September 24, 2007
Greetings from...
...Russia
!
So here I am in Moscow - the 1st leg of my whirlwind, round-the-world work trip - after a one-night transit in London, a flight delay and a massive traffic jam.
*yawn*
So far I don't have much to base my initial observations on, just the long ride to the hotel and occasional glimpses out of the window during the flight, but Moscow is greener than I expected and less developed as well. The overwhelming impression is that of space, vast amounts of space. The streets are wide and fairly empty and everything looks orderly. It's less drabby than I imagined, although I must admit that subsconsciously I was expecting some vestige of the Iron Curtain - the stereotypical grim buildings, depressed-looking people shuffling along in their weathered clothing, authoritarianism on every street corner. But I suppose that capitalism has well and truly arrived when right across the hotel, there's a huge spanking new Zara store and the street looks like any other high street in some random First World country.
My room is HUGE, with a big-ass king bed taking pride of place. There's like 10 pillows on it of varying sizes so I'm wondering how to sleep - should I just throw everything onto the floor? :) And, the bathroom floor is heated! No more cold feet when showering :D My only complaint so far: no HBO on TV! The only English channels are news channels and so far I've seen the same news items repeated three times. Sigh. But, at least there's English channels!
8 meetings tomorrow. EIGHT. SIAO. Time to crash... Adios amigos :)
Posted by scrabbyfoo at September 24, 2007 02:37 AM