For some crazy reason, the audit organization decided to schedule an engagement in Moscow in December… couldn’t this wait until the Spring?? Apparently not, so for the last couple of weeks I was in Russia for work.
During the week, work was extremely busy, but our team of four still managed to get out in the evenings and site-see a bit.
It helped that we stayed at the Hotel National directly across the street from Red Square. The National is not only a historic hotel, but was also once a luxury apartment building. Lenin even lived there. Now it hosts presidents and foreign ministers... and the Dell team. My room was just down the hall from the French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s (there was a plaque on the wall commemorating his visit).
One of the prep questions our teams always asks before a site visit is ‘What are your hours of operation?’ For example, in the US it’s about 8:00-5:00, while in Europe they tend to start a bit later around 9ish. In Russia, the admin told us most people don’t start to trickle into the office until around 10:00 and they leave at 7:00. When we woke up on Monday morning, we saw why. It was pitch black outside. It didn’t start to get light until almost 11:00. So people do rise with the sun, but they are night owls. Most of the restaurants and bars and shops were open well into the night. We later learned that Moscow and St. Petersburg only get about 75 days of sun a year. I could never live there… I would be too cold and depressed without a steady Vitamin D intake. The UK is about as far North as I go.
Besides affecting everyone’s schedules, the weather seemed to affect everyone’s moods as well.
David and I love “An Idiot Abroad,” a British reality TV show that follows Ricky Gervais’ friend, Karl, around the world. Karl hates to travel, so Ricky has forced him out of his comfort zone by sending him on adventures that are always hilarious. This past season, Karl met his Russian twin when he took the Trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to China. When he arrived in Moscow, his taxi driver was absolutely miserable. Karl asked him what he should see and do in Moscow and the driver responded with, “Nothing! It’s awful here! Just terrible!”
We got that vibe a lot.
When we were in St. Petersburg over the weekend, our tour guide showed up at 9:50, 20 minutes past our scheduled departure time, exclaiming, “Why did you schedule this so early? It’s too dark and cold. It’s terrible!” Then she went on to complain about how much she hates being Russian with her “stupid Russian passport” that doesn’t allow her to easily leave the country to travel or live abroad. Poor girl!
Just take a look at this professional technology magazine I found in the Dell office…
Russians are definitely more blunt, too. I’ve gotten used to that from working with a lot of Europeans who will say exactly what’s on their minds, but the Russians take it to a whole new level. For example, in restaurants if we would ask for something and it wasn’t available, instead of hearing, “No, I’m sorry, we’re out of…” we would get, “Niet!”
Speaking of restaurants, the food experience was very interesting. Sushi is hugely popular right now in Russia, especially Moscow. I kept forgetting how big Russia is, but it made sense that Japanese food would be popular once Sasha (our tour guide from St. Petersburg) told us she was from a small island North of Japan. I only had sushi once during the trip, and it was really good.
My first taste of Russia came with my blini on the plane ride from London. Blinis are like crepes and can be prepared savoury or sweet. Dinner on the flight to Moscow was a blini stuffed with custard and raspberry sauce. That would usually qualify as dessert in my book, but for the Russians it was a typical dinner. For breakfast most days, I had blinis with sour cream. And for lunch I often ordered a ham and cheese blini with a chocolate banana blini for dessert. I couldn’t get enough of them, they were so good!
Another popular dish is borscht, beet soup. I hate beets, but I couldn’t come to Russia and not try borscht. It was actually really good. The broth is really flavorful with the different seasonings and there is beef in the soup as well, so it hardly tastes like beets at all.
Beef stroganoff was invented in St. Petersburg (more to come on that in a different blog post) so I tried that during our first team dinner… which was quite an experience.
Usually I’m a great planner and try to figure out the best restaurants to eat at and opening times of museums/sites to plan my day. But with Thanksgiving the week before and work being really busy, I was not on my game for these two weeks in Russia. So on Monday after work, we dropped our bags at the hotel and asked the concierge where we should eat. She told us about Kitsch, a nearby restaurant that served well-priced, traditional Russian dishes. We walked to the address she gave us, but we weren’t sure if it was the right place because there was a scary-looking bronze guard dog statue outside the door and the sign above said Kitsch Kock.
We should’ve known by the name…
We opened the door and saw a steep black staircase between two walls covered in black wall paper and black lights hanging from the ceiling. When we got to the top of the staircase, there was a picture of a sexy vampire staring down at us. And in the middle of the restaurant was a chandelier with the lights shining through the hollowed-out eyes of skulls. We thought about leaving, but the manager was so nice and welcoming, so we gave it a shot. She didn’t have an English menu, but she spoke pretty fluently and was nice enough to sit down at the table with us and go through every dish. I played it safe with the stroganoff and a glass of vodka with orange juice. It was surprisingly delicious.
