Kalashnikov

When I was on a short visit to Finland, I brought something to my youngest brother as a house warming gift: a special tax free edition of Kalashnikov. It was the only one left in Sheremetyevo 2 airport terminal. This is one of the many vodka brands in Russia. Their "basic" bottle is pretty cool too with a simple army style design but this was just little bit more convincing for my purpose. I think my brother was quite happy about his new toy. By the way, my bother has already passed the magical age limit, so I was not doing anything illegal ;-)

Aeroflot

This is a vegetarian meal by Aeroflot, not too bad when compared with Finnair's boring piece of bread. I really don't have anything negative to say about Aeroflot, I like to fly with them if they are 200 euros cheaper than the Finnish competitor. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that they don't seem to have any e-tickets for their Helsinki flights. So every time I have to pick up my tickets from Aeroflot office and there will always be a queue for half an hour... Another problem is how to get to the airport and back, it's an adventure every time. You can go to half way with the metro (green line, Rechnoy Voksal metro station) and then continue to Sheremetyevo 2 terminal with a small yellow bus. However, if you are busy you might need to get a taxi and that is just so expensive. I mean it is cheaper to take the taxi from the centre but then you have a risk of being late from your plane because of the traffic (it might take one hour or three). This web site has some good information about how to travel to the airport: http://www.waytorussia.net/Moscow/ArrivalDeparture.html. Prices might have changed though, that yellow bus for example costed only 26 Rubles last year but now it's 50 Rubles. 

Okhotny Ryad

Okhotny Ryad is a underground shopping mall with three floors. It's located close to the Red Sguare. You can find many familiar brands here: Oasis, TopShop, McDonalds, Mango, Nike, Adidas, VeroModa, Mexx, Accessorize... On the bottom floor you can find many cheap fast food restaurants, even one with sushi but I can't really recommend this YoSushi to anyone (there is better ones in Moscow too with the same price). Clothes and accessories are maybe 30–40 per cent more expensive than for example in Finland, so I haven't been so much like a crazy shopaholic yet. Opening times are probably the best thing about shopping in Moscow, everything is open until 10 pm, fantastic!

Transit Cafe

Transit Cafe is the closest cafe or lunch place, just ten meters away from our office entrance. It just happens that I go there quite often... If you are lucky, you can fill your stomach in 30 minutes :-) I am quite familiar with the menu already, they don't have so many options without meat or chicken... The staff knows me too, so I don't particularly have to ask for the English menu anymore. First I had ambitious coals and I was planning to learn to use their Russian menu but so far I have been little bit lazy (or just very hungry)... However, now I almost don't need to see the menu anymore because I pretty much remember what they have ;-) This place looks quite Russian to me because of dark brown wood. Food is not that fantastic and this is not the cheapest place either but pretty ok anyway. My favorite drink here is milk shake: vanilla, strawberry or banana, depending on my mood. Very often you can see many familiar faces from our office...

Exile

The Exile newspaper is Russia-based English-language newspaper which can be found from many bars and restaurants in Moscow. It contains information about coming gigs, club reviews, bar & restaurant guide and also some interesting articles. This newspaper was launched something like 10 years ago by young american journalist. Sometimes stories are quite "masculine" but it's anyway a good source if you want to know what is happening: http://www.exile.ru. The Moscow Times is another English-language newspaper, there you can also find more news: http://www.moscowtimes.ru.

ProdExpo

I went to see this exhibition with my friend from work, he wanted to show me some examples of Russian packaging. This ProdExpo was an exhibition for medium size brands (mainly food & drinks) who are willing to get their products to retailers. Absolutely so amazing!!!!! It was a huge area just full of packaging, like a dream land for me! It was also ok to take photos, normally you are not exactly allowed to do it in a super markets. In Finland you often have 2–3 bigger brands in each category but here it was at least ten times more. There was for example three halls just for vodka! I can tell you that they weren't tiny halls... Everything is big here in Russia :-) The quality of the packaging  had of course a large variety but we saw some really good examples too. I was surprised with the good quality of printing and photography (but don't read this in a way that everything was printed with a perfect quality). I could take a catalogue covering all vodka brands with product pictures to home with me. It is amazing, I will take a good care of it! You could also find many girls at the stands promoting products, all the possible fantasies were included ;-)

