Early morning interruption...

And I mean early!

I got a call at 1:00 am this morning from the folks downstairs. My luggage had just arrived.

This immediately put a strong, positive spin on the day, as I had not been a very happy camper to learn that my luggage was not at the hotel when we returned from work.

Dinner last night was at a sushi joint, part of a chain that goes by the name of Yakitoriya. As had been the case the previous night, at a place called 'Steak & Pub' (written in Cyrillic), I was there with the end client.

(Hmmm, that's strange... I'm using the free access at the hotel - a single HP running Ubuntu - but while the keyboard indicator dutifully switches from 'USA' to 'Rus' and back, one cannot type in Cyrillic on the machine.)

My partner is a very capable guy I had last met in 1995 in Houston. We get along pretty well, though I think there is room for improvement in the "sharing the workload" department (I interpreted very little yesterday).

Today is a scheduled off day, so I intend to go up to the room (I'm on my way back upstairs after an totally indifferent $33 breakfast), unpack, and consider my options.

Cheers...

Walkabout Moscow...

Needing the exercise, I took off for a walk around the area, hoping to eventually stop by a couple of bookstores to see if they had any good materials on topography or surveying.

I started out from the hotel and went down past the Sheraton and then left to the Patriarch's Ponds (Патриаршие пруды), which is the site of the scene at the beginning of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. It was a pleasant enough park, with a statue of the fable-writer Krylov on one side, and if it was used in shooting the recent film version of Bulgakov's novel, a lot of stuff has been rearranged and painted since.

Coming out of the men's toilet, I was verbally harangued by a cleaning lady who read me the riot act (in Russian, naturally), telling me that the toilet had been painted, cleaned, and so on, etc. and why did I not obey the sign - hanging by one end vertically about a foot to the left of the entrance (so that one would have to crane one's neck to read it) - that announced the toilet was being cleaned?

I looked at her sweetly and in my best "bad accent" Russian said, "Me sorry. Me foreigner. Me no understand. Please repeat. Slower." And smiled, doing my best to imitate a puppy.

She gave me the dirtiest look! (And made my day.)

I wended my way down some side streets and ended up in Pushkin square, from which I walked down to the statue of Yuri Dolgorukiy on Tverskaya Street (stopping at the Moskva bookstore near there), then on down to Kuznetsky Most, to a place that several people had mentioned over several visits, a bookstore called BiblioGlobus. The store, which is across the street from FSB headquarters, is pretty impressive, has a stamp department (I saw a Great Britain one-penny black on a cover, offered with a certificate of authenticity, for 35,000 rubles), but not many dictionaries.

The exchange rate, by the way, has improved since last I was in town, with a "sell" price of about 30.20 and a "buy" price of about 30.80 for US dollars. (So the authenticated one-penny black cover is almost $1200.)

I am currently in an Internet cafe just off of Pushkin square, checking in and sipping a cool Pepsi-light before going back to the hotel via the direct route (up Tverskaya).

Cheers...