Before we flew into the former capital of Russia on a consultancy trip, we were briefed that although this country is changing and its economy is now in transitional mode....things are different.
For some reason, I was not too excited about travelling to Russia....I never heard anything which interested me. We (few batchmates) planned to go a a day earlier and do some sight seeing so we were on direct morning flight off to Russia. We landed there about 4 p.m local time and the weather looked great (much better than where we get in London).
Airport did not gave any signals about the booming local economy, it looked like any other average aiport around the world. I saw different adverts with weird russian alphabets. To make things interesting we were all from different backgrounds and nationalities....British, American, Nigerian and a few Indians with a common feature of "Londoner".
After speaking to a few batchmates, immigration officer came out if his shabby cabin and told us to stand aside from the queue. Couple of weeks earlier, one of my British colleague told me that his passport was seriously damaged when he went to Russia on a personal visit. Some pages on his passport were torn, some pages were badly scratched. ...So I was expecting something similar or worse. Few anxious moments went by and then I saw some serious looking men come (they looked more like men who hang people and less like senior immigration officials).
After asking a few questions....they let us in into the country. It was clear signal that we are getting into a country which is different and things are not straight.
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