Now 'N' Then

Place : MTS Office,Moscow

All About Moscow- Part I

I thought of writing this post after completing my stay in Russia but that seems too far. Also one of my colleague friend gave the idea of writing this topic.

I would like to describe my personal view of Russia than the ubiquitous one.

Unlike other countries where Airport is abutted to city this airport of Moscow was too far from inhabitants. Even when the plane was about to land I can hardly see any building, traffic or busiest roads. It took close to 2 hours for me to reach my destination. on the way, everything is deserted and all I can see is white and whitish everywhere. Roads are good and driver cruised at 80 -120 Kmph . Later I found from one of my russian friend that russia is more secured in all aspects.

Driver after baffling in his phone slowed down in front of a building, and uttered something, yeah its our destination and we can see a person walking towards us and he spoke a bad English which is actually good for us and helped us inside the aparment. There is something interesting about the structure of the apartment and in particular about the entry door. The entry to the aparment is very much perplexing. Almost all the building are very old and had two sets of doors to enter, one which is secret code protected and the other is strangely shaped key protected, before you use the key to unlock you have to press a sequence of keys to open one before it. It was a bit complex to understand during our initial days. Though the building looked very antiquated from outside, inside it is very posh with all modern gadgets.

Coming to the vogue of Moscow, on the streets I can see all teenagers, ultra modern with a glass of beer always. Most of the teenagers speak English, but they don't engage foreigners. Roads are always populated with modern cars and traffic is always terrific. Russians as i observed practice walking a lot and no wonder they are fit too. Chief Means of Public Transport are under ground metros which are very old.

Topography of mosow is absolutely perfect,with river passing through the center, to make it one of the good tourist attraction. There are parks spread all over the city which a very well maintained. They spent a great deal of Money in landscaping and its usually a place of slacking for people in weeekends. one may feel fully perked up in the park with fountains and damsels adding to the beauty. Moscow also hosts lots of museums,with good antiquates.

Although official currency of Russia is Rubles (in their jargon -Rublee`e ) ,USD is also widely accepted for trasactions. soon i understood that night life in moscow is onething which is great. Great for people who loves furore. I am not a great lover of the same and hence i can't contribure much on that.

Russian is the officialy and only language every where and for a foreigner it is very difficult to manage as they are very much lacking in English.

I will describe about my working experience with Russians, how amusing it is at times in my next post.

... to be continued.

Rendezvous with Russian cop

It was my second day of stay in Moscow, I and my friend was out for shopping. It is mandatory in Russia for a foreigner to carry all travel related papers with him at all times. As per the rule, we carried all the papers with us. on my way back, a cop on duty summoned us, although I had all the papers with me I was bit apprehensive and as obvious he verified my passport , stamps and ???. he was asking me something more.we were baffled. As usual he never uttered a word in English. what is he asking for ?.

All that I was saying to him was "Can you speak English? Eng...lish..... English". After repeated echoing of same statement he took a piece of paper from his pocket and showed me something written in English, it read "All foreign nationals are required to carry Passport and registration Certificate all the time blah...blah....blah " oops I realized i am missing something, but what is that registration certificate? I said "I don't have" .

Readers have to understand even though I write "I said" it required arduous effort from us to make him understand what we saying.

Now that we are Missing something from our side and he got a good point. He came close to me and took out a pocket diary and wrote number 7000 and said "roubleee". we are more baffled , he again told "Roubleee" uh ..."Money money " .. oh ! got it "Roubles" . he was asking for 7000 roubles.

My God!!! 7000 Roubles. we said " no no " ..."no money" with some expression and he again wrote something ... this time 6000.. again he saw us.. but again a "NO" from us.
.... again he wrote 4000 and he also said "here ...here now or blah... blah .. blah" we understood that he is saying us to pay 4000 roubles there or he is saying he will take us with him. he also told "Me .... police ...duty ..uh job .. document .....money " . we understood that he is trying to say " i am a police on duty and as you don't have the document you have to pay the money.

we were totally stunned and we dint have a little idea of what to do, just then a passer by stopped at us,seeing our conversation with the cop and thank god, he helped interpreting. then we got to know that it is a Local police registration certificate which we wanna get., yeah now i remember .. the landlord of the apartment taking photocopies of our passport to get the same telling us he will give it in three working days.