Stockmann

Stockmann is a Finnish department store (with a good quality) and they have five stores in Moscow (or the fifth will be open in 2008). One of them is at the Smolenskaja Square. It might be confusing to find it because you don't see Stockmann logos outside, it's located inside the shopping centre. When I went there for the first time I was so lost... This Department store is smaller than for example the one in Helsinki but they have pretty good selection and you can also pay here with your Finnish Stockmann membership card, absolutely great! They have many Finnish Products on their shelfs. Prices are of course higher than in Finland: clothes like 30–40% more expensive and there is some "bonus" with the food too. However, it's so nice to buy some Finnish rue bread or special kind of cheese sometimes. I was soooo happy when I found Fazer's Super-Salmiakki (Finnish salty liquorice, you either love it or hate it...) at Stockmann's food store =) Absolutely fantastic! You don't unfortunately get the service in Finnish but quite often there is some english speaking staff available. I was so surprised when I lost my bracelet in the fitting room (not expensive one but I liked it). After couple of days I went to Stockmann's again and I found my bracelet at the info desk. I was so sure that I will not see it again... Spasiba for that! Stockmann is open every day from 10 am to 10 pm and some local stores even longer, maybe even 24 hours.

At work

TBWA and Tango offices are located very close to the red square, so it's very central. Tango office is on the top floor and you can see Kremlin from the window. Fantastic view! We go to work here around 10–11 am (Moscow time is +3GMT) and work until 6–8 pm (official hours are probably from 10 am to 6 pm). I must say I really like this a lot, it is very natural schedule for me because I always do lots of interesting things during the evening and don't really feel like going to bed early. Once I came to work around 9.30 am and I had to spend the first hour just by myself and make some "tzai" (tea) alone... We don't by the way have "samovar" in our modern office but in stead we do have nice, Tango-style airport graphics and many airplane lovers. By the way, many thanks to Andrey, who took a photo of me today :-)

Water

It is not very good idea to drink the tab water in Moscow. I have to buy my water for drinking and cooking from the local super market. I hope I will stay fit with that exercise until I find a good fitness club or gym close by ;-) During my first week here I sometimes bought accidently sparkling water and it was interesting for example to brush your teeth with sparking water. Well, it certainly is worth trying sometimes, feels funny =) I also found an interesting packaging for Evian water, it's special x-mas edition. You can also buy some posh VOSS water from Norway, cots about 7–8 euros for one bottle (I think it's 1 l)... This water thing can be surprising for Finns because the tab water in Finland is very good and much fresher than any bottled water. 

Metro

Metro is soooooo handy for transportation, there is so much traffic jams and you never know how long it takes to drive somewhere. It takes only about 15–20 minutes for me to go to work/downtown with the metro, plus some time for walking. This can take (about 7 km) more than one hour with the taxi. If you miss on train, there will be another one coming very soon. It's unusual to have to wait more than two minutes for the next train. There is also a screen showing how long time it has been since the last train. Metro is also very cheap to use: single ticket costs 19 Rbl and 70 journeys 600 Rbl (about 25 euros). My first times in Moscow metro were however full of surprises, I was so lost all the time! In London for example you can change at one station to many lines but here you can have four different names for "one station" if there is four lines. So confusing, it took a while to understand that. On my first day it took like 4o minutes instead of 15 from the hotel to work. I am still not sure how did I ended up there, I was changing lines like five times... Luckily there was many friendly locals around! It is also very useful to be able to read cyrillic letters & signs. I am so slow when reading them but anyway, that helps! Great! Actually it is not always that hard, some words can sound familiar if you just read them in a right way: apteka (apteekki in Finnish, pharmacy), avtoservis (car service), gastronom (super market), kassa-avtomat (kassa in Finnsih too, ticket automat), fotografija ("photographic studio") and so on... Some metro stations are also very beautiful, historical & pieces of art itself. 

