VM Irkutsk 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Awake at 06:15, make coffee, finish packing, breakfast, and out the door to the LRT station at 07:30. Just missed the 07:42 train, and the schedules are a bit delayed due to construction on the Lake St bridge. Arrive at MSP a few minutes late, and take my place at the end of the line for group check-in. The women's team appear to be a little more organized (or at least on time).
Red Bull Arena from the air
Departed MSP at 10:30 headed for JFK (New York City).
We arrive right on time as my count down timer begins to chime. We have a three hour layover before the flight to Moscow on a Delta Boeing 767-300ER. Eric and I have both upgraded our seats to Economy Comfort, which gets us an additional 4" pitch (leg room) and 50% more recline in the seat back. I think the additional $60. each way from JFK to Moscow and back will be well worth the cost.
I settle into my seat, which feels uncomfortable for some reason. I am situated right behind the bulkhead, so there is an extraordinary amount of room, but lacks the underseat storage for my backpack, and the close proximity of the seatback table tray. But something else seems strange about the seat. Eric is seated right behind me for the flight, and he, too, thinks the seat cushion cusion is shorter. Strange. Flight is uneventful (thank goodness) and we arrive in Moscow at 10:30. Thanks to a little blue sleeping pill, I am able to get about five hours sleep.
We get thru passport control in no time, and find our Russian attache waiting.
The Russians have an election for President Putin on March 4th
We've got a motorcoach scheduled to take us on a tour of Moscow.
We begin our tour from SVO at 11:50 and head in to the notorious traffic. We pick up our tour guide, Daria at the Beloruskaya Metro Station. Daria talks a mean streak, non-stop from block to block in a never ending stream of historical facts and figures. We finally arrive at Red square just about 13:00, where we disembark and walk up to get team photos in from of the Church of St. Basil (the ornate onion domed church that is an icon of Red Square).
We then get a fifteen minute walk about the GUM department store. Kevin, Eric and I have all been here at least three times, so we know exactly where to find the restrooms on the third floor. An amazing shopping center with glass and steel barrel vault over the three story elite shopping experience.
We visit our favored grocery store, and contemplate some small bread and cheese. But we are going to certainly be stopping later for eats, so we just browse, despite Eric experiencing serious food envy. Some of the sturgeon was US$700. for a small tin (maybe two ounces).
We board the bus again for the pedestrian mall (Arbat street) where we can find some food. Many of the group stop at Mi-Mi (Moo-Moo, signified by large cow statue in front) where a buffet lunch can be had for about US$7. As the large group goes in, several others of us decide to explore elsewhere. Daria has described that this week is the beginning of the end of the winter season and is celebrated with pancakes, so ... that is our quest. We find a nice cafe, where I enjoy a cafe americano for 159 rubles (US$5.30) and some salmon caviar pancakes 269r ($8.97).
Wow! Moscow is an expensive city.
We meet back at the bus at 16:00 and head for the Cathedral on the Moscow River; built in 2000, it is new, but built on old sketches and drawings.
The interior is very ornate, and is based upon the Orthodox Christian designs. We arrive at 16:30 and enjoy only half an hour inside. Eric has explored the basement and indicates that there is yet more below, which is hard to believe given the vast spaces in the main space.
At 17:00 we're all back on the bus and ready to head into the propka (russian for cork - traffic jamb). We go about two blocks to cross the Moscow River bridge, and it takes us a full thirty minutes to reach the near side entrance. Another fifteen minutes, and we are on the river road, just the other side of the Cathedral. Yes, that was almost an hour to get from one side of the Cathedral to the other. It's almost like NASCAR, but only right hand turns have taken us basically around the block - but twice across the Moscow River in the middle of their rush hour. Now traveling along the river road in very little traffic, we are able to see one of the Russian Space Shuttles, Buran - the name that I chose for the bandy team (also means blizzard in Tatar).
Our tour concludes on Sparrow Mountain, the overlook in the Lushniki Sports District. There is a big game today at the stadium: CSKA Moscow host Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League. It is now 18:00 and we are at the overlook with vast views up and down the river and includes one of the seven Stalinist skyscrapers in the city. This one is the Moscow State University. Among the many vendors, there are several selling scarves and hats. Some of which represent the friendship scarves with half CSKA Moscow and the other half Real Madrid. I begin to bargin with one vendor, using my calculator method. I find his price to be 10 euro (US$13.), a little too high in my book, so I walk on. I find another stall with a really cool Locomotive scarf depicting all of their Russian League championships over the years as cars on a train. This may be for my friend, Brucio (www.dunordfutbol.com), but who knows, there may be even better scarves found this week.
We have only ten minutes to overlook, then it's back into the propka and on our way toward the center city to drop Daria off at a Metro, and continue on to SVO. It is 19:00, and we can expect an hour and a half to get to the airport in this traffic. Luckily, it only takes us another thirty minutes and by 19:45 we are in line at the check-in right behind Team Norway. Our flight boards at 00:55 for a 01:30 departure.
We look forward to another six hours in SVO, then a five hour flight across five time zones to our final destination of Irkutsk. We land just after noon on Wednesday local time.
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