The plane, a Boeing 767-300, descended through the clouds, revealing a dry runway under a gray sky. It had been a long flight, but that was to be expected, We'd left New York an hour late in the rain, but it was not raining at our destination. Airport runways are more-or-less anonymous, so there was nothing to really announce our location.
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But after touch-down, as we taxied toward the featureless buildings, I caught sight of a small church just beyond the airport's border. An unmistakable Russian Orthodox church. But this was not yet Russia; this was Moscow's Sheremetyevo-2 Airport. Welcome to the ghost house of the Soviet Union...
The building had been renovated to resemble something modern, but the grim-faced middle-aged women in uniform that awaited us were definitely
apparatchniki left-over from the Brezhnev era. No one smiled or spoke English. But they weren't really hostile; it was just that after a thousand years of bad government, they simply weren't too happy with anything...
It took an hour to get through passport control; some of it taken-up in the wrong line -- one that moved rather quickly I noticed. And then I noticed that everyone else in the line had maroon passports; and I took the time to decode the Cyrillic letters on the sign, and deduced that it was for holders of Russian Federation passports only. The other two open booths were already swarming with foreigners in no particular order, since there were no guide-ropes. Nor was there anyone present who spoke anything but a rather-unhappy Russian language...
By now it was almost 4 in the afternoon, but we'd made it to baggage claim; we were desperately trying to use our cell phone to call our tour company -- "unable to connect" it told us (at least that was in English.) We were supposed to have landed at 2 PM, and the transfer service only had a 2-hour wait limit. I spotted our battered luggage in the unclaimed area, as a charter group swirled around us. We joined them, and fortunately we were waved through customs by a young uniformed man who didn't seem to be concerned about us. And then, in the midst of the polyglot chaos, I saw the sign: "MR FENSTERMAN". I don't think I've ever been so happy to see my name in print...
