From Ronald: in Moscow

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August 19th 2008

Published: August 19th 2008

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FamilieFrey

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We leave Dragoer - by bus!

Hi, everybody!
Yesterday, 18th of August
we started our journey to Moscow. The first impression was a strange one: it really seemed that nobody, absolutely nobody was able to smile! We arrived in a totally filled up and chaotic bagage-hall, 31 Celsius outside, no aircondition, and three exited but exhausted kids. Having our bagage, proceeding to the immigration counter hall was the next step. Wheeeee! 5.981 human beeings puttet together in a small hall, at this temperature, trying to get through 4 counters! And. we where last (anybody there with experience in hurrying with three kids? :-) )! Clearly, Isabel was not very happy. Then, after 5 minutes (!), a very serious looking, non-smiling officer made his way through the crowd in our direction. He ORDERED us to follow him, NOW! Shit - what now? We ended up at the diplomats immigration counter, where everybody was smiling - to Isabel!! Really kid-loving people, this Russians!
We had arranged a transfer to our hotel. Turned out to be a good idea. Even though we had studied the cyrillic alphabet, we where totally lost in the jungle of cyrillic information, about 40 km from our destination. The driver was smiling, too! He putted

Flight

Ronald and Easy on flight from Copenhagen to Moscow

us into a kind of russian Renault whateverthenamewas, and drove us to our hotel, with many stops on some bridges and other, exponed places on thee highway (!), to explain us the beauty of his city. He would have been arrested 3 times, in Denmark, for hazardous trafficing! Though, we arrived at the hotel. 27 storeys tall, a few hundred rooms. Surprise, surprise: here, the smiles stopped again. We got 2 rooms, rather comfy, and went to bed at 1:30 AM local time. 2 hours ahead of MEZ summer time. 29 Celsius

Today,
we woke up to meet a warm but rainy day. Not an uglybugly rain, as we are used to in DK, but a nice and warm rain.
For the first day, we had ordered breakfast - what an experience! Scenario: a large music hall, with a few hundred guests at four-seated tables, a scene with a suprmarket-style electric sintesyzer, and a elder pianoplayer of the very non-smiling kind, playing the worst of the worst russian-german Hausfrauen-Musik like Aloah hey, Kalinka, Hawaii a.s.o. at about 88 dBa. The breakfast buffet was good, varied and plenty: Helene loves pasta, and that was what she had - together with

Sunny

Marika's new sunglasses on the flight to Moscow

a slice of melon...
Off we went to the Metro, Kreml and the little basilica beside, lots of police, military, nonsmilers and 5 hours intensive sightseeing, resulting in tired Frey's and a relaxed evening. We noticed, that beside our children and maybe some other tourist's kids, the town seems consisting in adults. Don't they ever reproduce, the Russians? Does the population come from a party-conform manufactory? Is this the reason for their allmost maniac smiling to Isabel?
We will find out - tomorrow. Now, we go to bed. The trip has begun!

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