It's going to be all white

Ha, I made a pun! It's definitely very white at the moment because of all the snow that I saw as we were coming down into Moscow Domodedovo airport (I can actually pronounce that now :P).

I also reckon it's going to be alright because as we were flying bits of Russian kept coming back to me. However I still crumble when anyone actually talks to me, making me feel incredibly British and a traitor to my degree because most of the time on the plane I didn't even try and just looked stunned and confused. I'll get there though.

My first impression of Russia is provided by Moscow airport as I have a very long time to wait till my flight to Tomsk. It's not even appeared on the departure board at all yet, so you know it's going to be a while. Anyway, so far Russia smells of petrol and cigarettes. I have no idea why it smells so strongly of petrol in this airport but it's potentially a dangerous combination of things to be smelling.

I can also say that I definitely don't care enough about my appearance to pass as a Russian woman. The women definitely seem to dress better over here and the majority of them seem to be wearing a fair bit of make-up. It's a good thing I conceded and actually brought some with me.

I think for the first time I'm vaguely enjoying being in an airport though. Normally the confused mess of cultures that serves to give an airport no culture at all puts me off and makes me irritable. However this time I feel like it gives me an oppourtunity to hide for a bit. For a few hours I'm a traveller, the same as everyone else, but it won't be long before I start sticking out.

To change the subject to something lighter: I found a thing that made me smile in the airport: the fact that large western brands exist over here with the names transliterated into cyrillic. I know it's not really that amusing and also pretty obvious that the big brands are in Moscow airport but seeing 'Baskin Robbins' written as 'Баскин Роббинс' is amusing to me.

So these are a few muddled thoughts on initial impressions of Russia, or as much as you can tell from inside an airport anyway, which as I said before is effectively cultureless.

P.s. funny story from moving out in Germany, a few of the bulbs in the flat had blown which I hadn't really noticed but the landlord said they had to come out of the deposit and that they were 22€ a piece. I looked horrified and tried to tell him I hadn't even noticed and I'd only been there for 5 months etc. etc. Then when we got back to the office he handed me about 80€ and said that was the remainder of the deposit. I was rather confused until we realised that I had understood 22 instead of 2.20. Perhaps the German still needs some work...