Anyhow, our arrival into Moscow was uneventful. Even the immigration officer was friendly and waved us through with a smile, after a quick check and stamp of our visa. Because we had awkward bags, we had decided that the airport-to-city train service might be too much of a challenge (actually, it had more to do with the late hour and excess of alcohol the night before), and we'd emailed the hotel before departure to book a car.
Three emails later ... one of which asked us to confirmed whether we wanted a Ford or a Nissan, to which I responded Nissan (some parts of Russian bureaucracy are unchanged) ... we arrived at Domodedovo airport to be welcomed by a man in a Ford. So much for that question.
But the funnier part of the Request for Transfer Transportation was hidden among the available options:
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| De Goin' home after 14 years |
How often have you been given the option of a "sensible driver" ... not to mention an offer to pay for using his back way?
We're both quite tired now ... and quite ready for the solitude of the train carriage ... two weeks of socialising has taken its toll. Unfortunately, we never did rendezvous with Sergey, Alexey and Maxim, the Moscow colleagues with whom I worked so much through 2008 and 2009... but on a journey like this, some things work out and others don't.
Tomorrow is our rest day in Moscow, and its primary objectives will be collecting the train tickets and scouring those full supermarket shelves for portable yummy comestibles. We need lots of quick 'n easy food to sustain us through 5 unbroken days inside a Trans-Siberian train carriage.
The adventure has now begun ... and we need a good night's sleep to be ready for it.
Surely to god you didn't request a 'sensible' driver did you Pete? That must have been a typographical error,or something misunderstood in the translation.....
ReplyDeleteTaxi drivers in Moscow have an unusual style. They tend to driver calmly on the big roads into the city ... presumably worried about police. But once they reach teh city centre ... all hell breaks loose. They accelerate hard and relentlessly whenever there's an opening on city streets ... up to at least 100kph ... while squeezing between trucks, buses and lamp posts. It's as if the driver suddently looses the plot ... the early calmness makes the sudden onset all the scarier the first time you experience it. Our man was clearly sensible because he delivered us quite efficiently (and consistently) to our hotel.
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