Back in the USSR

Saturday afternoon I arrived back in Moscow, after possibly the most uneventful two flights ever, I wasn't charged excess baggage for my clearly overweight/small house bag, I got a seat with the most legroom I've ever seen on the flight from Dublin to Prague, saw an amazing sunrise in the morning over Dublin and a cool sunset later that afternoon over Moscow, my bag actually managed to make the difficult transition from Dublin to Russia without needing an overlong rest in Prague (a first for me!) and I got a taxi home, with a seatbelt (shock horror!), for a not too extortionate price...in short, it was all coming up Fiona. (I figured I was owed a lots of good travel karma after the recent horrible travel experiences!)

Saturday night our friend Josh had his birthday party in his flat. You may have heard whisperings that Moscow is a tad on the chilly side at the moment so Josh was a bit worried that the atmosphere in his apartment would be slightly frosty seeing as his heating isn't working. We were all warned to dress for the occasion so when we turned up wearing our layers (some of us may have still been acclimatising and may have been wearing 2 feather and down duvet-coats,a wooly cardigan, two tops, a thermal vest, tights under her jeans, two pairs of wooly socks and three pairs of gloves/mittens, the michelin man look, trust me, its going to be huge!) the apartment didn't seem to be too cold, the kitchen especially seemed to be almost tepid. Josh explained that he had recently had the novel idea of turning on the oven to full heat and leaving the door open, instant heater, just don't stand too close. It actually worked quite well, especially seeing as nobody pays for gas in this country. A good night was had by all, though Josh may have woken up with less hair than he had woken up with the morning before, the result of over-zealous 'I'll just cut off the little curly bit at the bottom....now I just have to even it up...' oh dear! I'll have pictoral evidence in the next post, I promise.

Last night, newly-shorn Josh, Anna and I went to the friendly neighbourhood casino to watch what we were told was a very important american football game - Denver Broncos vs Pittsburgh Stealers. Josh having being born in Denver he's quite the fan and his mum had threatened us earlier in the day saying that we had to go. Unfortunately the Broncos didn't manage to seize victory but myself and Anna now semi-understand American football. Josh was last seen drowning his sorrows in a large bottle of vodka (see earlier post from St Petersburg, that size!!)

Thats all the scandal for now, its actually not that cold here, you just need to wear as many clothes as possible! We are very much enjoying the fact that we have no classes to go to and are spending our time sleeping, reading and watching dvds, not too shabby!