Two days ago I had coffee with Artem, a friend. Than I walked a bit around and ended up drinking cocktails with some expat friends. Check out the photos:

http://www.2-zero.com/two-zero/photos/moscowsummer/

You’ll see Moscow as you may have not expected it. The city can have its beautiful sides.

Greetings from Moscow

two-zero

It’s vacation time in Moscow and a ride in the metro is not only painfully hot and sweaty, its also showing you where people went into vacation, or they would like to go. I realized a few weeks ago that Russians collect plastic and paper bags from around the globe. May it be, because you usually only get thin cheesy plastic bags in the supermarkets or may it be another way of a show off. Metro riders are probably not a part if the upper class, but they seem to come around.

Last week for example. I took the metro to a club at night and there was this 50 year old women sitting across. In the US you would have thought, from the style and make-up, that she is an old used hooker, still on drugs and alcohol. Here she was probably just a house wife on her way to some night job. Carrying her belongings not in a Louie Vitton bag, but in plastic from Vegas.

The city of gambling, it said on the bag and from the look it must have been quite old. Maybe she has been there a few years ago, when her times were better. Or someone brought her a present from Las Vegas in the bag. She has been attached to it and was proud to show it in the metro. When she realized me checking the bag, she gave me that “Yes, right I have been in Las Vegas. Gambling and partying like the big guys. Just came back and now I am on my way to work.” - look.

Or yesterday. Same story. I go for a meeting in the city. Its rush hour, but the train is quite empty, because of vacation time in Moscow. Another house wife sits across and proudly presents her plastic that says in large letters: ANTALYA – Turkey.

And of course this is not only about house wifes. I see young girls, people in suits and even on the streets you find an occasional foreign plastic bag on the hand of some rich new russian walking by on Tverskaya boulevard.

When you start to look around, you’ll see more and more people with plastic bags. Men like to carry bags from Dubai, London or New York and women show off with plastic from Milan, Rome or Paris.

I gotta get myself a cool bag from some cool city soon.
Maybe its some inspiration for the fashion designers among you ;-)

Last week, my friend Pierre came for a visit from Paris. I don’t agree but respect him for how he lives his life. He finds dozens of excuses not to work and makes money from social security and lawsuits. Travelling the world at the same time. But that’s a different story.

Pierre’s girlfriend lives in Miami and while he was in Russia they had some troubles. Which almost every girlfriend understands. Why would you let your boyfriend go to Moscow and not give him a hard time. So he started to call her once in a while. Than things got more dramatic and Pierre called even longer and more often.

We use phone cards for international calls to save money and especially one called Matrix. Usually I buy them at a Kiosk near our house, which is open 24 hours. I showed Pierre where it is and how it works, with a Matrix card I bought there for 300 Rubels, which is about 10 Dollars just a day after his arrival.

Pierre bought one Matrix card after another. When he left 10 days later, the price of the same card went up to 380 Rubels, which is 12,60 Dollars. That’s an increase of 26 percent in only 10 days. Why? Supply and demand. A simple law of economics and another proof of how capitalistic Russia really is down to the bottom. Lenin would turn around in his mausoleum ;-)

Of course, I’ll play the game and buy my matrix card somewhere else for 300 Rubels until they’ll drop the price again, because I am a moderate capitalist as well.