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Moscow at last!
Entry 2 of 36 | show all | print this entry |
Landed in Dubai for at about 6:30am local time for a three hour stopover - flight to Moscow scheduled to depart at 9:30am. Various people had told us about how great Dubai airport is, sorry to disagree but I am now dreading the 10 hour stopover I have there on the way back. Long queues to pass through the security check into the duty free area. The duty free area is quite impressive, huge range of just about anything you can think off - alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, cigars - Cubans in a specialised humidor room, Dominicans, etc. just on ordinary shelves (perfectly appropriate!). Plenty of jewelry for sale as well as watches, cameras, iPods, etc, etc, etc. All that kept me interested for about 15 minutes. After which I went to look for a seat - not an easy task. Dubai airport is enormous and there are lots of seats, the problem was the majority of the seats were occupied, as well as much of the available floorspace. The entire airport had an overriding odour of stale tobacco smoke and human body odour. The one saving grace for the place - free WiFi so I could check my e-mail!
The gate opened for boarding at approximately 8:45am, 15 minutes late. There are 50 gates at the airport and we were boarding at gate 48. What this meant was that we had to get on a bus and endure a 10 minute bus ride to the plane and then climb a set of mobile stairs up to the plane. It required four or five bus loads to fill the plane, and this took about an hour and a half - the result was we pushed back from the gate at Dubai at 10:30am, one our late.
The flight to Moscow was about 6 hours, they served us lunch which, like dinner and breakfast on the earlier flight, was very nice. Dozed for much of the flight but did find a couple of episodes of American Dad on the entertainment system which kept me amused for 45 minutes and also played a bit of Tetris. I thought my choices of visual entertainment were somewhat ironic and appropriate - ironic choice of programme given American Dad's lampooning of the Conservative American stereotype that is still concerned about the potential for a Red under every bed, and appropriate given that Tetris was originally developed by a Russian.
We landed in Russia at about 2:30pm local time, half an hour late. Passport Control was a straight forward process, I filled in the migration card, handed over my passport to the woman in the glass box, she looked at me sternly, then proceeded to run my passport through some device, handed it back to me and I was through. Next stop, baggage claim. Located the correct carousel - number 2, waited for my bag to appear and then off to Customs. Filled in the Customs declaration, I was the only one doing so, everyone else just marched out the green door. Went over to the Customs officer and she informed me I didn't have to fill in the form. Deposited the form in the rubbish bin and went to leave, forgetting my poster which had been my constant companion since Melbourne. Luckily the Customs officer took pity on a poor Australian and informed me of my omission. I snatched up the poster and then headed out the green door and into the chaos of the airport. Just about every other person is a private Taxi operator offering his services. There were signs everywhere in the baggage claim area warning against using these Private operators as there is a risk of fraud and no guarantee of safety!
Headed off to find somewhere to change my Aussie dollars into Roubles. It turns out it is no simple task to change Aussie dollars in Russia. None of the money changers had any interest in my plastic money. It is illegal to take Roubles out of Russia and also illegal to use anything but Roubles in Russia. So there I was with no Roubles, no way of getting Roubles and wondering what on earth I was going to do. Luckily I remembered that I had 55 Euro in my wallet which I had planned on using when we got to Europe. Euro change to Roubles and at least I could now get to my hotel. Found the train station and bought my ticket from the airport to Pavleskaya station, which I knew, from my guide book, would then allow me to access the Moscow Metro rail system. Train arrived just as I was heading outside for the first time. The pilot had informed us that it was -1ºC in Moscow when we landed. When I got outside it was cold but not freezing cold, and there was some light snow falling. I had put on my jumper in the terminal and this was sufficient protection to get me onto the train, Once on the train, however, I did locate my coat against the time I would be required to exit the train. A forty minute train ride latter and I was in Moscow, apparently. Snow on the ground everywhere, stands off birch trees (I think) as we passed by in the train, but otherwise the city was not much different to anywhere else although at one point I did catch site of a characteristic spire. Once at the station I again had to run a gauntlet of private taxi drivers until I spotted the Metro entrance. Down into the Metro where I was faced by three enormous queues at the ticket booths. I got in line and managed to get my 10 trip pass after not to long a wait. Then off down the escalator, think the escalators at Parliament station in Melbourne except longer, steeper and older! I located what I thought was the correct platform and asked a local for reassurance and she confirmed I was in the right place. One stop then off and change to another line. A helpful man in a militaristic uniform (? police, ? army, ? ticket inspector) pointed me in the direction of the right platform. Once there I spent a good five minutes staring at the cyrillic alphabet signs until I managed to decipher enough so that I got on the train heading in the right direction. Seven stops latter and I was at station VDNKh, which looks nothing like VDNKh in cyrillic, then up the escalator - tip for Australians new to Russia - keep to the RIGHT if you are standing still on the escalator, I stood on the left and promptly managed to annoy several Muscovites until I had realised my mistake. Up the escalator and outside - much colder and darker now, it started to get dark at about 4:30pm and was completely dark by 5:30pm. Spotted an imposing building across the road from me and asked a flower seller, flowers for sale all over the place, if that building I could see was Cosmos - Da, Cosmos, was her reply and she then pointed me in the direction of the underpass that would take me safely across the very busy road. The underpass was a sight to behold, completely lined by booths selling all sorts of domestic items - drinks of all kinds, including alcoholic, food, hats, lingerie, chocolate, magazines, ... Out the otherside of the underpass I passed several food vans and the found the path up to the hotel.
The Cosmos is a very large semicircular building with a long ramp leading up to it, which was snow covered and quite slippery. I managed to keep my feet all the way up. Arriving at the front desk, I checked in with relative ease although they do take your passport away which is a little alarming. The girl at the reception desk was somewhat surprised to see me on my own, but was happy enough to give me my double room once I assured her that Belle would be joining me on Tuesday. So after nearly 30 hours of traveling I was safe at my hotel. I took a trip downstairs to find a bottle of water and then it was in to the shower and then in to bed. There were approximately 16 channels available on the TV, 4 in English - BBC World, CNN and two others. I watched TV briefly but mainly I just had my self a well deserved (I think anyway) nights rest.
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