After a rather intense last week before vacation we’d managed to get a rough idea on what to pack and get a lot of it in actual bags. We had about an hour before we should leave home and that’s when we got the tip that even though visa can be solved on arrival, waiting there is less than ideal. So I send in three visa applications at 08:57, given they should be OK and be done within 24 hours according to the website that would leave us almost 8 minutes before the plane would land according to schedule. We gobble down the last breakfast, empty the trash and head out enjoying the 2° grey skies.

We get to the airport fine, a long with a lot of other people and even check-in is smooth (despite the slight stressful detail that Juni’s middle names were lost somewhere between the travel agency and Aeroflot – meaning ticket and passport doesn’t match exactly). We were however advised to not save the passport-control until last minute since it was a lot of people today and “they don’t wait for anyone”. Said and done, we moved from one control to another and eventually got on the plane. First leg was a breeze, we enjoyed our iPads and had a light snack.

We had 3 hours in Moscow airport while we wait for the final leg, and it seems there was quite a lot more to do since I was here last (which was more than a decade ago to be fair) We managed to get some cigarettes for Kalle & Gunnel and diapers (for Juni) which we hadn’t forgot to bring – we’d however placed all of them in the checked in luggage. I finished the book Saturn’s children by Charles Stross – which was OK, but nothing extraordinary and left the sci-fi for once and started to read Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl – that was recommended by a colleague. Juni had a great time at the playgrounds and we finally boarded the last leg.

Juni handled the travel like a champ and fall asleep from her iPad eventually – however a screaming child is never far away and in our case the row behind us, I was slightly surprised that Juni slept through it but won’t complain. Russian service is Russian service, and after waiting for two hours since departure we got our dinner, and after some searching they indeed found out that they had “special food” for me (vegetarian) prepared and after that I tried to get some sleep.