Stranded in a Transit Zone

Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport

Edward Snowden, former National Security Agency subcontractor and leaker of classified documents, is apparently in limbo in an international "transit zone," at the Moscow airport.

I was in an international transit zone once.  In 1980,  I flew from Sydney to San Francisco, and the plane stopped for refueling in Honolulu.  Passengers were allowed to get off to stretch their legs.  We never officially passed into Hawaii because we were corralled in a big room with plenty of chairs and windows and a bathroom and not allowed out.  We never went through Passport Control or Customs.  It was good to be on the ground, good to look out the windows at the ground, but pretty boring.

That was 30+ years ago.  What's a transit zone like these days?  And, more interesting, what's the nitty gritty of living there? 

A reporter at the Huffington Post, Maria Danilova, also wondered about what the hell the transit lounge at Moscow Airport was like and managed to get this picture:

The transit zone at Moscow airport

Comfy-looking, isn't it?  It is "essentially a long corridor, with boarding gates on one side and gleaming duty free shops, luxury clothing boutiques and souvenir stores...on the other."  There are restaurants (whew! There weren't any in Sydney).  The reporter found no sign of Snowden, but there are  "dozens of small rooms, some labeled 'authorized personnel only,'  where one could potentially seek refuge with support from airport staff..."  I can only hope these rooms have couches.

I wonder what Snowden thought was going to happen if he disclosed the documents.  According to The New Yorker, he could be in prison until approximately 2043 if he returns to the US and faces espionage charges.   Would only a young person do something like this?  Someone who's a) never been in a transit zone and  b) thinks he has a lot of years ahead of him?

The Guardian, the British newspaper that released the Snowden documents, reports that the record for living in an airport is held by Mehran Nasseri, an Iranian refugee, who lived in a departure lounge de Gaulle airport in Paris for 18 years.  My God!  Another Iranian refugee spent ten months at the Moscow airport.  They might as well have been in prison.

And if Snowden is granted asylum somewhere, will he be like the Duke of Windsor? Wandering around, not allowed into the country where he'd really like to be?  But the Duke of W. got to live in a mansion in Paris and go to parties in New York.  Living in Bolivia (possible) or Cuba (no response) would not be like that.  I notice that Snowden hasn't approached North Korea, the one place I can think of that would probably be even worse than a transit zone.