MOSCOW!!!

St. Basil's Cathedral


I am here! It is great to finally make it. I have been waiting for this trip for quite a while and am glad it has happened.

I arrived yesterday and entered with the Visa without any problems, which was nice, and had my luggage really quick and was off to the city. After checking into the hotel and settling in, I made my way into the downtown. By the time I got to the Red Square it was dark, but that made it really cool. St. Basil's Cathedral was lit against a black sky which just looked awesome. I unfortunately did not have my camera at the time, but will get back at night again to take some pictures.

Today I went out with a tour guide to really make the most of the trip. She took me on the Metro to the Chinatown section and then walked to Red Square from there. Again, seeing St. Basil's come into sight was breathtaking. Once in the square we talked a lot about the history of the buildings, the Kremlin Wall and Lenin's Mausoleum. Next it was a walk inside St. Basil's. This was good on two accounts - first the building is really amazing, each of the 9 domes is actually the top of a chapel, second, it was freezing cold (14°F/-9°C) and being out of the wind was very nice.

From there we walked along the square to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the eternal flame. We were just in time to see a changing of the guard. Those guards are very limber, goose stepping as high as they do for as long as they do!

Next up was the Armory Museum inside the Kremlin. Here there are several Faberge eggs Tsar Nicholas ordered for his wife, plus a ton of gold, silver and pottery the Russian Empire acquired through the years. On the first floor is an exhibit of coronation dresses, religious vestments and carriages. In all it wasn't overwhelming, but that is probably because a lot of the national treasures were sold under Soviet Rule. It is said the Queen of England has a more valuable collection of Russian Heritage than The Kremlin has.

From here it was a very cold walk to The Cathedral of Christ the Redemeer. This is an amazing looking building with a horrible history. In the early 1900s it was torn down to wipe out buildings built to honor some previous rulers. Then for a period of time in the late 1900's it was an Olympic sized swimming pool! Fortunately, by 1997 President Yeltsin had had the Cathedral rebuilt based upon photographs to look exactly the same. They did a great job!

Here are some pics - I am sure I missed a lot of things, but in 5 hours, I feel like a covered a lot. I may try to get back into Red Square on Thursday when Lenin's Mausoleum is open to the public, we will see though...


High Stepping!


Christ the Redemeer

Umm... Been a while

Yup, it has been a while since the last post. Sorry about that. After all the excitement of the around the world trip and then the motorcycle ride, it has been hard to come up with an event that tops them. Plus it has been really busy with work and two kiddos running around the house.

Anyway, since the last time I wrote I have been on a few trips. I went to Slovakia again last week. Just like last time, I could not get a direct flight, so it was into Vienna and then a car ride over. It is a nice ride though through villages and farmland. I didn't spend much time in Bratislava again so it is hard to really write much about it.

This week I went to Warsaw again for two nights. A lot of work so no sightseeing, but I did see something cool - my first SNOW of the winter. Yeah, snow on November 5! I can not remember the last time I saw snow that early in the year. It wasn't much, but it was still kind of cool.

Other than that, it nothing big. The big trip is coming in a week though. I leave on Nov. 18 to go to Moscow. I am really excited about this trip, although right now it looks like it will stay below freezing the entire trip, plus with the sun going down by 5:00, it will be really cold. I will have to see if the vodka really helps ;).

The Happiest Place on Earth

No, for the last few weeks of September and beginning of October it is not Disney, it is Munich, Germany and the great Oktoberfest! Again, taking advantage of my current situation, I hoped on a plane Thursday morning with a buddy from work to go check out what the big deal was, and it was great.

We arrived at the fairgrounds about 1:30 on Thursday afternoon and it was packed. We made our way through a few tents without finding a place to sit before settling for an outside table to get started. I had been offered tickets to join a vendor who had a table starting at 5:00 so we made our way there and enjoyed the atmosphere, the beer and the music inside. Knowing that we had more friends coming in on Friday and that we would want to put on a good show for them, we called it a night relatively early and went back to the hotel.

On Friday we struck out into the city center area. The buildings were just amazing. It was a really nice down town area, so much different than Cologne. It seemed bigger and cleaner.

After finding a place to get some good schnitzel, we made our way to the festivities again. We capitalized on our experience from the day before and found a table outside to start. At about 4 we went to a tent and met Caren, one of the waitresses, as soon as we walked in. She asked if we had a table, when we told her, "No." She told us to wait right there. Two minutes later she came back and led us to a table that was just big enough for all 10 of us.

This was completely different than the night before, since it wasn't a corporate thing, the people were much more relaxed and, um, lubricated. The band played a larger variety of music (I never would have guessed I would be singing John Denver songs in the middle of Munich!) and Caren made sure we were never too empty or hungry.



Unlike Thursday, we gave a much better showing on Friday and stayed until they turned the lights off on us. The really great thing was that with very, very few exceptions, no one got out of hand, the place was very clean, and when it was time to break it up for the night, it was just a bunch of happy drunks finding their way to where-ever they needed to be next, so unlike most events like this in the US.

Next year they will wonder what happened

It happened, I have hit the top of the ladder, the frequent flyer ladder that is.

I have officially earned 100,540 qualifying miles and that is not counting my flight to Singapore which hasn't been credited yet. About 30,000 of these miles aren't actually flight miles, but instead are bonus miles for flying in business (thank you DHL).

The kicker of this all is next year whatever job I go into, I will definitely not be traveling half as much and I will go from being Chairman's Club (good until March 2009) to, um, well, they don't have a name for that club, maybe I will make Silver again, but I doubt it. In any case, if I'm not traveling, does it really matter if I belong to an elite travel club? Membership does have it's privileges, but it does come at a cost...