Moscow, Russia

Before coming to Amsterdam, the training center that I had visited most frequently was Louisville, Kentucky. So, what did I think about attending a 2 day work training in Moscow?? I thought that it was great! Moscow was not one of the cities on my list of "must sees", however, when the chance arose to do so, I thought that it was a great opportunity. Derek, Aaron, Todd, Diane and I, traveled to Moscow before the training and spent some time over the weekend visiting the sites of the city - mainly Red Square and the Kremlin. Moscow was definitely different from the other European cities that I had traveled to. The alphabet letters are different, therefore, it is hard even attempt to translate the words / symbols, the police have an active presence in the city (and the ability to pull anyone aside and demand to see their passport and entry visas - which was saw often), and the buildings are different - extremely elaborate and ornamental. The typical Russian dishes of meat, potatoes, and Borsch soup also were much heavier than the bread and cheese that we are now used to having in Holland. We enjoyed the sights, rode the underground metro (all in Russian), figured out how to divide numbers by 34 (1 euro = 34 rubles), tried to figure out what a unit was, searched for the smallest wooden doll baby (a traditional Russian gift of wooden dolls inside dolls) and learned that elevators were invented in 3 BC. Overall, it was a good trip - a welcome break from work, good sites to see, great friends to hang out with, and a new answer to the question "where was the best place you have ever been to training?"