Week 4

The week started well with Monday being a day off as it was the Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland. This is the day Russia recognises those men and women that serve in the armed forces. I went to Kolominskaya park with Ilya. This is the site where the czar used to have his summer residence. Not much is left, but the park still has a church from the 16^th century, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list and the house Peter the Great lived in when overlooking the construction of the fort in St. Petersburg.

During the week it was pretty quiet at the office as Katya and Polina were away on holidays. Jeroen was ill all week, so that meant there were some empty desks. With Katya away, this left me to work on the initial research for the second project. It is coming along nicely, so we should be able to send of the initial market scan by the end of next week. No reply about the first project yet, so we have to wait and see about that. I had a quick chat with Jeroen about the first month and they seemed satisfied with me. We had pizza and beer on Friday afternoon, which was a good end to the week.

I also had three Russian classes in which I finally made an attempt to grasp the tricky Russian grammar (which is comparable to the German one with its six declinations). Made some good progress so am pleased about that.

Also, I met Alexey on Wednesday for dinner at an Uzbek restaurant. I know Alexey through Vladimir and it was great to meet up with him again. He had been travelling around Central Asia recently and had some good stories to tell. The food was also pretty good, so all in all an enjoyable evening. I went out on Friday night to some nightclub called Jumanjii with Ilya, Sasha and their friends which was a good laugh. Drank a couple of shots of my favourite Russian vodka (Russkii Standart Platinum) and messed around on the dancefloor. The weekend has been quiet, mostly relaxing. Went for dinner at a Ukrainian restaurant with Yegor, Sergey, Jason, George and a couple of other guys. Had tasty food and got to know the Ukrainian version of moonshine called garilka (60% and a peppery flavour).