Day 5 - Friday 15th June

Todays plan was to do one last stroll through Moscow, get our flight to Kazan and find a pub to watch the Egypt game and then another one to watch the Spain V Portugal game.

Today did not go to plan.

Met a few Aussies around Moscow obviously doing the same routine of getting up early and beat all the crowds. Got some breakfast and headed back to the hotel.
At about 9, (for a 11:45 flight) Reception offered to organise a taxi so she could talk to them in Russian so “there won’t be any issues”. Told her we were headed to “SVO, sheremetveyo”.
Taxi came and greeted us with “Aeroport?”
We said yes, SVO.
Off we went. Traffic was pretty shit through the CBD so we thought we were headed to the outer ring of Moscow where we would then take off towards the airport.
After about 15 minutes, we tried to confirm, and did my best pronunciation of “sheremetveo”. He said Da da da.
Anyway, another 15 minutes later it became obvious we were getting absolutely no closer, so we showed him the airport and he nodded. And he said something. So I did my rendition of it again and he looked at me puzzled, and he was like “VKO?”.
“No! SVO, sheremetveo”
So then he busted out google translate and offered us “pork to get to which knuckle.”
Fearing there was some kind of miscommunication there, we tried our google translate which probably told him we liked flowers and wild Putin’s.
Anyway he started saying sheremetveo and changed the route.
Traffic in Moscow is horrendously bad. Never seen anything so terrible. It’s like being on the M1 bumper to bumper, then up to 100km an hour, and slam on brakes. Anyway. We arrived to the airport at 12:00. Missed our flight so we began rapidly trying to source a plan b, c, d, e and f. We tried to book a 6pm flight, but wouldn’t accept our cards, we then booked a different one through Expedia as cards didn’t work on their site again (not my idea) and it said there would be 30 minute until confirmation.
Meanwhile the earlier flights had now sold out. We were fast running out of options.
We waited 45 minutes for confirmation, nothing. So we tried to cancel. 30 minutes to see if the cancellation worked. I said f**k it, and went and booked us onto a flight from one of the other airports at 8:30.
We left
Our airport at 3:45 and arrived at the other 2:45hours later. Traffic is a joke. Then in a final nail to our coffin, my mate was turfing everything of if his bag and suitcase trying to find passport. He was convinced her left it at the airport. Was ready to say see ya, when he felt it inside his jacket pocket. FMD, it’s a shame they don’t sell brains sometimes. Natural selection just doesn’t cut it.

Got to airport and there were a lot of Aussie frantically running for their 7pm flight. A lot of people missed their flights earlier and a lot were almost Going to miss this one. At this point all other flights were sold out. The only option, hire a car for 12 hours of death defying driving in Russia or take a taxi for $300 for 12 hour ride.

Anyway, made our next flight and got to our hotel in kazan! Turns out we are staying at the fanatics hotel, next minute who walks in, Daryl Braithwaite! He’d performed for the fanatics (seemingly a group of 40+ year olds) opening night! And the lobby broke out into a rendition of horses. What a time to be Alive.

Finally, after 5+ hours in a cab, 3 airports, we finally arrived in Kazan! Bring on match day!

Place is buzzing!