I arrived in Moscow with a couple of local guys. We quickly made our way through customs and found our driver and walked around to the car. Gold 4WD Lexus with black non-see through tinting (nice ride) and my first time in Moscow had the mind working over time… KGB? nah. I later found out our driver had been with the company for about 10 years. He had all sorts of “tactical” driver driver training from the days when security was more of issue. We hit it off pretty well when we started talking about cars, motorbikes and snow mobiles (in broken English and my four words of Russian). It seems as though cubic centimeters and km/hour are some sort of international language. He was a rev head at heart. Later this worked to our advantage when we were running late to the airport. The Lexus (and driver) moved like clock work through the traffic.
I checked into my hotel downtown on the way to the office (nice). You have to travel everywhere with your passport in Russia as well as have it registered at every hotel you stay at. Customs give you a bit of paper when you enter the country that hotels/police etc are supposed to stamp to keep a record of your movements. On the way out they take it from you. Our Moscow office is about the same size as our Perth office. The people there were great. I caught up on some emails for the first time in a week. I was given a quick guide to Moscow. I planned to take a walk around that night and check things out. As it didn’t get dark until 10 or so I had a good 4 hours of daylight to kill.
One thing that I immediately noticed walking around it that the girls are incredibly stylish. Everyone dresses very well. Matching bags shoes etc, it would leave most people and places for dead. Certainly not what I expected.