This is Truth.

Sheremetyevo - II

You haven’t really lived until you’ve ridden on a plane where the passengers cheer after you touch down safely.

After touchdown, I quickly realized why this place was dubbed Sheremetyevo-II, when I notice the decrepit, ridiculous looking terminal Sheremetyevo on the other side of the runway. I appears to still be in service, though the planes around it (there are no ‘gates’, only parking spaces) would suggest it only services local flights. The place makes our terminal, Sheremetyevo-II, look ultra modern in that ideal-setting-for-one-of-John-Cusack’s-first-movies kind of way.

The airport was built in the 1980s to welcome foreign dignitaries to all of the wonders of Soviet modern architecture and technology, which is probably why the only escalator was out of order, so the old ladies had to go down stairs with their carry on roller bags, and all of the doors are hand-operated, and there was only one passport check line for the entire airport open – which was fine, because the whole place was as barren as Ann Coultier’s womb (that one’s for you Jon, and for anyone else who knows who she is, and if you don’t, don’t bother finding out, unless you’re the kind of person who think that combining Dick Cheney with Hillary Clinton would be a good idea).

Sheremetyevo-II was designed for security, there are glass sealed walls herding you all around, not to prevent terrorism, but to prevent the unauthorized from slipping onto a plane and off freedom. This was Moscow’s only airport for international flights, and it would be impossible for most of them to get there anyway, since it is not even on the Moscow map, and is located in the middle of a field far from the city. You can barely see the spires of Stalin’s ‘seven sisters’ as you come into your final descent. Clearly, the place was designed ferry foreigners into Moscow in the most impressive method possible, in order to inspire them to the wonders of socialism as they careen down Leningrandskoy Highway and over the Moscow river toward Red Square.

Such misguided attempts to impress others into your economic system with something as ridiculous as an airport would never happen in a free society, would it? [Fly to Dulles in DC, then answer that question]

One of my two bags came out missing a wheel, which I did not even try to rectify. The baggage dollies had stickers which said “Mockba 2012” in reference to their recently failed attempt to land the summer Olympics. You’d think they could have found new stickers in the last 8 weeks.

I collected my life, stepped out of the baggage claim, and into unreality.

posted by Майлз Г. Смит @ 2:03 PM