Ana, one of my co-workers, was a very brave eater during the whole trip. She would order sushi without knowing what kind of raw seafood she was being served. At Kitsch Kock, she enjoyed the cow tongue. Later on in the week she even tried bear! I don’t know what kind of bear they serve in Russia, but I have never heard of bear for dinner before this trip.
Our engagement director had told us that last time he was in Moscow (years and years and years ago) he went to a Ukrainian restaurant with a farmyard in the middle. He LOVED it and kept telling us how we had to find it. So I Googled “Ukrainian restaurants in Moscow with farm animals” and sure enough, Shinok came up at the #1 Ukrainian restaurant in the city. So during our second week of work, we took a taxi across town to check it out.
The restaurant was so fun! It’s meant to look like a Ukrainian farmhouse, so you actually walk into the home and up three flights of wooden stairs to get to the “dining room.” And sure enough, in the middle of the restaurant there was a farmyard complete with chickens, roosters, peacocks, and even a cow! And watching over all of the animals was a babushka.
That night most of the table ordered the Chicken Kiev, breaded chicken breast stuffed with butter. I had already had Kiev earlier in the week, so this time I ordered the crispy garlic chicken. The waiter brought me out a whole chicken, butterflied. I was just hoping it wasn’t the mother or sister of one of the chickens I had just seen wandering around the coop. Joey, my engagement manager, had the rabbit pie. I didn’t notice any rabbits or bunnies hopping around, but that may have just been because Joey ate the last one.
On Friday after work, Joey and I met up with his wife, Jenn, back at the hotel and then walked to Café Pushkin for dinner. Café Pushkin is owned by the same restaurant group as Shinok, but Café Pushkin was much better. The surroundings weren’t quite as whimsical, but the restaurant was inside a beautiful big house decked out with dozens of Christmas trees. They served traditional Russian and French dishes. This time, I ordered the cheesy chicken. It was like Chicken Kiev except inside of butter in the middle, it was oozing with gooey, delicious cheese sauce. And it came out on a cracker set made to look like a saw.
For dessert, they made Jenn's crème brulee at the table in front of us with a candle.
One other cultural difference I picked up on, besides the attitude and food, was that Russia was not as Westernized as I'd thought it would be. I expected with a bustling metropolis, millions of people, and advanced space and military programs, Moscow would be more developed. The first sign that this was not the case was when I had to go to the health clinic to get immunizations for my visit. The doctor warned me that I needed to get all of my hepatitis shots and boosters and told me when I was in-country, DO NOT DRINK THE WATER. That really surprised me. I expected that going to Mexico and Egypt, but Russia?? The entire time I was there, I was extra careful about brushing my teeth with bottled water and never ordering ice!
There was also a massive language barrier outside the office. Even Joey and Jenn, who are probably the most well-travelled couple I know, said it was more difficult finding an English-speaker in Moscow than in most Asian countries.
Because traffic is so awful in Moscow, the team opted to take the metro instead of a cab to and from work. Because of recent terrorist attacks at the airport and on the subway, we were extra vigilant, and thankfully nothing really happened while we were in town (besides the mass protests and rallies the second week of the trip).
The metro was extremely difficult to get around in, though. I would not have tried it on my own. The Russian language is in Cyrillic, so we couldn’t even read the metro stops. For example, my full name, Sarah Elizabeth House, translated into Russian is Сара Элизабет дом. Yes, there’s a number 3 in the middle of Elizabeth... Since we couldn’t read anything, we literally had to guess which platform to get on and then count the number of stops between stations. And if multiple lines stopped at the same place, the stop had a different name for each line. Really confusing! After a couple of days of counting stops and listening to station names, we got the hang of it though. Enough to barely get by.
While Joey, Jenn and I travelled to St. Petersburg on Friday night, the rest of the team took a self-guided tour of the Moscow metro, which is the most beautiful metro I’ve ever seen. Stalin ordered marble and statues and chandeliers in the stations to make the lives of the commuters a little bit brighter and “thank” them for their sacrifice. Peter, another one of my co-workers, took these pics during their tour:
Even though Russia wasn't quite what I expected, I had a really good time there for two weeks. It is such an interesting place and it’s growing and developing so fast! I will post more blogs about what we did and saw later, but I wanted to share this little cultural overview first!
During the week, work was extremely busy, but our team of four still managed to get out in the evenings and site-see a bit.
