Hello from Moscow, 

 

DRAFT

 

The flight from Rostov in southern Russia is an adventure all its own. The Aeroflot airline is something out of the African bush pilot league. No assigned seats and everyone rushing to get a "good" seat. Box lunch for the meal. Smokers in every other seat! The plane looked like it had been assembled from parts salvaged from a junk yard.

 

The airport bus dropped me near the Kremlin and I took off on my mission of discovery and found a quite nice hotel used by and run by one of the airlines.

 

The first night at dinner the waitress seated two enticing women at my table even though there were several other unoccupied tables in the dining room. When I complained the women feigned disappointment, as they might well have been. Thinking some sort of scam likely, I dashed up to my room to check on the contents and then back down to the reception desk to request a different room as the women had learned my room number from the waitress.

 

The next day I wandered the Kremlin grounds and discovered a huge underground shopping mall right across the street from the Duma parliament building where president Yeltsin was being impeached.

 

The next day I hopped on a train? and headed west toward the Baltic states. 10/2011

 

Peace,

Fred Bellomy