Juice or lemonade...?

Cookies, fruits, large selections of drinks (including beer) and so on... are available almost any time of the day/night. Really handy! Everything has a price tag in it and it's quite easy to just point with your finders what you want to have. I have done it many times... However, I have been planning to surprise the sales person there someday with my perfect, native russian language ;-)

Sokol

Some pics from Sokol, close to my home. I have two minutes walk to the Sokol metro station and there are little kiosks, church (land mark), pharmacy (open 24 hours) and a game house on the way.

Swimming in a bathroom

I can also swim in my bathroom, great! However, I think I need to find a bigger pool soon too...

Kitchen

My kitchen: I am so happy particularly because of the dish washer :-)

At home with lights

Everything is pretty much unpacked now, it took like half an hour to put all my things to their places ;-) Sergey who owns this flat is very nice, helpful and friendly person. He lives two floors below me with his wife. My new home is just recently been renovated and it's nice & tidy. I have pretty much everything I need: dish washer, washing machine, enough storage space for clothes & other things. There is even a boiler in a bathroom for getting warm water also during the summer time. That's great, otherwise I might need to be three weeks without warm water because they are fixing the system & pipes. My brothers are probably very happy to see my blue led lights on the sealing and a big TV ;-) Unfortunately everything is dubbed in Russian, even Simpsons and South Park... I am happy to have some some "Finnish design" in my home too: I got my polar bear bed sheets from my mum & dad as a x-mas present and of course I had to take them here with me :-)

My own home

We went to see some apartments with Natalya, my friend from work on Monday evening and we found two really nice ones, also one which was not as good as the other ones. Today we found out that there was some problems with getting the first one but I could get the other one and I would be able to move in this evening! Great =) It's a good location, Sokol, 15–20 minutes with the metro to downtown or to work. I would say it's pretty ok, considering that there is 10 million people living in Moscow (plus surroundings). I was not able to come to work before 11 am because I was driving around Moscow with my luggage in a "black cab". Of course I didn't remember to order the taxi on advance and I had to ask the hotel staff to get me a taxi from the street. The driver was ordinary & symphatetic looking older russian man and he didn't really know how to drive in downtown. Ordinary people try sometimes to make some money with offering taxi service, so anybody can stop and offer the service for you... You just need to discuss about the price before going in and to make sure that there is no other passengers in a car, that can be dangerous. This time the driver didn't speak any English (that's very normal) and I had to call to the office to get some instructions. We also had to ask police (militsija) three times before finding the right street... However, I really look forward to be able to move to my own home today!

The eagle has landed

I arrived to Moscow on sunday 3rd of February 2008. After landing with Aeroflot plane, I had to spend like 45 minutes in passport control. Some flight from Chine had  luckily just landed before us... Then I had troubles with finding my suitcase on the baggage belt. I was so sure that is was lost forever (I read from somewhere that it happens quite often that luggage gets lost in moscow airport) but then some other travelers told me that I should maybe see the other belt (plane from Istanbul or somewhere). Hurray, I found my luggage there! Yes! Then just finding the cap and going to the hotel... Well, I was so much late from the time the taxi was ordered for me that I didn't see it anywhere. There was a very helpful woman at the info desk and she was even calling for that taxi but unfortunately I never found the right taxi. So I ended up taking a taxi (with official taxi card) from the airport just by myself (vow!). First you need to negociate about a price and the result was 1800 Rubles to the Belgrad hotel in downtown (normal price 1200–2000 Rbl). It was surprisingly fast this time to get to the hotel, only 45 minutes. The hotel was quite old soviet style hotel with some disco lights outside. It's good, at least you can recognice it very easily :-) It was so great to be able to go to sleep! Few previous nights had been quite short for me because coming back from Maldives (absolute great holiday!). I was somehow little bit tired and confused with life...