So, our trip to Moscow. I was scheduled for 15:00, and so as not to let others down and leave earlier, I arrived early at 14:40. However, there were some "guys" who didn't care when they arrived or if they were holding anyone up... Haha. I don't know those guys, but some of them took seats on the bus, left their backpacks there, and went off somewhere...

We waited for them for about 30 minutes, and then our driver made a very wise decision – he threw their bags out and drove off. Conclusion! If the fate of the group depends on you, you must be responsible and disciplined. Not even 50 km later, it turned out that we had another free seat on the bus, an interesting situation!!! :) I thought... The further you go, the more interesting it gets... The girl was lucky, good for her! She got to ride on two seats at once.

Our bus turned out to be unusually uncomfortable; it was a "MAZ", "Maxim's House" as the Moscow homeless called it (I wonder why??? If anyone has any guesses, write to me). The bus had a number of drawbacks - starting with the fact that if someone wanted to recline their seat, you had to shout to almost the entire row: "Careful! I'm reclining the seat!". And as for legroom, you might as well put your feet on the ceiling, even though I'm 176 cm tall... The buses were probably built for Southeast Asia, but they didn't buy them, and the goods had to be sold...

The second significant drawback was that the seatbelts in the bus worked poorly, the lights were installed in inconvenient places, there was no toilet, the seats were narrow (even though I'm not very fat, I weigh 60 kg at 176 cm), there were no comfortable headrests, only one armrest, and the button to recline the seat kept getting stuck for some reason. If anyone has had similar problems, write... Let's write a collective letter and send it to OJSC "Minsk Automobile Plant" with our wishes and recommendations.

We arrived in Moscow at 03:00 AM. A small part of us decided to walk around night Moscow (when else would such a chance arise? For me, never again, only Saint Petersburg). First, the bravest ones and those who had already been to Moscow went out, then I followed with a guy from the back row, sorry I don't remember your name.

We went to relieve ourselves, and just as we finished, our buses suddenly flew past us! "Achtung! Wir anstreben Kommandeur" (I don't know what this phrase means, but the feeling was exactly that!) We barely caught up... Well, we caught up, so we caught up, no point in sitting still, we went for a walk again. While we were walking around the consulate and the tall beautiful building, we were stopped three times by 9-series cars with tinted windows, and from there: "Hey, dear, need a taxi?" (maybe it's a fashion they have?), we decided to go back and take 5 more people with us, just "for certainty". We walked "very well", to our heart's content.... At 7:00 AM they announced – IT'S TIME... Hmm, I felt a little cold in my hands, and in one other place. We left everything, even money. I only took a lighter and one cigarette, and of course, my documents; I regretted not taking two cigarettes.

While walking from the bus, I smoked it, saw a large number of people near the main entrance, everyone had numbers... I, fully confident in myself, took mine out, and then – "Kurwienski ojciec" (a terrible swear word) it turns out that the number had rubbed off!!! How will other people understand what my number is?! I started running around, looking for coordinators, because I knew that no one else had a pen (everyone left everything on the bus!). I found one, wrote down my number. Good. Special thanks to the coordinators for their ingenuity in resolving the queue issue, very well organized. Well done!

1. Heading towards the policeman, I take my passport, we get into a narrow space between the booth and the main entrance to the consulate building. The space is narrow, there is a draft, and the wind has a specific feature of accelerating in narrow spaces, which makes it feel quite "bad". I start hiding behind the girl standing in front (am I not a scoundrel?), only my head is sticking out and looking: "What's going on there?" :) I let the American look at the passport, and he took it... or did he? Honestly, I don't remember... Then there was a small metal detector, we went inside...

2. Finally, there is no wind. Good. I hesitated a bit, but immediately realized that the room looks like a luggage compartment, we took off our jackets, went into the next room.

3. A large metal detector was waiting for us there, I put my jacket on a thing similar to those in airports for luggage, the guard asked me to go through the large metal detector again. Don't be afraid if you are asked to go through the metal detector quickly again. That's how it is, everyone goes through twice. I took my jacket and rushed to the other room... Ladies, be careful – this door (between the halls is very heavy!) But this door opens a door to where??? Correct, to the coldest room of the bastion.

4. So, we put our jackets back on. Good, you are seated in rows, they give you back your passports, some other junk, and Attention!!! They staple your passport... God!!! What am I going to tell the Poles at the border now??? I'll probably tell them about the bad Americans, haha. Here we listen to the coordinators extremely carefully... and start turning on a special brain function, or better yet, two at once: ATTENTION and CONCENTRATION, and turn off ingenuity and resourcefulness.

5. When they tell you to go, just go, and get in line for the fingerprint scan, that's what I did. There will be three directions, well, as they say in the fable: go left - you'll return without fingerprints; go straight - you won't find anything at all (that's the exit!), go right - you'll submit your fingerprints. In Moscow, all Consulate employees speak Russian, except for the Vice-Consuls (more on that later). The ladies speak Russian, telling you which hand to put down.

6. After the fingerprints, I got in line, the end of which goes upstairs. I waited until I was told to go forward. Here is the most important thing – we turn on the last three important functions: 1. CONFIDENCE, 2. SMILES, 3. MEMORY + (If there are still plenty of resources) we turn on INGENUITY (I turned it on). We were seated in our places, a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon was playing on the TV, too bad it was in Russian. So the plot is like this... just kidding. We waited until they said: "Forward, second row". And so, it began...

We are waiting, jacket in hand, documents with the folder too.