To make up for missing my mom’s 90th birthday in October I flew to Moscow in early January. Getting there was a bit cumbersome: there’s no direct flights between the States and Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine, so I flew via Belgrade with a nine-hour layover. Belgrade’s center is just a 30 min ride from the airport, so I decided to kill a few hours wandering around the city. I visited Belgrade almost ten years ago while on tour with Cirque du Soleil; I only vaguely remembered the city. We were there during the summertime and even then I wasn’t blown away by its “beauty”; the most memorable thing was attending an Ozzy Osbourne concert. On a rainy winter day, it looked even more drab. After a few hours of “sightseeing” I returned to the airport to wait for my flight.
Arriving in Moscow at two in the morning with a temperature of -25 °C gave me a bit of a jolt but a few days later it had warmed up. The next few weeks were full of various errands. I only managed to see a handful of friends, I guess I wasn’t in the mood. Constantly grey sky didn’t make it any more enticing to go about. Besides, the main reason I came to Moscow was to spend time with my mom and take care of a few things. Four weeks passed rather quickly and I was sad to leave again – who knows for how long – not Moscow but my mom.
I of course didn’t bring my Brompton – winter cycling isn’t for me.
Moscow in numbers:
0 km — distance cycled
-25 °C — lowest temperature while I was there
2 — sunny days out of four weeks, quite depressing