Russia (TT column 03.06.13)

I always love an adventure, or so I thought. When given the last minute opportunity to "pop" over to Russia for some commentary work I jumped at the chance, that was before I thought about logistics. I was only invited on Tuesday with the broadcast company hoping to have me at the event by Friday.
For most European countries this should be straight forward, however Russia certainly doesn't come under that label. It just happened that I had a trip to London anyway so with a letter from the Russian hotel I headed to the visa office. After the warnings I'd received I was prepared to be waiting all day so was pleasantly surprised when my application was submitted promptly.
The next problem was the collection of my acquired visa as it would not be ready until the end of the following day. I decided to risk things, I headed home for a day before travelling up to London the night before planning to pick it up first thing on the way to Heathrow. I hadn't bargained on several other people having the same idea, my stomach sank when reaching the visa office twenty minutes before it opened to find a queue down the street. Thankfully for Russian efficiency I was back on the road running across the city to make my flight.
It seemed things were on my side, my flight was delayed. This moment of relief didn't last long as I soon discovered that i had no ticket for my connecting flight which even if I did there was no way of making on time. Not sure how logical a decision it was but I boarded my flight to Moscow, on arrival after many phone calls a second ticket was issued however apparently there were no more flights to my destination of Nizhny Novgorod for two days. It turned out that if I made the train, metro, then train journey across Moscow with my luggage I might catch the final flight that night from a different airport. The adventure didn't end there but thankfully my journey did