Monday 14^th April

A friend of Katia and Viktor who we had met at the restaurant last night had asked me when I was leaving Vladivostok and was surprised when I said that I didn’t know, and that I hadn’t yet bought a ticket to return to Moscow.  That’s the nature of the job.  Sometimes what should be a 15 minute task takes a whole morning, sometimes what you think may take an afternoon is done and dusted within an hour.  There are so many known unknowns and unknown unknowns, to quote Mr Rumsfeld, that it would be folly to do anything other than have a guess at how long it will take.

Having said that, by midday, I know that I am making really good progress, and that while there is  still a lot to do, they are all relatively on the known side of the unknown spectrum, and barring a disaster, I should be done by the end of the day.  I make the decision to ask Polina to investigate flights back to Moscow for either tomorrow or Wednesday, and am more than pleasantly surprised to find that there is actually a flight tomorrow leaving at a really sensible time of the day, 1:30 pm so quickly ask her to book me a place.

Buoyed on by the fact that I don’t have to get up before I’ve gone to bed, I dot as many I’s and cross as many T’s as I can, tidy the place up, even do a lot of the documentation, take some photos and am done by just after 7pm.

Tanya takes Yelena, Julia and me back to the Bavarian place where we meet up with Artem, and again I eat far too much fish, sausages, soup, cabbage, and slosh back a few more house beers while watching another band do 2 sets, 1 of mainly Beatles and other English 60’s covers, the 2^nd set a more upbeat eclectic mix of James Brown, La Bamba, and a load of songs from Pulp Fiction.  All the way through I’m getting bombarded by questions asking about life in England, my travels, my shoe size, everything, but I don’t mind because I can see how intrigued they are by it all, and they are really great company.  Once more the beer wins the battle over my natural shyness and I am forced to dance the night away with 3 lovely girls.  Luckily, I’m fairly sure there are no pictures of me dancing so I can say that I was, once more, Fred Astaire meets John Travolta-esque in my efforts, and no one will know any different.

I get dropped off at the hotel, arranging to meet Tanya in the morning to go and collect my flight tickets before heading to the office for the last time.

I think I only get woken about 6 times during the night by phone calls, texts and emails, so that’s quite good, all things considered.