I was thinking about brief encounters with awful airports and recalled a miserable couple of hours spent at KUF - Kuybyshev (now Samara) airport on the Volga, during an overnight SU flight from Leningrad to Tashkent in 1974. As through pax we were on the ground for around 2 hours (scheduled maybe 1) and allowed to disembark to use the loo, whatever.

Chaos is a kind word. I went to use said loo (the ones on the plane were beyond disgusting) and realized I should have stayed where I was. Imagine a prison lavatory. No doors on the stalls, no proper seats on the bogs, and there was TP - chopped up pages of Pravda - in a basket next to the loo. (Political comment?) And you can imagine the smell. When I went to return to the plane, the scene was like one from the evacuation of Saigon - throngs of people, many in Uzbek headgear, storming the boarding stairs, being fended off by sturdy Aeroflot FAs. I finally got back on and we took off.

Same trip, a couple of weeks later. Our little Intourist group (around 10 of us) is waiting at UGC - Urgench airport, for a YAK-40 flight back to Tashkent. A couple of big cars arrive and disgorge several burly men and a couple of women, who march to the counter and exchange words with the gate agents. Our guide comes to us and announces that we've been bumped due to some VIPs (bigshots in the Uzbek Communist Party, we learn later) have to get to Tashkent for an important event. Enjoy another night in Urgench, honored guests.

Yeah, the hotel, like the airport, is missing a couple of amenities. Like electricity. And potable water. Air conditioning? In Uzbekistan in August? What are you, some sort of western wimp? Enjoy your warm apricot juice (no booze, please, we're Muslims.)

The next day, Tashkent never looked so good.