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Belle Flies in
Entry 4 of 36 | show all | print this entry |
Last night turned out to be highly amusing. After I had posted the blog, I wandered thorough the hotel foyer before heading up to my room. It was after 10pm and all the little shops had closed, there were less people around but there had been an amazing proliferation of suggestively dressed women. Several of these 'ladies of the evening' offered to provide me with a massage, one, however, cut out the euphemisms and blandly asked if I would like some sex. I headed up to my room alone amused at the quite incredible change in character that had occurred in the space of half an hour.
Today is the first day of the full conference programme. There are three streams running concurrently so you have to choose the sessions that interest you most and miss out on those others that are running at the same time. I spent most of the day in the respiratory disease stream, during which Warwick Bayly gave a presentation on EIPH. Happily he did not disagree with anything I am planning to say in my presentation on Wednesday.
At lunchtime I wandered to a park about a kilometer from the Conference venue, Anna, my saviour from yesterday had suggested that it was worth a look. Everything was snow covered and there were a host of young people ice skating on an outdoor ice rink. I plan to head back there tomorrow with Belle.
Belle landed in Moscow at about 3:30pm and I went to meet her at Paveleskaya station. I had to wait about an hour for her train from the airport to arrive and so I spent my time people watching. Most of the women wear fur of some sought, either as a fringe on their jackets or full fur coats. There were also plenty of fur hats to be seen on men and women. Not for the first time I was approached by someone speaking rapid Russian at me. I guess he was asking for directions or something but I was no help given I couldn't speak his language and also probably had even less idea than he did about where he wanted to get to. During my quiet observations I did see one poor soul with a haemangiomatous proliferation affecting the whole of one side of his face. There were a number of enormously fat pigeons who have taken up residence in the station where they are fed by kindly locals. There were also some wolfish looking dogs who called the station home and did there best to keep clear of the human passersby.
When Belle arrived we headed off to find a toilet. Belle paid 15 roubles for some toilet paper and a sightseeing tour of a Moscow public toilet, apparently there was just something to squat over and Belle was not about to give it a try. It was now somewhat urgent that we got back to the Hotel Cosmos ASAP. We headed off into the Metro which was busy as ever. We managed to get on a train heading in the right direction, we were then pushed back off the train at the next stop by a unstoppable flood of commuters exiting the train. Fortunately this allowed us to re-board a far emptier carriage and we made it to Prospect Mira where we changed to the number 6 line that takes us to VDNKh and the Hotel Cosmos. Belle had to register before we could head upstairs so we joined another of the now familiar glacial paced queues. We eventually got Belle registered and headed upstairs to relax for a little while.
After Belle had settled in to room 845, we decided to head out for some dinner. We first checked out what the restaurants the Hotel had to offer but nothing looked particularly inviting. On the way to the Hotel from the Metro station we had passed several food vans with interesting looking local foodstuffs, so we decided to brave the cold again and headed back to the food vans where we picked up some local hot dogs. That probably doesn't sound particularly interesting from where you are, but we both thoroughly enjoyed our dinner. The sausages were highly seasoned and there were several dressings and pickles to add to the flavour. The other bonus was the cost of our entire dinner plus bottled water supply ended up being less than it would have cost for one of us to eat at the cheapest of the Hotel's restaurants.
Latest Comments (1)
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how DO vet profs feel about all that fur? (reply)
Jan 30, 2008 08:07 EST by ange_l
the dangerous moment in this piece was when, after 15 roubles of pain, urgency mounting, the two of you were 'pushed back off the train at the next stop by a unstoppable flood' .... wait for it ... 'of commuters' ..... phew!! for a second we were concerned for Belle there :o)
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