Tuesday 8^th April

Another day, another delay.  I guess the taxi drivers have sense and don’t really want to come across to this side of town, but eventually one turns up and we head back into the main part of town to the offices. 

The lads in the UK had done a sterling job on the one PC, and had cleared all but one lurking little Trojan which I identified and destroyed like the bug killer that I am.  Back to the plot then, I get the updates loading on the system while scanning it with just about every bug hunting tool known to mankind just to confirm that the system is indeed clean, and not in need of  a rebuild.  The laptop in the office seems to be running too slowly for our liking so just as we think we can wrap up things, we take a last minute decision to rebuild the system from scratch which means a delay of a couple of hours, but time for more tea and some birthday cake from Natasha whose birthday it was yesterday.

We use the waiting time to arrange the next leg of the project, right across the rest of the continent to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.  We go through various scenarios as travel from where we are to where we need to go is not an easy matter and decide to get the direct flight which means hanging around Krasnoyarsk till Friday.  I’m not enamoured by the prospect, but grit my teeth and prepare to give it a fair crack of the whip.

Eventually we finish, take the usual photographs of the router and the server – David Bailey has got nothing on me, I’m telling you.  A couple of snaps of the people in the office and we make our goodbyes to head back to the delights of the hotel.

Nik wants to grab a quick meal in the hotel then head for bed but I really feel quite depressed about having another meal there unnecessarily (breakfast we have no choice really), so I make the bold decision to risk walking the mean streets of downtown Krasnoyarsk to a Peoples Bar & Grill, similar to the one in Novosibirsk where I’d had the Russian Flag cocktail.

I had noticed that the forecast had said it was going to get colder but wasn’t prepared for just how cold.  It was already -12 and falling rapidly and a raw wind was cutting me to the bone as I strode on through the wind and snow to the restaurant.

Once inside, I impressed myself by ordering the whole meal in Russian (well it sounded Russian-ish to me anyway) and had a nice time tucking in to good food in decent surroundings.  Life was good again.

I spoke too soon. Or thought too soon as I was on my own and speaking would have been a bit daft really.  The phone rings and it’s Polina in Moscow who tells me that there is only a single seat available on the flight to Vladivostok. Ah! A quick few phone calls and emails later and it is decided that I should go alone to Vladivostok while Nik returns to Moscow on Thursday then home.  It’s a scary prospect, but circumstances dictate it will be thus so that’s the way it is.

I leave the restaurant and it’s got even colder so I wimp out of walking back to the hotel, and with the confidence of having ordered my meal in Russian, and a couple of beers inside me, I feel that I must now rise to the challenge of working alone in Russia and manage to convince a well dodgy looking taxi driver to take me back to Fawlty Towers.

I’d brought some bottles of Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce out as a small gift to Nik when I came back from the UK last week so we have a few really good Bloody Marys while playing back the journey we had made together, and regretting that we couldn’t sign off together on the shores of the Pacific.

So our last day together will be tomorrow and we decide to go on a sightseeing tour of the Krasnoyarsk area.  It has got to be better than what we have seen so far, surely?