made it

I flew into Yerevan at 4:00 am, 13 hours ago. Got a ride to the temporary apartment where we are staying. Slept til noon and got up. The trip was interesting.

Kiev was a flash. Beautiful people. An hour in the airport, so what is there to say? Coming in, from the air, I saw field after snow-covered field. Ukraine in winter. It looked very peaceful. Boarding the plane for Moscow, me an two businessmen, at the end of the line to climb the stairs off the tarmac to the plane, paused to watch an AirFrance 747 taxi out from next to our plane and take off. You don't often see these big planes moving from upclose and outside of them. It was funny. It was a really beautiful moment, all three of us just stopped and watched this behemoth lumber off across the icy runway and time seemed to slow down for just a moment.

Moscow airport was all bustle. I was the only one from the Kiev flight to have to transfer and go to another terminal. SO after sitting around for a bit, this pimply kid walked up and asked if I was going to Yerevan. He led me to a gate and down the stairs, where we got into a big post-Soviet van, which drove us across the airport to the other terminal. There were a couple of short-of-breath moments where I thought I might be getting kidnapped or something, as there was no explanation as to where we were going...but I rode it out, sat tight, imagined my escape plan and felt like i was in some action movie, trundling across the runway of the Moscow airport, which was buried under two feet of snow. Come on. Thats totally the opening to a bond movie or something.

The new terminal was busy and fluorescent. Alot more asian tourists than I was expecting. And then it made sense. Moscow is probably a hub for East-West travel. Duh.
The food was especially bad airport food, but I had a russian beer and a double shot of espresso. Not in that order.
I've gotta go look at an apartment. I'll continue this later.