I'm off to the States for three weeks. This will be my first trip there, so I'm going with an open mind. Obviously I will post my impressions here when I get back. First though, I must brace myself for the combined madness of bank holiday airports and paranoid travellers...
I've just had a fantastic week away in Durham for the summer school for my OU course. Fantastic stuff. We flew to Newcastle from Bristol, got the Metro to the station then the train to Durham, so it was only a couple of hours door to door (although that's more money to Future Forests to offset that evil CO2!). It was an early flight, and thanks to my objection to buying anything other than beer at airports we had a particularly early 7am pint. Still, start as you mean to go on eh?
We got to Durham pretty early so we got a chance to look around too. Durham is quite similar to Bath in that it's a pretty small city with lots of old bits, and there are several nice pubs to sit in and while away the time. As we discovered. Soon enough it was time to go back to the university to register. We were based in Hatfield College for A214, which is right next to the cathedral in the nice old bit. Some other courses had summer schools going on further out, but we didn't really have anything to do with them. We were lucky as all of the buildings we used had great locations, and were close together. Can't fault it.
The hall we were staying in was... basic. I've seen and lived in some halls in my time, but these were pretty ropey. It was no problem for a week of course, but I might have got slightly depressed if I was in there for a year. Still, there were some great people in there with me. There were so many great people on the course that it just didn't seem long enough to meet them all - I was still meeting fascinating people on the last night. Does this all sound a bit gushing? Well, it really was that good and some of the people really that great. To top it all off, the work itself was great too. Hard in places, but great. It was so good to be with loads of people doing a subject they love - just like university again really, and actually in a university obviously added to that.
If you ever do an OU course with a summer school, make sure you go! You won't regret it. If I had to come up with a regret, I'm just sorry that I won't be able to do it again.
It's flipping hot isn't it? Can't complain about the sunshine, but the heat does knacker me out a bit. My 2 mile or so walk home is all up a reasonably steep hill, and in this heat I'm pretty much soaked in sweat when I get home. Yum.. there's a mental image you could do without eh? Needless to say, I just want to chill out a bit with a gin and tonic when I get here so I'm not getting as much done as I'd like.
Anyway, the weekend was good. On Sunday we went on what is now almost a traditional yearly trip to Longleat. I took a camera this time and managed to get some photos of animals (which you'll find on on my Flickr page) before the battery inconveniently ran out. It was a lovely day but the downside of that was that pretty much everyone else seemed to have decided to go to Longleat on the same day, so it was very busy.
Rather excitingly the company I work for got bought by another much bigger company yesterday. This has caused much idle gossip and speculation at work, which is always fun in itself. Time will tell how it all pans out I suppose - it doesn't make much of an immediate difference to me but our directors and senior management can probably retire early. Not that they will, the mugs. If I had enough money to retire then I would! Unfortunately my shares in the company aren't exactly going to go far towards paying off a months credit card bill, let alone the mortgage!
It just so happened that my pal and ex-housemate Luke was in Moscow on Friday night, so he gave me a call and I ventured out into the city to meet him and his pals for a bite to eat. The original plan was to eat at a place called Gogol near the Marriott Aurora, but that turned out to have some gig or possibly football going on, so we wandered off to find somewhere else.
Wandering around Moscow is strange. It's quite chaotic of course, and I'm getting used to that, but we came across some weirdness. There was an elephant in the street at one point, with lots of balloons. There was obviously a reason for it but there didn't seem to be a crowd or anything. Strange. Anyway, we went to a bar that was a favourite of Luke's friend Esther. I can't remember the name, but they served very sweet Russian 'champagne' and tasty food (although in rather small and randomly delivered portions). My suspicions about Russian customer service was confirmed throughout the meal. The waiter was a bit abrupt (stopping just short of being rude), and he warned us that his shift was finishing so we'd better pay up now (or words to that effect). Can't be missing his tip can he? It was an enjoyable evening though, and on the way back I had my first experience of a car home the way most Russians do it, i.e. sticking a thumb out and hopping in one of about 5 cars that instantly stop. For 500 rubles we took a very fast trip through Moscow in a knackered old Lada with a smashed windscreen and no seatbelts. The gearbox was also making alarming noises on every gear change - apparently it failed completely soon after I got dropped off at my hotel. Fantastic.
Today I met the others near the same spot and we had tea in a cafe before heading to the bus station on the Metro to see Luke off. Luke had forgotten to bring any rubles so I performed a handy currency exchange (I knew that carrying cash and not depending on my card had to be useful one day). They were lucky to get a relatively modern bus rather than one of the many Soviet-era black-smoke-spewing ones. It actually looked like it would make the six hour journey in one piece. We then wandered back to the Metro and I did a short tour of the grander stations... you know, the ones with the mosaics and chandeliers. They are indeed very grand, but it's not quite like all of the Metro stations are like that, as I had heard. Worth seeing though.
Now it is nearly 8pm, or 5pm GMT, so the England-whoever game must be on. People care less here now that the Ukraine are out, but it's actually quite nice to be away from all of the football hysteria. A quick check of the BBC website reveals that it is half time and 0-0. Good to keep up with these things in case I bump into another expat in the hotel who can't really talk about anything else!
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!
Some observations:
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...
