“I will disappoint you and say: No, it is not: the Su-34 is way cooler, with its brutal and violent display of air combat manoeuvring-  and the resultant formation of clouds and rainbows around it. But again, the PAK FA programme is still in its infancy. You can’t expect a toddler to be as cool as Maverick in ‘Top Gun’, saying ‘Because I was Inverted’ and putting his Ray Bans on. The prototype won’t be flown as violently as an aircraft that is already being used operationally. Unique? Hell yes. Cool? Su-34 is the coolest jet of all them Sukhois, at least for now. The wider front section of the fuselage acts as a great catalyst for the vapour cones to form.”

“People are friendlier, more helpful and open, with their ‘hearts given to you in their hands’, as one the old Polish sayings puts it. For me, the show was less commercial than any Western one, and very well organised. Ah, detailed security checks should be expected. You have to put your bag through a Heimann X-ray every time you enter a train station, then before you get on the bus, and then, before you get into the show area. At the beginning it could be viewed as a nuisance, but one can get used to it. And the Russians are super-nice about this, hence throughout the whole procedure you are treated more like a guest, less like a terrorist. I was being warned by my friends: you’ll end up with a bullet in your head, and your camera gear being sold on the Russian counterpart of eBay. Nothing like that ever happened. I began to like Russia, maybe even becoming a bit of a Russophile. People say that it is those at the top who create the hostility — the ordinary men and women are as heart-meltingly warm as it gets.”

 

“Any local shop with low prices. We did it in a convenience store, located at the corner of the street where our hotel was.”