My trip to Moscow + Pics!

Posted Saturday, February 10th 2007

As I said I would, I’m writing a story on my trip to Moscow, and I’ve even included some pictures at the end of the post.

Anyway, time to get on with it.

A bit of background information. I started working as a junior software analyst & project manager at a software company, and I had my first business trip at the end of January / beginning of February. My first trip was to Moscow, and it was exciting in many ways.

We left on January 29 - we flew from Skopje, Macedonia to Vienna, Austria. After about an hour, we boarded our flight to Moscow. Being on a plane for the first time, I was quite excited. Turned out to be pretty cool. We arrived at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport around 1 am, and got to our hotel - Ukraina (2nd pic) around 2 am. After a drink at the bar, we went to bed.
The days were mostly similar - wake up at 8, down at the restaurant for breakfast at 8:30, at the office by 9-9:15 am. I talked to various people during the 4 days I was there, in order to gather all the information I needed.

Anyway, Moscow. It’s huge. I still cannot fanthom the large scale of everything. Buildings are big, roads are big, everything is BIG. The main road going into Moscow is 20 lanes. 20 lanes! I saw some great things that I’ve only seen on TV or in movies before. St Basil’s Cathedral (pic 4), Lenin’s Mausoleum (pic3), the Beli Dom (pic 10) - all great and impressive things that have left me in awe.

I also took a few rides in the metro, which is filthy and old, and hardly anything remains of what it used to be. The streets are really dirty too, and as a result, so are all the cars. The people are reasonably nice, though service in restaurants and such (even in expensive ones!) is questionable. Went to a number of different places - a great Casino/Hotel with a bowling alley, various resturants - including a Japanese place where I tried unfiltered Japanese draught beer, which was amazing. I also tried Russian beers, which were quite good indeed. Oh, and it was really cold - it was -26 C at one point.

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