We arrived safely in Moscow about 3pm local time (7am EST for those back home). The Moscow airport is a little old school interesting, kind of felt like I had gone back in time a little. We had a long wait in the Passport check point because two or three full planes had landed at the same time and they only had five lanes open for non-Russians, two lanes for Russian citizens, and one electronic passport lane (did you know they had those?) for a total of eight lanes for the entire airport. After a while the citizens’ lanes had long been cleared so by some miracle they waved us over and we got though about 15-20 minutes faster than it would have been.
Then we loaded up a very old looking bus and headed to our dorms in metro Moscow (the airport is about ten miles outside the city kind of like Detroit Metro). This took forever because of rush hour traffic. I had thought Detroit rush hour traffic was bad at times but it has nothing on Moscow traffic! However, it wasn’t as bad as regular daily traffic in Port Au Prince, Haiti (worse traffic in the world!) but still pretty bad for an average Joe from the Midwest…
When we got to the dorm build I had the fortunate pleasure of learning that our teachers’ rooms were on the fifth floor, that’s the top floor, by the way… If the morning movement class doesn’t whip me in shape, those stairs certainly will! Then…my room is tiny! It’s like 6’ wide and 15’ long but the bed and closet (which take up one whole half the room lengthwise) make is even smaller. I think I might actually have the smallest room of the bunch, and I’m the biggest guy in the group…
I also fried my good power strip when I plugged it into the converter…apparently it didn’t like something! So, I’m stuck with just one “American” outlet for now. Perhaps tomorrow I could buy a cheap Russian alarm clock that would work in these plugs. I did manage to find an alarm clock that will work on my computer so I hope I wake up to it in the morning.
Moscow is a pretty interesting city. The mix of old Soviet Block apartments mixed in with the newer buildings from the last twenty years makes for a bit of a surreal landscape. One block you feel like you’re back in the Cold War and the next you’re in the 21st Century again. All-in-all, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the city over the next couple days…
Look for pictures to arrive soon as well…
Glad to hear you made it to your destination. You were just arriving in Moscow when I was leaving for work after a good night's sleep! I bet you will sleep well tonight.
ReplyDeleteEnjoying your posts! Have a great time and I look forward to your updates!
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