Joey, Ana, me, and Peter wearing Russian hats in front of St. Basil's
It helped that we stayed at the Hotel National directly across the street from Red Square. The National is not only a historic hotel, but was also once a luxury apartment building. Lenin even lived there. Now it hosts presidents and foreign ministers... and the Dell team. My room was just down the hall from the French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s (there was a plaque on the wall commemorating his visit).
One of the prep questions our teams always asks before a site visit is ‘What are your hours of operation?’ For example, in the US it’s about 8:00-5:00, while in Europe they tend to start a bit later around 9ish. In Russia, the admin told us most people don’t start to trickle into the office until around 10:00 and they leave at 7:00. When we woke up on Monday morning, we saw why. It was pitch black outside. It didn’t start to get light until almost 11:00. So people do rise with the sun, but they are night owls. Most of the restaurants and bars and shops were open well into the night. We later learned that Moscow and St. Petersburg only get about 75 days of sun a year. I could never live there… I would be too cold and depressed without a steady Vitamin D intake. The UK is about as far North as I go.
Besides affecting everyone’s schedules, the weather seemed to affect everyone’s moods as well.
David and I love “An Idiot Abroad,” a British reality TV show that follows Ricky Gervais’ friend, Karl, around the world. Karl hates to travel, so Ricky has forced him out of his comfort zone by sending him on adventures that are always hilarious. This past season, Karl met his Russian twin when he took the Trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to China. When he arrived in Moscow, his taxi driver was absolutely miserable. Karl asked him what he should see and do in Moscow and the driver responded with, “Nothing! It’s awful here! Just terrible!”
We got that vibe a lot.
When we were in St. Petersburg over the weekend, our tour guide showed up at 9:50, 20 minutes past our scheduled departure time, exclaiming, “Why did you schedule this so early? It’s too dark and cold. It’s terrible!” Then she went on to complain about how much she hates being Russian with her “stupid Russian passport” that doesn’t allow her to easily leave the country to travel or live abroad. Poor girl!
Just take a look at this professional technology magazine I found in the Dell office…
I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw that cover. Never, ever have I seen a magazine with such a dismal cover model.
Russians are definitely more blunt, too. I’ve gotten used to that from working with a lot of Europeans who will say exactly what’s on their minds, but the Russians take it to a whole new level. For example, in restaurants if we would ask for something and it wasn’t available, instead of hearing, “No, I’m sorry, we’re out of…” we would get, “Niet!”
Speaking of restaurants, the food experience was very interesting. Sushi is hugely popular right now in Russia, especially Moscow. I kept forgetting how big Russia is, but it made sense that Japanese food would be popular once Sasha (our tour guide from St. Petersburg) told us she was from a small island North of Japan. I only had sushi once during the trip, and it was really good.
My first taste of Russia came with my blini on the plane ride from London. Blinis are like crepes and can be prepared savoury or sweet. Dinner on the flight to Moscow was a blini stuffed with custard and raspberry sauce. That would usually qualify as dessert in my book, but for the Russians it was a typical dinner. For breakfast most days, I had blinis with sour cream. And for lunch I often ordered a ham and cheese blini with a chocolate banana blini for dessert. I couldn’t get enough of them, they were so good!
Another popular dish is borscht, beet soup. I hate beets, but I couldn’t come to Russia and not try borscht. It was actually really good. The broth is really flavorful with the different seasonings and there is beef in the soup as well, so it hardly tastes like beets at all.
Beef stroganoff was invented in St. Petersburg (more to come on that in a different blog post) so I tried that during our first team dinner… which was quite an experience.
Usually I’m a great planner and try to figure out the best restaurants to eat at and opening times of museums/sites to plan my day. But with Thanksgiving the week before and work being really busy, I was not on my game for these two weeks in Russia. So on Monday after work, we dropped our bags at the hotel and asked the concierge where we should eat. She told us about Kitsch, a nearby restaurant that served well-priced, traditional Russian dishes. We walked to the address she gave us, but we weren’t sure if it was the right place because there was a scary-looking bronze guard dog statue outside the door and the sign above said Kitsch Kock.
We should’ve known by the name…
We opened the door and saw a steep black staircase between two walls covered in black wall paper and black lights hanging from the ceiling. When we got to the top of the staircase, there was a picture of a sexy vampire staring down at us. And in the middle of the restaurant was a chandelier with the lights shining through the hollowed-out eyes of skulls. We thought about leaving, but the manager was so nice and welcoming, so we gave it a shot. She didn’t have an English menu, but she spoke pretty fluently and was nice enough to sit down at the table with us and go through every dish. I played it safe with the stroganoff and a glass of vodka with orange juice. It was surprisingly delicious.
