Now This Is, The Story, All about How,

My plans got turning upside down...

===============================

⚠️ DISCLAIMER: THIS POST WAS WRITTEN ON THE 3rd OF MAY, RIGHT AFTER THE EVENTS DESCRIBED, WHEN I WAS VERY, VERY HURT, AND REFLECTS THE WAY I HAD BEEN FEELING BACK THEN.

IT IS NOT THE WAY I FEEL ANYMORE.

===============================

For the Best, `Anashushim. 😃

I mean like, I Should Have Known. The moment the Babruysk railway station manager(?) had told me, back on Monday Monday (Only Four Days???? ZAPHOD!! 🙃), how only Russkiy i Belarusskiy citizens, are considered human beings enough to get to cross the border into Mother Russia {imagine here icon of stalin oversees a tank-n-missiles parade at the Red Square...} by land (a regulatsia, which nobody else had bothered themselves to inform me about before that!!) - and so I, the mere Jew from da Mittle Osten, shall hence be required to spend six times more money for a blastered FLYING TICKET - I really should have known, that the Russia country was up to no good, hence why they were startin' makin' problems in da neighbourhood. HOWEVER...

Nu, yesterday I was up at 04:50, to be ready with all my stuff (two suitcases, together weighing over thirty kg, the CPAP and the red pocket-thingy), to go with the 06:15 train, from Babruysk to Minsk, from whence I grabbed a taxi to the airport. My flight was at 11:30; pics from the waiting are two posts ago.

So, first, once I just arrived at the sheremetyevo (or whatever its strange name is) airport in moscow, the idiots there had informed me that there's a problem - and, at the beginning, they did not tell me what; only upon interrogating me, the guy had informed me, that the fact I had visited vilnius worried them a lot. So, I made it clear to them all, that all throughout those years, since february '22 on, I had been supporting the Russian side, so I find all their behaviour towards me to be most offending; half-an-hour later, they did finally allow me, to cross the border into their sacred land.

Moscow is cold, and I am not talking about the weather; there's something bad and tense in the air, something vile. And the place is crawling with policemen.

It is NOT the Lovely Moscow I remember so fondly, from June '22.

However, that did not end my troubles. When I had finally reached the hotel, exhausted and dying for a shower and good sleep, the dumb receptionist had informed me, that he cannot check me in, since I do not possess a "migration card" = some type of a small form, which they presumably should have handed me to fill in at that airport, instead of troubling me with offensive and dumb interrogations.

So, I told him, while feeling in a horrible nightmare, just phone them at the airport, and have email it or fax it or something, I shall fill it and shall finally be allowed into my room!!

But talking to him, was like talking to a stone. He jus' kept on sayin' "no migration card no check in", while insisting that the ONLY solution would be for me, exhausted as I had already been, to travel ALLLLLLLLLLLL THE WAY BACK to the airport and to have them let me fill in that stupid little form.

Well - they just Love their dumb beauraucracy there; from the happy go lucky days of savietsky soyuz.

So, faced with no other option, this is what I had done. And for what???

Turns out, meine Dammen und Herren, that the Belarusians should have let me fill out that nonsense (they never did), as Russia and Belarus are considered to be ONE SINGLE HAPPY FAMILIA UNIT, so a flight from Minsk to moscow, is considered to be as domestic, as a flight from moscow to kazan. And for me all that is left is to wonder, are foreign citizens now being barred to travel via land within the territory of Mother Russia, too??

So, only the Belarusians, can give me that hollier-than-God form; the Russians are barred from doing it, as I had arrived from Belarus...

And, should ANY hotel, check me in without that "migration card" thingy, they shall commit a crime against sacred russian law, and be subjected to a HEAVY punishment.

So, listen to this: it turned out, that NO ONE IN RUSSIA IS LEGALLY CAPABLE OF HANDING ME THIS FORM, WITHOUT WHICH CHECKING ME INTO ANY RUSSIAN HOTEL IS EXTREMELY ILLEGAL. Why? Putin.

So, meine Liebe Freunden&Freundinen, upon boilin' it all down to this insane conclusion, I had officially and terminally given up on Russia. They are a Great people, but...

I went one floor down to the ticket center, bought a ticket to the cheapest flight I could get = which just happened to be here, to Samarkand! 😍😍 - and, after a night flight, came here, to one of the nicest places I've ever been to.

The people are friendly, the climate is warm, it very much reminds me of Albania of the late 1990's. The culture is very much like that of Albania, Turkey, or Southern Italy.

The driving culture too.

However: upon arriving here, at the airport the clerk did not ask me any stupid questions, there were no dumb interrogations, he just looked at me, typed in what's necessary, stamped my passport and in I went, to get my suitcase and to then be swarmed by scores of hungry taxi drivers. 😃

I Love it here. Russia's loss, is Uzbekustan's gain.