After explaining this through our interpreter he let us go.!!!

Thanks for the interpreter who helped us.

The Taxiwala

We were finally out of Airport from the immigration counter, a short delay of around 120 mins. we went to the conveyer belt to collect our luggages and our bags were already out of belt.

collecting the bags,walking few steps we looked around and found a middle-aged fair guy holding our company's placard.yeah he is the person ,the taxi wala who came to pick us. I can see the signs of frustration in his face, after all he has been waiting for more than 3 hours. Its natural.

One of my colleagues tried to explain what made us late, but in vain. He never understands anything other than Russian; a genuine agmark Russian. so from here on its the sign language with which we communicated. we followed him and on the way we need to get our currencies exchanged we showed the counter to the taxi guy and said we will be back in 5 mins, yeah in sign language, seems he was very much irritated and grumbled someting low. But Never mind he has been there for more than 3 hours. we exchanged and finally followed him to the car in the parking area.

It was freezing cold outside ,the temperature display read zero degrees, we reached the car. alas!! here comes another problem we are four with huge baggages and we cant fit into the car. Taxi guy understood the problem and he called someone and with a struggle made us understand that another taxi is coming, we tried to get the time-frame but again in vain. 'Leave it' what more we can do.

First five minutes of waiting was an enjoyment and we were enjoying the weather and then started the problem we started feeling cold our ears started paining and it was already 20 minutes in freezing cold meanwhile we explained the taxi driver that we are feeling very cold and we will wait inside the airpot building. its after a long struggle we made him understtand that, but the only word he told is "Ni-eath" which meant "No". we din't understand why the hell he was not allowing us to wait inside.

we were waiting in the parking lot in the freezing cold for more than 40 mins and came another taxi to pick us. of this 4o mins we tried to talk to the driver as much as be can and atmost got the same words from his mouth again. he never smiled nor spoke back to us .Again to make the driver understand whom to take where took us some 4 or 5 calls to our manager.

This first experience made me understand that russians are very much abstained from English, which i never saw in other countries.

My Experience- Moscow

Its been more than a month i have been here,this is my second time to moscow and as usual on an on-site assignment.

My first visit to Moscow was in March, it was terribly cold and everything was white, its first time in my life i see such a snow . we all 4 landed in a deserted airport, tooo far from the city.

we all 4 were in the immigration queue, we were spread across different counters. I was third to reach the counter , I handed the immigration form along with passport(pp) to the officer in the counter,immediately on seeing the form she said something and gave back the form and passport . , 'whats wrong' I wondered, she said something in Russian. I wondered how these ppl are hostile and never bother to speak in a language which a foreigner can understand, and as expected all four of us were out of the queue, and we understood that we want to use another form. The form which we were using was given in flight and is not the standard one.

Everything was fine and in next 10 mins we all were in queue again and my turn came, i with lil hesitation gave my pp and form to the officer in the counter, she was scanning my pp left and right, stared at me and told to the security something and again we 4 were all out of the queue and were taken to a separate place.

An Officer came and started speaking and with little struggle we understood that he is asking for one of our ID cards /invitation Letters, its a struggle b'cos he spoke "Ruslish" absolutely foreign language :) . we handed over the all documents.

The interrogation was usual with what, where, when, why, who, how questions,after that we were idle for some 40 - 45 mins discussing amoung ourselves, we were all ok as this was expected. Finally the "Ruslish" Speaking officer Came and gave us a "go" finally after 120 mins we were out.

My experience with Taxi wala made me understand that Russian's are hard people to get along with .