Getting to Russia

We're in Russia to watch a satellite launch in relation to UG's job. There's a reason I call him the Uber Geek.

We'll be meeting up with a group of VIPs from the company that purchased the satellite, the company that built it, and some hosts from the company that coordinates the launch of the satellite (ILS). This group will do a little bit of sightseeing in Moscow, and travel together to Kazakhstan for the launch.

To get here, we took KLM through Amsterdam. At one point, I felt we were going to be trapped in Schipol airport for the rest of our lives. I probably complained here about Schipol before, and I still hate it. I booked with KLM, knowing we had to connect at Schipol. But the flight was cheap and UG wanted to go back to the Science Center. (No, that's not code, he goes to Amsterdam for the Science Center.) I knew that the Amsterdam to Moscow portion would be on Aeroflot, but I didn't realize until we tried to check in at Calgary yesterday (this afternoon? who knows when you're flying trans-Atlantic overnight?) that Aeroflot and KLM have no connection to each other. So, our luggage was checked through, but we couldn't get boarding passes for our flight to Moscow. They told us in Calgary that we could ask when we landed how to get a boarding pass. I wanted to ask her if she'd ever been to Schipol herself. But seeing as she was a KLM employee, and Schipol is their hub, I bit my lip. But of course, we land over an hour late and there was no people anywhere near the gate. After a 5 minute walk, we found "self serve connection terminals", which are only helpful if you are looking for a KLM boarding pass. Then we found a transfer assistance desk actually manned by people, but not Aeroflot people. They told us to come back at 10am, it was 9:45. Okay, another 15 minutes of wandering. UG wants some food, but nothing high in carbs or deep fried. He appears to be out of luck. At 10am, we went back to the transfer desk. I asked the one person who hadn't been there before if she was with Aeroflot. No. The woman who told us to come back at 10am leaned over and said "11am", in a tone that suggested she was sick of having to deal with us.

Eventually we found a generic information desk, and the woman there (the first person able to answer a question without acting like it was seriously interrupting her work) confirmed that the desk we'd been harassing was in fact the correct place, but they don't usually show up until 2 hours before the flight. So, we're looking at 11:30am.

Landing was no fun, either. There was a heavy fog, which means that flights have to wait longer for a turn to land. We circled for 30 minutes, and then taxied for another 25. By the time we actually got to a gate, and to the 2 toilets available for several gates, I thought I was going to wet one of only 2 pairs of pants I brought with me. Great start to a trip! Clearly, Schipol can't be held accountable for the weather. But how about putting the runway somewhere near the terminal to avoid driving in from the next county?

In Moscow, ILS arranged to have us met at the airport by an English speaking guide, and a chauffeur driven Mercedes. UG has decided this is how we will be picked up from airports from now on. The hotel is much more central than I expected. We can see the Bolshoi Theatre from the front street, and there are a lot of shops and restaurants around. On a map, it looked a lot more spread out. We passed a lot of "soviet era" apartment blocks on the way in from the airport, which are much nicer than I expected. I had pictured grey cinder block complexes, like the worst of low income settlements I have seen in Canada and the US. The ones built by Stalin are built from stone, and rival sandstone buildings at home. The ones built by Kruschev are a tan coloured brick. As we sped by, even the brick seems to have some character, as if it were hand made, or there is variation in the colour of each brick. All of them have wooden balconies, most of which are not aging well. And there are clothes hanging from most, along with regular broken windows, which give the buildings an air of poverty seen anywhere. But the construction of the building itself is rather quite nice. At least interspersed with the new, brightly lit shops and theatres. Maybe when these buildings are all you can see, they aren't so nice.

There is quite a bit of snow on the ground, which we saw from the air and in fields outside the city. Near the hotel, being an urban area, it's all been cleared away. We passed a square which is obviously used as snow storage. In my jet lagged confusion, I thought the dirty, melting piles of snow were art sculptures. It's rather cool, 1 or 2 degrees C. Our guide was horrified to see that I was just wearing a sweater and UG was wearing a hoodie. Apparently we are much more accustomed to winter temps than her southern France guests from yesterday.

On the way in, we passed the spot where the Nazis were held back from entering Moscow, held back by tank stoppers which are still there. We were told that Hitler was bringing a train filled with black granite to build a monument when he took the city. After holding him back, the Russians confiscated the granite and used it in some of the local architecture. UG commented that they should have used it to line some urinals. The guide was horrified, "it wasn't the granite's fault!".

The hotel is nice, although the rooms have a very traditional decor. I realized at breakfast, while trying caviar with pancakes, and being offered champagne, that this is not the kind of place that is typically in UG's & my vacation budget. It's also not the hotel we were told we were staying at, we're much closer to the Kremlin. That explains why everything seems so much closer than I thought it would be! Fortunately I discovered this before we tried to walk to the cell phone store UG had looked up in advance as being a short walk from the hotel. The ILS had left welcome cakes in our room, which we ate for dinner rather than going looking for food, and some nesting dolls customized with the images of satellites and rockets. We unpacked and went to sleep. I woke up roughly every 2 hours, and tried to do math on the time. "The clock says 1am, what time is that really? Oh, yeah, 1 am. ZZZZZZ" 7:30 seems to be the final wake up time, although I feel like I've been hit by a truck and could sleep for another 12 hours. We're going to do some sight seeing today before the official activities start this evening.