Well – I am on my way to Siberia… this time voluntarily (unlike once, very long time ago…). Leaving Monday 11/4 arriving Sheremetievo (Moscow airport made famous by one Snowden) Tuesday mid-day 11/5; then – 11-hours layover, waiting for the connection flight to Tomsk (my eventual destination). That stinks… luckily I do not have to take out my luggage, get it here through the customs and then re-check it in (as it was in the old days) for the last leg to Tomsk. Went to one of the airport clubs (named after the great Siberian Lake Baikal) – they offer 3-hours sleep in a clean bed for US$70.00! …geez! - no wonder Snowden was frantic to get out of the airport… Well – my stomach was growling and it was time to eat. Time to change some $$$. They gave me 28 rubels per US buck! Knowing that the exchange is a bit over 32 rb to a US$, I asked the lady in the window when the US$ fell down so much? I got a nice smile and an honest answer: “that is the price of changing the money at the airport” – well, things are changing in Russia… in the old days it was a sour and disdainful look and a bark: “that’s the rate.” The Patio – a fake Italian restaurant serving fake “Italian” food, but a really good espresso (Italian made machine cannot make it fake if the coffee beans are right – and they are!), also, being a Guinness drinker, I was happy to see they have a quite good Czech black beer on draught. Less than 3-hours left for departure; waiting by the gate is as good as any place else (except, perhaps in Lake Baikal for US$70/3-hours). There are two other flights leaving from the same gate ahead of my flight, so I found a nice corner seat by a fellow with a lot of shapeless luggage packages wrapped all over in a cellophane kind of sticky tape (quite popular with Russian and some East-European travelers who use rather variety of cloth-sacks instead of regular suitcases or travel kit-bags). Then my neighbor got up for his flight leaving behind one of the packages. When I called him telling him that he forgot one, he answered that it is not his. Weary of recent bombings in the Russian cities "allegedly" by Islamist fundamentalists I reported the “abandoned” luggage to the gate attendant. It has taken two more fellow travelers to report it to two other gate agents, before someone came to look at it. That “someone” was a captain of the airport police. She came in her full attire: big visor round cap with her rank on stiff epaulettes, light-blue shirt with her name tag, service badges and police insignia, dark-blue mini-skirt topped by a wide leather belt with a big leather holster with “nagan” (handgun in Russian) and decorated ankle boots on at least 3” nail-thin glass-transparent high heels… Neither Rodgers and Hammerstein nor contemporary Hollywood could create a funnier looking character… Alas, she refused to let me photograph herL. She looked at the package (without touching it) and began a five-minute conversation with someone on her cell phone, briefly describing the package. Five-minutes later comes a blonde sergeant in similar attire, except that it is all green and her soft cap tucked under her epaulettes. Now it is her turn to describe the package (without touching it) to someone on her cellphone. Then, five-minutes later comes a man in military garb (with no rank or epaulettes); looks at the luggage, picks it up to look at it closer… at that moment a man runs out of the glass-enclosed room for smokers and grabs the package off the hands of the guy… he is asked if that is his, and when he answers affirmative he is asked for his ID card and taken for further “clarifications”. End of the show. The captain and the sergeant click-clack in unison with their glass-high heels away and my boarding time arrived…
Seeya'all in Tomsk...