2005-05-01 - Moscow - stress and tiredness
It´s Saturday the 30th of April today and the last days have been very hectic. I´ve met my parents again after almost 10 months of travelling, big press conference here in Moscow and then all this people, this stress and unfriendliness compared to what we are used to. Also an incredible tiredness after this last days of travelling and the jetlag. The weather in Moscow today is nice and sunny, and the temperature now in the morning is around 48°F.
Johan Ivarsson at the pen:
It started already in Yakutsk when we stepped out of the plane. It was people everywhere who all seemed to be in a hurry, commercial signs wherever you turned your head and noisy music playing non-stop in every shop, restaurant and even at the hotel. Everything was so fast and unreal compared to the world we´ve been living in. Moscow was worse of course. Here we almost got run down when we walked out on the street. Not even possible to compare it to the good Kolyma region where everyone we met on the streets stopped us to talk for a while, shake our hands or at least ask us how we where. This would never happen here. And everywhere you go, to a shop for example or even the people at the airport who are hired to help you and give you service, you are met by unfriendly and stone-faced people who are more interested in looking at them selves in the mirror than to help you. I´m afraid that it will take much longer to get used to the civilized world again than I could ever have imagined.
We also lost our gun to the police at the airport here in Moscow, who refused to give it to us when we where checking out. Instead we will now get it when we leave for Sweden, we hope. If not, well, then we will be stuck in Russia for a while since it is impossible for us to leave without it. Dmitry Shparo, who is helping us with permissions and everything here in Russia, say that everything will be alright, though. But it feels like we´ve had our share of problems for this expedition now. Will never stop?
We are very tired now of course due to all this new impressions, the fact that we are eight hours wrong in time and also due to the expedition itself. But it haven´t only been negative experiences since we came back to the civilization. Same day as we arrived here in Moscow we had a very successful press conference at the Swedish Embassy with many of the biggest Russian newspapers and T V-stations. And a few minutes before the press conference started my parents, who I haven´t seen for almost 10 months, arrived from Sweden together with Titti (Mikael´s wife and our third active member of the expedition). A very joyful moment of course, it was great to se them again after all this time!
So now we are trying to enjoy our lives here in Moscow for a bit before we continue home tomorrow. Will probably make a tour into the Kremlin and the Red square. |
