RUSSIA

Moscow, Business Days 2-3

(Continued from Moscow, Day 1)

MOSCOW, Feb 27 - My last two days in Moscow were sped in practically round-the-clock business meetings.  Still I managed to take some interesting shots of the city while driving to and from the meetings...

Two views from the same window - one on a snowy, another on a clear day.

Fresh dusting of snow around the Kremlin walls on a beautifully clear day. The gate visible on the right side of the picture leads to where President Putin lives (inside the Kremlin, of course).  In fact, traffic was stopped for his motorcade when I took this photo.

This is a building where some of Russia's recent history was written in blood, as had so many other chapters of this vast country's violent past.  A group of Russian parliamentarians staged a coup against the Yeltsin government in October 1993.  The uprising was brutally suppressed (see "Yeltsin's Red October II," 1993).  Now, the building is used as the Ministry of Justice.  No evidence of its near destruction (by tank shells) is visible anymore.

Not far from the above building is the U.S. Embassy (above).

This is one of several imposing structures around Moscow that date back to the Stalin era (1930s).  They were nicknamed "wedding cake" buildings.

"New Arbat" is a Moscow's night life district.  "On the left are the casinos, on the right the night clubs and restaurant," my Russian driver summed it up.

Moscow is now a new haven for billboard and any other kind of large (VERY LARGE; VERY LOUD) outdoor advertising.  This is, for example, an enormous hot air balloon-like Russian doll "guarding" the way to a bridge over the river Moscow that leads to the Kremlin (in the background) and the city center.

The Evening of Feb 27 

This evening, my IBM friends Dunja and Roman and I went to dinner at a typical local Russian restaurant...

...where this picture was taken.  The restaurant depicted a Russian village atmpsphere, replete with trees, flowers and bushes - quite a contrast to the -12C outside temperature.

Here are Dunja and Roman, just outside the restaurant...

...and Dunja and I, too, at the same site.

(Back to Moscow, Day 1)

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