My trusty red bag all packed up and ready sat on the shelf beside me as I start my journey to Russia…

I stared out of the window 10,000m up as we passed from day to night in a matter of minutes. The 5 hour time difference mean our day was to be cut somewhat shorter by travelling east but I didn’t seem to mind as I was distracted by the peachy glow of the daylight we left behind as it lingered on the horizon. Soon it was almost completely black outside and barely any discernible features could be seen in the land below.Russia is so vast its virtually incomprehensible, it takes over 10 hours to fly from one side of the country to the other and somewhere approaching a week to go by train, some participants to the meeting were travelling from Moscow by train…all 29 hours of it. Quite an endurance event in its own right but I am reliably informed there is a bar on board…

The plane touched down in darkness and after figuring out how to fill out the customs forms with those I met on the plane going to the same conference, I headed out of the terminal building with a smile on my face. Snow, and lots of it, spread thickly over the empty car park immediately outside the terminal building like someone had emptied a vast can of squirty cream everywhere. What few cars there were sported a good foot of cover over their bonnets and roofs with icicles hanging from bumpers and exhaust pipes. Under-foot the ice hardened ground crackled and crunched, the sub-zero air was dry and bit into the back of my throat causing me to cough a couple of times in the startlingly different atmosphere, I had no idea of the temperature but my nice big coat was doing its job. We climbed into the waiting bus and headed on into the centre of Yekaterinburg, the windows iced up on the inside – so thats pretty cold outside then! – and meant we could not see out to orientate ourselves but since it was roughly 2am there was very little to see in the darkness anyhow.

The hotel was warm and comfortable but there was one thing that struck me as mildly disconcerting, the 5th floor window ledge held a mound of snow that covered at least the bottom foot of the glass. Well, there’s something you don’t see every day! I hit the pillow at 4am…we are due to be at the talks starting the next day at a merciful 10.30am.