link to Inter-Bridge.biz

My company teaches English face-to-face or over Skype.

Monday 21 January 2013

218:Des the Dvornik

Well, here's a turn-up for the books*. I'm in UK, and here in Cambridgeshire, and in many parts of the UK, there seems to be more snow than there was in Moscow. The difference being that this will all be gone by the end of the week, (he says hopefully), whereas in Moscow I'm going to have to wait until April. In UK we can't cope with snow - thousands of schools have been closed and the country almost paralysed. 





*a turn-up for the books

Thursday 17 January 2013

217: M&M

The year took a long time to get started. I had two lessons all week last week. Hardly enough to pay for a bus and tube ticket, never mind a plane ticket.Thank goodness it has picked up a bit this week, although there is still a bit of spare capacity left at the moment if anybody is interested?
Inter-Bridge availability

I am spending my time marching from McDonalds to the metro. 




Talking about fast food, in the UK news this week we heard that horse meat has been found in some Tesco burgers. Shock, horror! In UK we don't, as a rule, eat horse - at least not knowingly. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking about shopping in general, a friend of mine has unearthed an old, 1985, sketch of the two Ronnies where one of them is dressed as a sheikh and struggling with English pronunciation. It is from an era before political correctness so don't watch if you are easily offended and don't like to read references to golliwogs.


On 16th January in 1547, Ivan IV, aka Иван Грозный or Ivan the Terrible, was crowned Tsar - the first ruler, but not the last, to hold this appointment  or to carry on as if he did.

Saturday 5 January 2013

216:Culture vulture*

Back in Moscow after spending New Year in UK, I thought I might visit/re-visit a few of Moscow's museums. I had read that all the museums, apart from the zoo (!, yes, I know), would be free to the general public during the long holiday, 31 Dec - 08 Jan). Of course there can be only two outcomes from such an announcement: firstly it's not quite true and perhaps not all the museums will be free. Secondly the queues for the more popular museums will stretch twice around Moscow. 
This is what I found at the Museum of Contemporary History, just North of Tverskaya metro station.

A dearth of visitorsThis says that entrance is payable during the holidays

After that little setback I thought I might try the Borodino panorama, having never been there before. This is what I came across on the way there


If this is Grandfather Frost then he should surely be heading away from Moscow, having delivered all his presents.

And then, when I got to the panorama, ужас!




Not being blessed with Russian patience and single-mindedness I decided to abandon the search for cultural enrichment and went instead to the cinema at afimoll to see The Hobbit. Enjoyable but not the easiest film to understand in Russian. On the way there I managed to spend a few minutes admiring the art exhibition at Vistavochnaya metro station which reminded me how vast Russia really is. I managed some culture after all.








Reminded me of the word оленовод = a reindeer breeder
* Culture vulture = noun, informal, a person who is interested in the arts
N.B. Don't forget - you can click on any of these pictures to enlarge them.