We said a warm and tearful goodbye to Lena today. She is the dearest friend I've made in Moscow yet, and I will miss spending each day with her.
From the Department of Complaints: A is off to Warsaw on business next week. My own travel plans have been frustrated by a conspiracy of small details. For example, infants need paper tickets, which require actual physical delivery; packages are given tracking numbers and rendered un-reroutable days before they begin transit; bicycle trailers are excess baggage, inadmissible on small, intercity planes; online transactions originating in Russia seem to alert anti-fraud forces (men or machines?) absurdly often, leading to payment delays and even permanent blocks that isolate us further. I've been spending hours on the phone in the afternoon trying to sort such things out... We had tickets home and now we don't. I've found that when it comes to stalling, misinformation, and unapologetic dismissals, impressive as Russian bureaucrats are, they lose hands-down to American customer service telephone reps. Tight race, though.
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