Can you get to Moscow from here?

So, Moscow was not exactly a city I thought I would visit while living in South Asia. But would you pass up an opportunity to see the Kremlin and Red Square, especially on the company’s tab? I think not. The IFC/World Bank is quite big on “learning opportunities” and takes training its people quite seriously. All new IFC staff are invited to attend the “IFC Induction” course, a week-long welcome-to-the-club covering A-Z of what’s what and who’s who. It is held about 4 times a year in different locations. This one, held in mid-July, was the first one ever to be held in Moscow. My fellow inductees and I found out why.

The hotel we were set up in was called the Ismailovo and turned out to be an old Soviet-style 3-star, *way* out of the city and not at all set up for international guests. If you didn’t speak Russian, you were at loss to make the hotel staff understand anything you might need. The facilities were quite basic – no air conditioning and a conveniently placed thermometer in your room to tell you it was 28 Celsius in the middle of the night. You had to put down a deposit in cash to make a phone call. And the food was awful. It was not the Moscow office staff to blame at all, however, so that must be said. They had a budget to work within and Moscow was recently named the most expensive city in the world. However, the situation was bad enough to warrant a budget-busting move to the beautiful old Metropolitan Hotel just minutes away from the Kremlin and Red Square by Day Two. Quite an exciting start to my first visit to Russia.

To get to Moscow from Dhaka, you fly through Dubai (United Arab Emirates) and have to stay overnight. Luckily, our friends “the other Wilsons” were also along as Craig, my colleague, was also attending the course. We had a chance to see some of Dubai on the layover afternoon and evening. Weird city. Built up out in the middle of the desert and populated by very few natives, it offers the wildest things to visitors and residents, many of whom are ultra-rich.
You can go to a huge shopping mall and ski – yes, ski – in the middle of the desert. I’m all about out of the ordinary experiences, but I just don’t need to ski inside a shopping mall in the desert. Anyway, there was good food and interesting street shopping – okay for killing a few hours, but I would not want to really vacation there, and certainly not live there. Too artificial.

The highlight of visiting Moscow (well, besides taking a quick jog through Red Square one morning, which is actually must smaller than I imagined) was seeing our friends from Washington, Sean and Laurie – and their daughter, Isabella, who was but a wee thing when they left DC. Managed to get a nice picture with Sean to prove I was there! They actually left Moscow to head back to DC the day after I saw them, awaiting the birth of number two.

-- Jennifer