Part 8: Moscow first
Two months later.
With a travel backpack on my back, I walked through the aisles of Berlin’s Tegel Airport. Tocotronic on the ears, Saturday is suicide. That’s a different site, I thought, checked my luggage and headed for the gate. The plane was half empty. It was January. A window seat and I was happy like a little child. A window seat, how long ago that was! After two hours only Cyrillic writing and not a word of English. Where was the damn cash mashine? Sweat ran along parts of my body that I had not been aware of for a long time. Russia was damn warm in winter. With money and train ticket finally fading daylight outside and a sting in the lungs that stayed and stayed and that only subsided again on the train. New sweat. Jacket, scarf, hat and sweater number one off, quickly! It got dark in Domodedovo in no time – wasn’t that the airport where a bomb exploded at baggage claim a few months ago? – and the train rolled towards the megacity.
In a naive way, I was confident that I would quickly find Gianni’s hotel, or mine. A little cash could solve all sorts of problems! The first time I looked at the map was a bit late, I admit it, but I was so freaking lucky! The train stopped and I read in Latin script the name of Gianni’s hotel, just across the platform. Sweater number one, scarf, hat, jacket back on. And out.
