first trip
(Written on the plane from Moscow, Tuesday 20 July)
My first trip to Moscow lasted only 17 hours, was seen through the lens of a couple bad hours of plane sleep followed by the shortest and most expensive hotel stay of my life ($950 for four hours total in the room for those curious), and really only consisted of brief vistas from the freeway and Tverskaya Street. I saw the Kremlin from the first taxi ride at 5:00 a.m., and it was pretty. The rest of Moscow seemed to me to be tall (often massive or astoundingly tall) concrete or brick buildings, some very impressive, shrouded by tall weedy deciduous trees, like maybe the town once had a plan, but things had gotten out of control, and then everybody agreed that should just be the plan. It's an interesting look, one America would never know how to wear (not to mention England).
I'm coming to terms with some cyrillic letters. B is V; C is S; P is R; pi is P; gamma is G; the funny pi with a back foot is L. The backwards R is "ya" (my proudest moment was deciphering Japanese -- япoнская -- (and H is N, naturally--vowels are tricky, as in any language) while stuck in the middle of a traffic jam and about seven oblique converging lanes of automobiles when I was certain Sarah and I were going to miss our flight out).
I asked Sarah what the draw of emerging markets work was, other than it's work when other stuff has dried up. Apart from confirming that, she didn't have any compelling answers. My days as an emerging markets lawyer are numbered--they just have to be--even though I will be spending a bit of time in Mocква in the next month or so. $51,777.49 and counting. Stay ever vigilant-- /B/
My first trip to Moscow lasted only 17 hours, was seen through the lens of a couple bad hours of plane sleep followed by the shortest and most expensive hotel stay of my life ($950 for four hours total in the room for those curious), and really only consisted of brief vistas from the freeway and Tverskaya Street. I saw the Kremlin from the first taxi ride at 5:00 a.m., and it was pretty. The rest of Moscow seemed to me to be tall (often massive or astoundingly tall) concrete or brick buildings, some very impressive, shrouded by tall weedy deciduous trees, like maybe the town once had a plan, but things had gotten out of control, and then everybody agreed that should just be the plan. It's an interesting look, one America would never know how to wear (not to mention England).
I'm coming to terms with some cyrillic letters. B is V; C is S; P is R; pi is P; gamma is G; the funny pi with a back foot is L. The backwards R is "ya" (my proudest moment was deciphering Japanese -- япoнская -- (and H is N, naturally--vowels are tricky, as in any language) while stuck in the middle of a traffic jam and about seven oblique converging lanes of automobiles when I was certain Sarah and I were going to miss our flight out).
I asked Sarah what the draw of emerging markets work was, other than it's work when other stuff has dried up. Apart from confirming that, she didn't have any compelling answers. My days as an emerging markets lawyer are numbered--they just have to be--even though I will be spending a bit of time in Mocква in the next month or so. $51,777.49 and counting. Stay ever vigilant-- /B/