Moscow again

Here I am in Moscow again! Going by my blog I guess it doesn't look like I ever left, but I did the day after my last entry. I've done some stuff back in the UK of course but have mostly been busy with my OU course. I did attend the Bath Storytelling Circle in The Raven, which was rather good. We also went to see The Fountainhead in the Little Theatre, which was a one-off showing done by the Bath Film Festival. Very weird but good. The World Cup has been going on of course, and I've seen one game. It's about as interesting as football gets, I suppose.

So anyway, here I am in Moscow again, and for slightly longer this time. It's hot and sunny which bodes well. There's some inconvenience with the hotel being quite full so I have to move rooms three times while I'm here, but that's last minute travel for you! At least I don't have to change hotels completely like I had to in China. I also get a weekend here too this time, so assuming work doesn't go all pear-shaped I might even get to see the parts of Moscow that aren't on the road to the airport or the office!

Moscow observations

Some observations:

• nobody wears seat-belts, even though speeds in the city are about 60mph and zero, but nowhere in between.


• Speaking of cars, everyone has either a bashed-up old Lada or a very expensive Merc, etc. Nobody seems to bother with something in the middle


• very, very few people in the street are smiling, even when it's sunny. They seem happy enough when you actually talk to them though


• There seems to be a trend with women of dying their hair (or some of it) red. Also, tight jeans that stop halfway down the calf seem very popular. On the other hand there are lots of very stylish people in expensive clothes


• Everyone eats more soup than you'd think, especially rather thin, watery soup with vague bits of fish in it


• The cotton-wool-like seeds from the trees that make it look like it's snowing are rather pretty, and you really have to see them. It's funny that everyone here are so used to it that they wondered what I was talking about at first. There are huge piles of seeds everywhere, and the rain has only thinned them from the air a little bit. Bizarre.

The good weather finally departed today and it rained in the afternoon. Still, this is the first rain I've seen for weeks so I can't complain! At least I've now seen the city in bad weather too. It doesn't quite stop people driving like lunatics of course, but that adds to the 'fun'.

I'm flying back tomorrow. When I was booking the car to the airport the lady laughed at my 3.5 hours of allowed time and said I'd never make it in that on a Friday. Bear in mind that I'm in Moscow and this is Moscow airport we're talking about! See what I mean about the mad traffic? Having said that, I dread to think how long it would take to get from, say, Leicester Square to Heathrow in the rush hour, and that's roughly what I'll be doing...

Moscow

The food at my hotel continues to impress with the 'Russian-themed' restaurant in the hotel providing yet another excellent classic Russian meal. It was quite flashy, and lunch in the canteen of the company I am visiting today was a marked contrast. This consisted of a large boiled tongue on a plate of pasta, along with some horseradish. It turns out that ox tongue with horseradish is a traditional dish, but it was challenging in its tongue-ness. Tasty though.

The weather remains rather magnificent and the golden roofs on the Kremlin looked particularly sparkly today. The traffic was really heavy so I had a good chance to appreciate the views. It turns out that the huge queues of people (and police with guns) that I saw outside the Christ The Saviour cathedral yesterday weren't as normal as I'd assumed. They have the 'right hand of John the Baptist' on loan from Montenegro. It's 'believed' to have healing powers and is in Moscow for the first time since being smuggled out of Russia after the revolution. This seems to be enough to bring out the crowds (it was a particularly impressive queue), so the locals must be quite a cultured lot. It's a shame that you don't see so many locals when staying in hotels, but I was too knackered to venture out too far today. I hope that work doesn't end up going to the wire and I get some time to look around a bit more...

From Russia, With Love

..or if not 'love', at least some sort of warm and fuzzy feeling. Here I am in Moscow, and you know what? It has made a good impression on me so far.

The day didn't start off brilliantly. I got to work to park the car while I'm in Russia only to find myself trapped in the car park for 20 minutes. We have a cunning key-card entry system for our work car park you see, and I managed to drive in when someone else was leaving. Once parked I found that my card didn't work, so I couldn't get out. It's just as well it wasn't a weekend or I could have died of thirst, or hypothermia or something. Madness. Anyway, eventually someone came in to the car park so I could get out and walk to the station, where conveniently I hadn't quite missed my train.

I experienced another of life's firsts at Heathrow when I was paged over the PA. It was all quite exciting. I left to queue for checking-in and went to find out what it was all about. About half an hour later I had discovered that it was just a request from some of our guys in Russia to pick up some mains adapters which, while not massively exciting, was at least one of the few things it is possible to do at Heathrow airport. Plus I now know how it feels to be all important by getting paged - the reality is that the airport staff don't really know who to phone or what's going on. This is an interesting insight into the way airports operate in itself.

The flight to Moscow was uneventful. Some Russian girl has sat in my seat but it was a good excuse to strike-up conversation. She was clearly reckless as she continued to use her mp3 player during takeoff/landing despite being told off several times. This would have made her sexy and exciting if she was good looking, but since she wasn't it just made her appear a bit lippy. Still, there are worse people to sit next to. The film on the plane was 'Firewall', which was actually quite good. I have decided that Chloe from '24' (who co-stars in it) can actually be attractive. I'm not sure what they do to her in '24' to stop this, because in that she's just annoying.

Moscow airport is like many in the east. As soon as you're through passport control your ears are assaulted by a thousand minicab drivers all asking you if you want a taxi. Thankfully mine was all ordered in advance so it was just a case of finding my name on a sign. This done, it was an hour's cruise into Moscow. First impressions of Moscow are good - it's nice and green with lots of parks and trees, the traffic doesn't seem to be insane, and we drove right past the Kremlin and other landmarks, which is nice. It feels a bit like London in some ways, what with the bridges over the river and the seat of government right on the river bank. It looks clean and they seem to have made a real effort with interesting public art, nice flags on the bridges, and so on. Hopefully I will be able to get a few photos to illustrate these points.

My hotel is ok. The room is nothing special, but there is a good selection of restaurants and very posh shops downstairs. I went to the 'Russian' restaurant for dinner and it was very good, although very quiet. Afterwards I met up with a colleague for a drink in the bar and we talked about work. Hopefully it will all go ok tomorrow...