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 .