Chilling in Moscow

November 14 – November 20, 2016

Nothing of much import happened early in the week so I will share a couple of my insights about Moscow.

One of the daily adventures involves the traffic. I'm not sure whether it is because there are approximately 12,000,000 people in Moscow or because the city has grown as a series of rings with not many places where left turns are allowed or maybe it is just the crazy Ruskies all driving their luxury autos like they are headed to the hospital with a woman having a baby but it’s insane!

The traffic is so bad that when you order pizza or other fast food to be delivered, the delivery guy hops on the Metro with his carrying bag and then hoofs it to your door because it's quicker than driving! I’m quite glad that I decided not to bring a car though groceries can be a pain! Luckily, there are a few Embassy colleagues that are more than willing to lend a hand there.

Traffic is one thing but parking is something else and in the last few years the city started charging for parking. You were supposed to be able to pay using your phone (that works better now apparently but at first not so much!) but no one likes paying for parking. Over the first couple of months, I noticed some really strange things – people cover part or all of their license plates with CDs, paper, tape, whatever and people parking on the sidewalks with their trunks open. Very weird! I finally figured out that the goal was to hide or obscure the license number to avoid paying for parking and/or parking tickets (which by the way are 10X more expensive than speeding tickets!!).

I find all of this quite fascinating but I have never lived in a really big city before so it is possible that what I perceive as something unique to Russia’s capital is not but please do not burst my bubble!

Fast forward to Friday and we are on to the next activity for the Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign (that old GCWCC follows you everywhere!); the semi-annual Canada Club Poker night. I will confess that I do not have a poker face but since I love playing cards, having fun and supporting charity, I signed up to play Texas Hold ‘Em along with 40 or so folks from various Embassies around town (several Danes, Belgians and Americans joined the Canadian contingent for the event).

After a couple glasses of wine and some Mexican food made by some of the ladies at the Embassy, 40 men, women and children (the youngest player was 12 and she finished 4th!) sat down with our stacks of $4000 in chips. My table played fairly conservatively but the wine was flowing and we were having a few laughs so all good.

Fast forward 4 hours or so and there are seven players left for the Final Table and miraculously I was one of them. I was the short stack and should have been knocked out easily but as luck would have it, I was seated on the right of the first dealer. This meant that I didn’t have to bet for several hands and the boys were too liquored up to restrain themselves (the winner apparently slept on the floor when he got home because the room was spinning!). I finished the tournament 5th so I won a small prize and some bragging rights. Better still 53,000 roubles (around $1100 was raised for Canadian charities).

Other than a quick trip to the Christmas Market at the German Embassy Saturday morning with some of the ladies from the Embassy, I spent the bulk of the weekend blasting carols and getting my apartment decorated (very early) for Christmas. I am hosting our Section’s Xmas party on December 1 and with Chantale coming next weekend wanted to make sure I had it all ready. All in all, it was a pretty relaxing week.

My New Gingerbread House