💡
It didn't help that everyone I knew in Moscow had left. I'd had a Thursday-night poker game with expats and English-speaking Russians, and at its height in mid-1997 thirteen people regularly attended. But by January 2000 I was the only one left. It was like being the last passenger at an airport baggage carousel. Everyone else had got their luggage and gone home, but I was standing there all by myself, watching the creaking metal track go round and round, waiting for my bag - knowing it was lost and would never show up.