Home to Moscow

Back to Moscow. When I return to Moscow, a kind of dread fills the pit of my stomach. The feeling you get when going to see a relative you don't like or the feeling you get when waiting for an exam result. We flew via Nice to Vienna to Moscow, to save air fair money on our return trip to Russia from a short summer holiday in France.

While sitting at Nice airport, eating my pre-made homemade ham sandwiches, I felt very poor. There were people of all ages, suntanned and heavy with shopping bags, dressed in white linen and wearing sunglasses with mobile phones glued to their ears. Private jets waited on the runways to carry their wealthy passengers back to where ever they had come from. I felt as if I were in Moscow. The flight was bad as mini me who is under two, screamed for the length of the flight as did two children behind me. By the time I arrived in Moscow I was as high as a kite after taking four Valium pills. The taxi trip back to Moscow center took as a long as the flight! Which screams madness in Moscow city road and transport planning.

In Moscow, you see such people, you see Bentley's, Ferrari's and Porches on almost every street, you see such vulgar displays of wealth, you can smell the money and hear the screams of people dragged off into the woods by bad men because they had not paid a debt or because they had stepped on another persons toes. Nice felt uncomfortable and this remained with me until we touched down in Moscow at Domodedovo airport, the best of the bad airports. The funny thing about that airport, is that when you arrive there is only one lift to serve all arriving passengers. One up and one down. People waited loaded up and sweating (for there is no air-con) with cling film rapped baggage on trolleys, queuing (Russian style) angrily to go down to the car park pick up point. Welcome to Russia.Welcome to madness, smoke and bizarre extremes.