Homeword Bound!

Next morning with still no sight of Nurken, who has our car paperwork and both our driving licenses and international driving permits, we get a taxi to the airport. It’s far from Heathrow or Gatwick – a long room with closed kiosks and a dozen people wandering around doing nothing, until they all decide to queue up at a door in the far corner. We join the queue and hope we are heading in the right direction, our passports and luggage are checked and we are handed boarding cards and file through into the next room, a coach soon arrives and takes us to the plane – it was a free for all trying to get seats – why we were given seat numbers on the boarding cards is still a mystery to us. One woman refuses to take her handbag off the seats for us to sit down so we have to look for more, Neil ends up sitting right at the back with a shelf over his head and his knees up to his ears. The plane is an Aeroflot castoff and the smell of aviation fuel is a little worrying! The plane taxis for so long we decide that he is going to drive to Moscow instead but eventually the plane lumbers into the air. We are fed and watered and shocked to find it was pretty decent. Once we get into Russian air space the plane lands and we are taken off to an old building on what appears to be a military base, where we go through a customs check. Jan gets the YTS border guard and it takes her half an hour for them to decide that she can enter Russia. We head off to a room to wait until we know what to do next. We re-board the same plane and take off once again to fly to Moscow, this time making a rush for it and getting seats together.

On arriving in Moscow we head to a kiosk displaying a ‘hotel and accommodation’ sign and ask if they can recommend a hotel – they say they don’t deal with hotels or accommodation and they point us into the departure lounge where we find a kiosk displaying a ‘hotel and accommodation’ sign and ask if they can help – they say they don’t deal with hotels or accommodation and point us back into the arrivals lounge and the kiosk we had already been to. We head back over there and are pointed back again to the departure lounge, where we are told the same story again – we end up taking the woman with us back to the arrival lounge where, after being told we are a 20 minute bus journey from Moscow, the two women decide that they can’t help us at all. Eventually a taxi driver wanders over to us and asks if we need a hotel – we climb into the taxi and off we go to Moscow – the 20 minute bus journey is really a 45 minute taxi ride and we pull up outside the largest hotel in Moscow, the Rossija, which is just opposite Red Square. Thinking we could never afford to stay there for the two nights we have to wait until we can fly off to London, we are taken to reception by the taxi driver. Luckily the hotel costs us just £40 a night and we are pleasantly surprised at our room. Although we are overlooking the internal courtyard the room is huge with cable TV and air-conditioning.... luxury! The bath is so big Jan needs a chair to climb into it and can swim laps! Neil decides to catch up on some sleep and misses a huge storm that swept in from nowhere. A couple of hours later we decide to do a bit of exploring, get some Roubles and some food. After comparing rates we descend into a basement Bureau de Change... a glass window to a tiny room, protected by a huge steel door. Then out to gawp at St Basils and the Kremlin before wandering off in search of food. After a while we find the food district and decide what is required is a curry. Neil hasn’t been this long without a curry since he moved to Bradford. A very posh Indian is located and we fill up on lovely food and Baltica beer. Refreshed we explore a bit more of the surroundings and find a beautiful Orthodox church just beside the Rossija. This hotel is BIG.... 3100 rooms, restaurants, shops, gym, go-kart track, plastic surgeons... its never ending! Not wanting to go back to our room yet, we stop at an open-air bar just by the hotel, and enjoy some more refreshments while watching the world go by. Eventually the day catches up on us and we wobble back to our room. The newly installed computerised entry system to the rooms still isn’t working so the receptionist rings ahead so the floor lady can let us in. And so to sleep........