him away when I noticed the paper he had in his hand had the name of my friend's company on it. So, off we went. Sadly, the guy had obviously been told we were very important and spoke no Russian (true on both counts), so he insisted on phoning my friend's PA – at 5am! - then handing me the phone so I could speak to her. Neither of us had anything to say to each other, so I had to do a verbal version of a 'Gaelic shrug' down the phone, and handed it back to the cab driver. Odd.

It took just over an hour, and the outskirts of Moscow are as drab and monochrome as I expected. Blocks of flats everywhere, and lots of concrete. Every twenty minutes or so, there would be a long stretch of open ground upon which were built ramshackle huts (or 'Dachas', as they call them). It seemed hard to believe that anyone lived there. So, reaching the airport, handshakes all round, and I paid 3750 rubles. I had no idea how much this was, was too delirious with fatigue to work it out, so didn't tip him. Later, I calculated it was about ninety quid. Ouch. Sadly/fortunately (depending on your point of view) this seems to be about the going rate.

So we're now sitting on barstools in Shere 1, in between people-watching. All the women are very well turned out – and some of them are even attractive. We now have nine hours to kill before our flight leaves, so we're mostly people-watching. There's definitely a 'look' here – form the most part, people have the characteristic 'flat' slavic(?) face and pale skin. I have to say that there is a greater than average proportion of 'striking' women here, but the way they dress is interesting. A lot of them seemed to be dressed for a Saturday night out (or possibly a Saturday night standing on a street corner), and patent leather and gold feature heavily. There's also one of those industrial cling-film-wrapping machines here, and most people opt for wrapping their luggage up with it. I don't know whether this says more about the quality of their luggage or the standard of Russian airport baggage handling...