Iron Maiden, Trials, Tribulations and Tide

Saturday, February 12, 2011

By now you know that my phone conversation with Mubarak ended well; still waiting to hear from Medvedev!

I must say that when I arrived at the airport yesterday, I did not dillydally once past customs. That is the spot where they set off the bomb that killed 36 people and I hurried out of the area to the Aeroexpress train ticket counter, which is on the opposite side of the terminal.  I found no comfort in reading an article while I waited for the train that said the bombing had been a ‘family affair’.

It was snowing quite hard as we approached Moscow and the pilot told us we were going to have to circle for thirty minutes since the airport was closed.  Normally, I would not like to hear that but I had hoped that we might land in the other big airport, which is much closer to our apartment.  The airport did open and we landed on time, instead of forty minutes early.  I’ve never been on a plane that taxied slower to the gate.  While the runway was nice and clean, the taxi areas were just a mess with lots of uneven surfaces due to ice build up.  This gave me more time to check out the Iron Maiden Final Frontier Tour Boeing 757 that was parked at one of the gates.  I’ve certainly heard of Iron Maiden even though I couldn’t hum any of their songs, but I was impressed that they had their own plane.  I was even more impressed when I found out that the band’s leader, Bruce Dickinson, is also the pilot for the plane!

Iron Maiden's 757

I really wanted to take a taxi to the apartment since I had three bags, but it was Friday afternoon and it had snowed and I knew it would be a three to four hour trip, so I opted for the train/Metro/walking option.  Actually, it wasn’t really walking; it was more like hauling and dragging.  The train was a piece of cake since I could take a luggage cart right to the train car.  However, getting the bags from the train to the Metro was a real pain in the rear.  You would think that a Metro stop that is at a major rail station would anticipate that people with luggage would use it, but it isn’t so.  There are no automated doors, which is really hard with three bags. There are no ramps, just two sets of stairs, which again isn’t easy with luggage and once you finally get into the Metro, you have to stand near the door, which is the only place that has space for luggage.

Once I got to my station it was a thirty-minute hike (normally about 10 minutes), dragging luggage through fresh snow that covered very old ice.  By the time I got to the apartment, I was sweating and sore and vowing never, never, never to travel with that much luggage.  If we had access to embassy mail, as the Canadians and British do, I could have mailed all the stuff back, but the US Embassy will not allow access to the mail to employees of AAS.  It was all worth it however when Cindy got home and realized I had brought her back everything that she needed. She showered me with favors!

We went to a restaurant last night that had been recommended by one of Cindy’s colleagues. It was a typical ethnic Russian place that was very attractive and had excellent food, perhaps the best we have had in Moscow, but oh my goodness was it expensive.  I kept looking and looking at the prices and tried to figure out how they could get so much money for so little food.  One eight-ounce bottle of water was six bucks and the cheapest little, little glass of wine was fifteen. The food was innovative; I started with little ravioli (called pelmeni) stuffed with salmon and served with lemon butter and red caviar on the side. Cindy had pelmeni stuffed with duck and fresh ginger in a marvelous sauce.  I really don’t mind paying lots of money for good food, but I draw the line on spending lots of money for bad wine.  Perhaps we were paying for the entertainment, which was quite nice and quite loud. It was like a gypsy band with violin, guitar, accordion and singer/tambourine lady.  I suppose that in a city with 114 billionaires, places like this can thrive.  Tonight I’m awake enough to cook.

We spend a little part of this afternoon cleaning the car, which had a one-week accumulation of ice and snow (you never would have guessed that Cindy had cleaned it off only last Sunday).  Once cleaned we had a heck of a time getting it out of the packed snow, so we placed tide detergent under the front wheels and it worked like a charm.  Tide should make that part of their advertising, ‘whiter than white, brighter than bright and provides wonderful traction.’

I slept for ten hours last night but I’m still a bit tired. I’m sure by tomorrow I’ll be one hundred percent alert, which will be in stark contrast to my fifty percent today.

Best wishes, Cindy and Wm.