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In our trip from Darlington to Moscow we almost got caught in central London around the time of the July 7th terrorist attacks. We took an overnight bus from Darlington to Golders Green on the north side of London and arrived at 5:30 a.m. We had originally planned to have breakfast with our friend Paloma in Golders Green before setting off to Heathrow, but the arrangements fell through and although we looked for somewhere to have something to eat, we couldn't find much open. Because of that we travelled through central London between 6 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. getting to the airport half an hour before the attacks.

At Heathrow we heard (and found strange) announcements to passengers saying that power failures meant that the tube was closed and that only buses and taxis could be used to get into the city. But we never guessed what had happened as we spent most of our waiting time in the airport eating, reading newspapers, and sleeping. As we were exiting the boarding lounge to get on the plane and passed a TV tuned to BBC World we learned the horrible news.

From London we went to Zurich where we spent about four hours waiting for our Moscow plane. Luckily, Zurich airport offers plug-in spots for laptop users, which meant that Jan could charge her otherwise dead Zen mp3 player as well as plug in her laptop. Gerry plugged his in too, but didn't get too far, falling asleep right over his machine. We had worked all day Wednesday in Darlington and that was after three or four nights of short sleep. When you add the poor sleep on the bus, in the airport, and in the airplane, we were pretty worn out upon arrival at Zurich. (By the time we got to Moscow it was worse. Our first two days were spent recovering from loss of sleep.)

Near the "computer-station" there was another large TV monitor with CNN playing. Only by standing next to it could we hear the speakers over the airport noise. Our thirst about events in London was only slightly slaked.

One of our first priorites therefore in getting to Moscow was to find a phone card so that we could call England and reassure Jan's family. When we did get in touch with them late on Saturday, Jan's brother said he knew we had safely left London for Moscow because our nephew Michael had called the airline and explained the situation and even though they are not supposed to, they had kindly confirmed that we had checked in for our flight. In the ensuing days, we were very happy to have access, via Frederik's radio, to BBC World Service, Radio France Internationale and Deutsche Welle and so were well provided with international news. We also had TV, but alas only in Russian and then only one station of the several that are broadcast here. We have no idea of the quality of other station, but Russia 1 was not a particularly interesting channel. It had two redeeming features: it broadcast the nightly news in Russian, which Jan watched every day, and it aired a well-known detective series called Kamenskaya based on books about a female detective by Alexandra Marinina that Jan also watched faithfully.