Thursday 17^th April

I trek halfway across Moscow looking for number 81 Crass-Spassky street or something like that to find the airline office so I can change my flight from Saturday to tomorrow.  The main reason for the trek is that there is no number 81, in fact the highest number I can find after looking up and down, backwards and forwards, over the Irish Sea is number 28.  By process of elimination, I backtrack and find the ticket office at number 18.  This after hanging on the telephone à la Debbie Harry for hours yesterday to find that I can’t just change the ticket online or even over the phone, oh no, remember where you are, young man!  If a simple task can possibly be made more complicated, you can be sure that it will be.

Eventually, I find the office, wait in a queue (of course) and get the flight changed for tomorrow morning, then head back to the office via the metro.

I like the metro in Moscow, although it does require the ability to read Cyrillic.  Once you can do that, it is fast, cheap, clean and efficient.

Once in the office, I confirm with Polina that we will go for a drink / meal after work as a way of saying spasibo for her great efforts.

I then try to dot all the I’s and cross all the t’s for the following week.  There are yet more flights and hotels to be booked, and I also have to coincide with a visit from Melissa from the UK the week after next.  If all I had to do was the techy bits, this job would be a doddle.

The day drags but eventually Polina takes me via the metro (she’s surprised I actually have my own ticket already) to a nice bar / café place where we grab a few drinks and a bit of food while a band play.  The place is full of European and American business people, most of them well on their way to being pissed, so is lively enough, and Polina gives me more insight into life in Russia and more specifically Moscow.  She promises that she will come up with a non-touristy guide to Moscow, to see the real city.  Deal!