Moscow welcomed me home with a beautiful - albeit cold - morning. Sparkling sunshine and crisp air made the quick morning walk a delight. I’m now sitting here waiting for the water man to come and remove the water cooler. It makes too much noise and we don’t need something that big. The water man is like the cable guy, they give you a five hour range of times when they might come and you had better be here or they’ll not reschedule for weeks.
The flight home was easy and on time. I had two checked pieces of luggage and one carry-on, which is a lot of luggage for me but I purchased lots of things in Germany that we can’t get here, including a new piece of luggage to carry all the goodies. Lufthansa continues to be an excellent airline with great service from check-in to touch down. It took one minute to check in at the priority counter at Frankfurt International. Within this minute the bags were tagged and boarding card issued along with an invitation to the lounge (Star Alliance Gold Card works wonders overseas), and all of it done with a big smile. It took quite a while to get through security due to the heightened tensions in Europe. I had to play a little bit of my harmonica, just to prove it wasn’t filled with C-4 or some other plastique. One of the security women clapped when I played the opening strains of La Marseillaise. Click on the button on the right to hear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise
The plane to Moscow was an Airbus 320 and Lufthansa has a funny way of dealing with Business Class. Every seat on the plane is exactly the same in terms of pitch and width. (31.3”/17.3”) which makes it difficult to sell Business Class in terms of comfort. So what LH does is to block the middle seat for Business Class and then they have these clever little trays that come down from the middle seat with a place for your elbow and an insert for a glass. You can then lift up the armrest and all of a sudden you have 19.8 inches of width. They have these little trays on the first eight rows of the aircraft and they have a sliding partition so that if there are only a few folks in Business they will move the partition to make the first four rows business and the rest coach. Well yesterday I was in row 8 on the aisle and there was someone on the window but no one in the middle seat when they closed the doors. I knew where the little latch was that releases the tray and I engaged it and lowered the tray to the delight of the guy on the window.
I don’t know if it set off an alarm but all of a sudden a flight attendant was there telling me that I couldn’t have the tray down, that was only for business class. I gently inquired as to what difference it would make since the seat was empty and we weren’t asking for any business class amenities. She said that if others see it they would want to do it. I reminded her that the rows behind me didn’t have the tray and the two rows ahead of me had three per row so they couldn’t use them. I smiled and promised to raise the tray and lock it before landing so no one would see it on the way out. She smiled and said that would be okay. Gotta love the Germans, play it by the rules until you are called on it. Other than that, it was a swell flight. They don’t have any entertainment on the 320s since they are used for flights under four hours and I guess they figure you should be able to entertain yourself for that long. They do, however, provide a beverage service with free wine, beer, juices, sparkling wine and soft drinks. They also serve a hot meal with two choices; yesterday was a very good chicken breast with fresh veggies and the other was a Bavarian wurst with potato salad and cabbage. Just like the old days where the tray had a salad, hot bread and butter, cheese, a little chocolate bar and a delicious Zwetschenkuchen, plum cake.
We landed about ten minutes late and I was sure that I would have to wait for the 7:30 train to Moscow since I knew there was no hope of getting my luggage and getting all the way to the train station in twenty five minutes. I cleared customs in two minutes and looked to see which carousel my bags would be on. In the amount of time it took to go to the bathroom and get a luggage cart, they announced our luggage was coming up. My two bags were among the first to arrive and I decided to try for the 7pm train. I was off in a shot and it felt like that old O.J. Simpson ad for Hertz. I was tooling down the airport terminal, evading folks as I sprinted with my cart to the ticket counter. I had exact change, got my ticket and started the long sprint to the train arriving just in time to toss my bags into the car and hop on as the doors closed and we took off. I was huffing and puffing like a sixty-four year old and dropped to my seat in exhaustion.
We got to the metro station at 7:45 and I started hauling my three bags toward the Metro stop. It is a fact of life that train and metro stations in Moscow are built with the assumption that everyone is traveling with one small bag. The doors don’t open to allow two bags through, the turnstiles are too narrow so you have to push one bag and pull the other, and there are certainly no luggage carts. I struggled down to the metro, hopped on at exactly two minutes to eight and hopped off at exactly eight ten and proceeded to schlep my bags to the apartment. Cindy was waiting for me with a lovely dinner and cocktail service that would rival any first class flight. Her little uniform was also adorable. Before we had cocktails I had her sit down and I started to unpack all the bags. I had purchased five bottles of assorted booze, two pounds of German coffee, a big bag of Gummi Bears, a big tin of Mozart Kugeln (great candies from Vienna), two blue pashmina shawls, a bottle of German honey, four back issues of the International Herald Tribune, a small computer bag, and four bottles of sparking water. All of that in addition to my clothes, computer and accessories, earphones, iPod and toilet kit. Now you know why I needed to get a new suitcase and why the two bags were so heavy.
Ok, the water man cometh and goeth so I’m going out on the town. More later, wm
I set out to visit Chekhov’s Moscow home and was very disappointed that it turned out to be the writer Anton’s home and not the navigator Pavel Andreievich of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. However, since I was there I gave it a look-see and the garden was worth the walk. Good thing too since the museum was closed and the garden was all I could visit. No Cherry Orchard and no Seagulls, what a bummer. It was a good two-hour walk and it was just an incredible fall afternoon.
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| Anton's Home |
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| Pavel's Home |
Best from Moscow, Cindy and Wm
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