Travel Shorts – Moscow, Russia

In June 2010, I did a train tour of Scandinavia that ended in Russia. For my departure, I made the mistake of booking a very early flight and the airport in Moscow is over an hour outside the city.

Unless you had my taxi driver.

Yup. It was three in the morning, pouring rain and the road was more like a back country secondary road than an interstate. And my taxi driver was in a bigger hurry than I was.

He did 160 kph all the way.

I was too afraid to ask the driver to slow down. I didn’t want to distract him.

He made the trip in forty minutes.

Needless to say, I was wide awake when I went into the airport. I dropped my luggage off at the Lufthansa counter and headed towards my gate. As I ascended the escalator, I could see that security used the full body scanners.

The ones that every Star Trek fan out there fantasizes about.

I stepped off the escalator and saw there was only a couple of staff at that early hour. One young woman pointed to the seats, indicating that I should sit down. Then she picked up a tray and pointed to the word “SHOES” on the side.

No problem, I said and hauled off my sneakers and placed them in the bin.

Then the woman handed me another tray with the word “CLOTHES” on the side.

I looked at the woman and said “Lady, as bad as the taxi drivers are, I don’t want to leave Russia that bad.”

🙂