The traffic jam in Moscow is bad. The metro is good, but crowded. I read somewhere that the Moscow metro transports 9 million people every day.
When working in Moscow, we often stay in a 4-star Marriott hotel just a five minute walk from the office. Then we avoid both the traffic jam and the metro-crowds.
At 8 o'clock in the morning, we meet the rush outside of the railway station. Everybody appear to be going the opposite way. Then we cross under the street, through a tunnel with small underground shops, offering newspapers and tooth paste and matryoshkas (the Russian nested wooden dolls).
Every morning the same guy is advertising cheep hostels, the same man sitting on a chair playing accordion, and the same old peg-legged woman is begging for money.
Fashion-flashing women and designer-suit men are hurrying to the law firms and merchant banks.
Moscow has become a modern city in good and bad. The middle-class is growing. The rich are richer and the poor are poorer than they used to be in the Soviet days.
We work long days, and then walk the same way back to the hotel at night.
We often stop by at Dubinin Restaurant to get some food. Up the stairs to the 2nd floor, smokers to the left, non -smokers to the right. TV screens on the walls show soccer games or hockey from KHL (the Russian equivalent of NHL)
Dubinin has become like our regular place. They serve some really good sausages; Dubinin's Meter if you're really hungry, and Munich sausage with sauerkraut. To drink, we order Dubinin's Dark Beer, served in a 1.5 liter jug or a 0.5 liter mug. Very good.
Last week they were out of Dubinin Dark. Sold out. Waiting for the next batch from the brewery. Fortunately there are alternatives, such as Cernovar (dark of course). The Checks know how to make beer too >:)
(I took the picture above on a sunny morning on the way to the office last week. Dubinin Restaurant is the opposite way; behind my back)
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