Blogs from Moscow, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 80

Om een uur of tien wordt ik wakker, Wijnand slaapt nog , op de kamer is het niet om uit te houden zo warm dus ga ik maar naar beneden naar de bar om mijn dagboekje even wat bij te schrijven. Zo waar staan er een paar knappe dames achter de bar, de meeste Russische vrouwen die we tot nu hebben gezien waren niet om aan te zien. Ik bestel een colaatje en begin met schrijven. Vaandag gaan we in elk gevel het mausoleum bezoeken en verder is alles prima, zolang het maar iets goedkops is, tering wat gaat het geld hier hard. Als ik om 12.45u terug kom om de kamer is Wijnand wakker, maar het is inmiddels alweer te laat voor het mausoleum, dus gaan we maar even een uurtje slapen, we zijn ook ... read more

From November 1997 to February 1998, I was detailed to the White House Office of the Federal Environmental Executive, where I helped write several Executive Orders related to Greening of the Government. The only travel I did was for my boss. She got sick, and with 24 hours notice I had to fly to Lawton, Oklahoma to give a speech at the Oklahoma Environmental Educators Conference. I was in good company; following my speech Senator Inhofe gave his speech. In March 1998, I was brought back to NAVFAC as Program Manager with the Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC) program between the U.S., Norway, and Russia. I took several business trips including to Moscow, Russia in June for a technical meeting. My trip to Russia was supposed to be for two weeks. The first week was technical ... read more

Moscow 1989-1995 To get a flavour of the world, I arrived in Moscow in August 1989, just two months before the Berlin Wall was turned down. I spent in Moscow six years, in a city where stricking changes were taking place. All of us that spent together such a long time, do agree that there are no words of gratitude to our Russian teachers that were dedicated to their work in spite of the whole economic and social crisis that the country underwent. ... read more

An Aeroflot flight brought us from Leningrad to Moscow. We stayed at an Intourist hotel. Sightseeing in Moscow focused on Red Square and the Kremlin. I'd always waned to see St. Basil's Cathedral since reading about it in a vintage National Geographic magazine. There was also a visit to the famous GUM (Gosudarstvennyi Universalnyy Magazin) store off Red Square. GUM was described in the West as a department store, but the structure, opened in 1893, was really more of what I would call a shopping arcade. In 1914 Baedeker called it the "Trading Rows" a translation of its name in pre-Soviet times. We saw Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square, for which there was a long queue. There were also visits to Moscow State University and to the VDNKh (Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy). In ... read more