Ana, one of my co-workers, was a very brave eater during the whole trip. She would order sushi without knowing what kind of raw seafood she was being served. At Kitsch Kock, she enjoyed the cow tongue. Later on in the week she even tried bear! I don’t know what kind of bear they serve in Russia, but I have never heard of bear for dinner before this trip.
Our engagement director had told us that last time he was in Moscow (years and years and years ago) he went to a Ukrainian restaurant with a farmyard in the middle. He LOVED it and kept telling us how we had to find it. So I Googled “Ukrainian restaurants in Moscow with farm animals” and sure enough, Shinok came up at the #1 Ukrainian restaurant in the city. So during our second week of work, we took a taxi across town to check it out.
The restaurant was so fun! It’s meant to look like a Ukrainian farmhouse, so you actually walk into the home and up three flights of wooden stairs to get to the “dining room.” And sure enough, in the middle of the restaurant there was a farmyard complete with chickens, roosters, peacocks, and even a cow! And watching over all of the animals was a babushka.
That night most of the table ordered the Chicken Kiev, breaded chicken breast stuffed with butter. I had already had Kiev earlier in the week, so this time I ordered the crispy garlic chicken. The waiter brought me out a whole chicken, butterflied. I was just hoping it wasn’t the mother or sister of one of the chickens I had just seen wandering around the coop. Joey, my engagement manager, had the rabbit pie. I didn’t notice any rabbits or bunnies hopping around, but that may have just been because Joey ate the last one.
On Friday after work, Joey and I met up with his wife, Jenn, back at the hotel and then walked to Café Pushkin for dinner. Café Pushkin is owned by the same restaurant group as Shinok, but Café Pushkin was much better. The surroundings weren’t quite as whimsical, but the restaurant was inside a beautiful big house decked out with dozens of Christmas trees. They served traditional Russian and French dishes. This time, I ordered the cheesy chicken. It was like Chicken Kiev except inside of butter in the middle, it was oozing with gooey, delicious cheese sauce. And it came out on a cracker set made to look like a saw.
For dessert, they made Jenn's crème brulee at the table in front of us with a candle.
One other cultural difference I picked up on, besides the attitude and food, was that Russia was not as Westernized as I'd thought it would be. I expected with a bustling metropolis, millions of people, and advanced space and military programs, Moscow would be more developed. The first sign that this was not the case was when I had to go to the health clinic to get immunizations for my visit. The doctor warned me that I needed to get all of my hepatitis shots and boosters and told me when I was in-country, DO NOT DRINK THE WATER. That really surprised me. I expected that going to Mexico and Egypt, but Russia?? The entire time I was there, I was extra careful about brushing my teeth with bottled water and never ordering ice!
There was also a massive language barrier outside the office. Even Joey and Jenn, who are probably the most well-travelled couple I know, said it was more difficult finding an English-speaker in Moscow than in most Asian countries.
Because traffic is so awful in Moscow, the team opted to take the metro instead of a cab to and from work. Because of recent terrorist attacks at the airport and on the subway, we were extra vigilant, and thankfully nothing really happened while we were in town (besides the mass protests and rallies the second week of the trip).
The metro was extremely difficult to get around in, though. I would not have tried it on my own. The Russian language is in Cyrillic, so we couldn’t even read the metro stops. For example, my full name, Sarah Elizabeth House, translated into Russian is Сара Элизабет дом. Yes, there’s a number 3 in the middle of Elizabeth... Since we couldn’t read anything, we literally had to guess which platform to get on and then count the number of stops between stations. And if multiple lines stopped at the same place, the stop had a different name for each line. Really confusing! After a couple of days of counting stops and listening to station names, we got the hang of it though. Enough to barely get by.
While Joey, Jenn and I travelled to St. Petersburg on Friday night, the rest of the team took a self-guided tour of the Moscow metro, which is the most beautiful metro I’ve ever seen. Stalin ordered marble and statues and chandeliers in the stations to make the lives of the commuters a little bit brighter and “thank” them for their sacrifice. Peter, another one of my co-workers, took these pics during their tour:
Even though Russia wasn't quite what I expected, I had a really good time there for two weeks. It is such an interesting place and it’s growing and developing so fast! I will post more blogs about what we did and saw later, but I wanted to share this little cultural overview first!
Keep on writing. Even though you do not get a lot of comments, I know that at least 6 people in El Paso that read these blogs and await the next installment of your travels and adventures. Russia in the winter, what an amazing opportunity. Looking forward to the next installment of Russia.
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