The Russian adventure has begun!

I arrived in Moscow after 13 hours in flight and was greeted with an abrupt entrance into the culture. I wanted to head downtown Moscow to see Red Square so I thought taking a taxi or the metro would be an easy task just like any other major city. Wrong! There is just no getting by with knowing a few words in the language like I have experienced in other areas such as Italy, France and even Africa. I had plans to stay at a friend’s apartment of my boss Jeff Weibel, what a great bonus since Moscow is known to be THE most expensive city in the world so that would have drained the funds. The owner of the house was in Africa but he had two polo players staying there, one from Costa Rica the other from Charleston SC so I needed to make contact with them to arrange the keys, but no phone cards could be found! After wandering around the airport with my luggage, I finally had one of the 23 taxi drivers approach me and he let me use his cell phone. I was on my way after haggling the cab fare of 2500 rubles which is $80.00+ USD! Since it started out at 5,000 rubles I was confident I passed my first Russian test. I made it safely to the apartment which was several block from the action of the Kremlin and Red Square, so off I went with my traveling companion our infamous Gnomey. What a sight to see all the tourists posing for photos, ran into a few brides along the way! One without her groom which made me ponder. Of course I was the crazy American posing with a Gnome! I passed Lenin’s tomb but was unable to set the embalmed body since it closed for the day a few hours earlier. I visited Basils Cathedral (the famous photo that speaks Moscow). It was worth the time and money to be there at the center of this country’s history that you only know from movies and learned in the Russian history class in college. After stopping by a local pub for a brew, I hit the wall with jet lag and went “home” to sleep a solid 12 hours.