Out With the Old?

Thanks to Author Julia for suggesting the title of today's blog entry.

I swear, Moscow was handing out some heavy, angry energy on my last few days there.

I sliced the back of my heel on a friend's stairs. I slipped on some ice and wrenched my knee. I stepped in a small hole and twisted my ankle. Banged my leg under a restaurant table. Workers cleaning ice and snow off the roof dropped a load that just missed me and the girls.

It was as if Moscow really didn't want me to leave. Or was expressing some profound anger that I was.

Yesterday was Travel Day, and I woke with very unstable stomach.

I attributed it to stress.

You see, there was an issue with getting a Power of Attorney for the move, and I thought that it was very possible that The Spouse would have to stay behind in Moscow to deal with it.

Then there was the snow, which would have grounded any airline except Aeroflot.

Add to this all the headaches of getting the cats through the bureaucracy at the airport.

I ended up going to the airport in a taxi by myself, and the driver had the heat cranked. At one point I thought I was getting car sick.

My vet, Yuri, and his wife, Valeria, accompanied us to the airport, and Valeria worked her miracles both in the vet office there and at check-in (somehow she arranged for us to have a whole row to ourselves which meant an invaluable extra two seats as it turned out).

I was feeling worse and worse. I bought a Sprite, this is how bad I felt, thinking it would make me feel better. I was hot. I was cold. I could NOT get comfortable.

Long story short, about three hours into the flight to Paris, The Expatresse utilized TWO, count 'em, TWO "air sickness bags."

I had to hand the first one to The Spouse. That's love, you know. When you can hand someone your bag of vomit.

I went and sat in the loo for a bit, but by then the crisis had passed.

The rest of the journey was uneventful.

First impressions:

• We arrived at the Luxembourg Airport about 7:00 p.m. Where did everybody go? Other than the nice lady at the car rental desk, and the nice man in baggage claim, no one was there.
• Where was all the traffic? It was 8:00 p.m. on a Monday night when we drove to the temporary apartment. Where did everybody go?

The apartment is light and airy and spacious, although it is really only one bedroom, and The Spouse and I have the foldout couch in the living room, and it is on the third floor (fourth as Americans count it) with no elevator, but that won't kill any of us.

It has a dishwasher in the kitchen and a washing machine in the "keller." There is a bakery right next door, and a place to park our rental car in front. There's free WiFi, and plenty of channels in French (and God knows what else) for the kids. We watched an episode of America's Next Top Model last night, and I don't know what the subtitles were. Maybe Dutch?

It is going to have to be home for a while, too, as the moving company cannot release our shipment until we receive a "certificat de residence" which we cannot possibly have before our original delivery date of April 1.

Why do the moving companies ask you when you want to take delivery when it is rarely, if ever, anything you can control? Why do they even ask?

I expect we will be here until at least May 1, which helps justify the 27 kgs of excess baggage I paid a small fortune for yesterday. I just thought we might need something other than winter coats.

The other very fun thing is that I have already driven a car! I drove The Spouse to work this morning AND found my house again. This was my first big victory as I did not study the corner of our street for landmarks on my way to his office. It really is so terribly simple it is laughable: go to the corner, turn left, and continue until you get to the street his office is on. It is a 15-minute journey round-trip. The ease of it really did make me laugh: this is so NOT Moscow.

More evident to the un-Moscow-ness of it all:

 

Cats, happy to be done traveling, enjoy the view.

Behind our building is a park.

This is, apparently, a lot of snow for Luxembourg.

Skittles in the kitchen.

The view in front of our building.

What a nice, sunny day.