Day 2 - Working in Russia

In Russia people work really hard! I mean it!

But what happens when a Greek goes to Russia, where everybody seems to be workaholic? Well ... a picture is worth more than a thousands words! :-P :-P

Seriously now, after going to the premises of the company with the "high-tech", people-carrier taxi, things were not exactly "Swedish"! People starting carrying computers, changing rooms and in general doing a bit of "Agile" planning (first do, then see if it works). So when we were "advised" not to help anyone because we were the guests, the option was obvious to me. Even more, when I found these boxes of wine under my office (4 of them) things looked apparent! :-)

The most exciting part of the day though was lunch time!!! We had to walk through mad and small lakes of water (result of the morning ... and noon ... and afternoon rain) to find our way to the bus which would take us to the restaurant in the main company building 5 minutes away. Now, that was an experience. People even with suites had to fit in a mini-bus which would go through larger lakes of mud and water or even the pavement (there was a liiiiitle bit of traffic, so the driver could simply not afford waiting). After entering the building and the card-reader control, you walk 2 floors down to the basement where a restaurant of not more than 10 tables was serving different sorts of food. No need to say no one apart from our Russian colleagues was speaking English, so poor Ivan had to do the translation for all of us! The food though and the prices were descent so that was the pay-off. The other good thing was that no one was complaining about all this (one more difference with Sweden)!

In the country of big differences, things cannot always look disappointing. The hotel is GREAT, the rooms are GREAT, the 8th floor EVEN GREATER (me and Fredric will investigate further what is going on there !!!) and the view from my room really awesome!