Moscow, home of the fur hat

We arrived in Moscow on Tue, Feb 7 at 5:20PM. What looked like a short line at passport control took over an hour. Uuugh. Once we got to the front of the line, all of us made it through except Greg who was detained and asked to wait at the desk with no explanation (at least not in English). He waited. And waited. Then he waited some more. Meanwhile, the other 3 of us were on the other side of the glass enclosure, unable to speak to him or communicate, other that we could see each other. Keith and I took turns waiting, keeping Greg within our eyesight constantly to ensure that he was not whisked away by Russian airport Police. Eventually, after about an hour there was a change in shift for the passport control workers, and Greg was eventually waved through with no further explanation about his detention. His opinion was that Russia was just "hazing" him- testing him to see if he had what it took to be in Russia.

Russians seem to be most accustomed to waiting patiently and to dealing with bureaucracy, perhaps it's another vestige of the Soviet era. The people behind us in line at passport control were three large Russian men. They insisted in standing extremely close to us in line, no matter how much we moved forward or how often Jim, our trumpet player (clad in a leather motorcycle jacket and cap and looking a bit tough) gave them dirty looks. They just seemed to encroach on us. Ah well, like I said comfort isn't everything.

Eventually we cleared customs, declaring all of our instruments and other electronic valuables so that we'll not have a problem taking them out of the country. (Hopefully.) When we got outside the restricted zone we looked for the "English-speaking driver" from the US Embassy who was assigned to retrieve us from the airport. We looked and looked. And looked. A "helpful" Russian man spotted us as Americans with a ridiculous amount of heavy luggage and offered us his services and his van to Moscow. I went to try to call the embassy, which was difficult as first I had to buy a phone card, then figure out how to use the phone card (all without a word of Russian). To make another long (probably boring) story short, I at last reached the embassy who told me that they had no record of any cars sent to Sheremetyevo airport to pick up anyone and that it would take them at least an hour to get us one, which they didn't even have... Great. Welcome to Russia.

After looking at our new "friend's" price list ($150 for a van to Moscow) I returned to the band, who was waiting with our luggage to suggest that we find another ride. Meanwhile, in a stroke of luck, our real driver actually showed up. Our assistant from the embassy, Maria (Masha) called on the driver's cell asking frantically about where we'd been and what had taken us so long. Oy. We stepped outside to the van and we were brutally assaulted by the bitter cold wind and air. It was around 0F and we were not ready for it. We piled into the van (where the heat didn't seem to work to well) and slumped into the seats, demoralized by our long day and slouched towards the National Hotel in Moscow.

Fortunately, upon arrival we discovered that our hotel was a 5-star Le Meridian. The large, comfortable rooms and a gourmet dinner, at a reasonable price, took the edge of the day off quite nicely. We crashed, wondering what the next day had in store for us in this strange land.