The heart of Russia?

This morning my great host Alex and I had the pleasant company of Oskar. Unfortunately were we not allowed to keep him but had to hand him back to his host family before having a generous Siberian-style breakfast. All in all a very good start of the day.

Later in the morning were we attending an interesting round table meeting with many cultural and ethnic groups represented. To me this was very relevant to my profession and I will bring with me some good ideas how to approach these matters. During the meeting there was also some musical performances by young talents of which some were quite memorable.

Concluding this meeting we were sharing restaurant with celebrities attending the start of the annual movie festival. After this we were given the opportunity to visit the charming town of Suzdal, which is a medival town known for its many (many!) churches as well as its architecture and rural atmosphere. Our crazy weather gods didn't let us down and as always was our excursion framed by a perfectly blue sky. My host in Moscow called this town the heart of Russia, a fitting name for this Unesco heritage site. We are very grateful to our hosts who made this out-of-program trip possible.

In the evening were we invited to a very tasty dinner, a hot banja and good company. This Russian tradition would be very easy to get used to, meeting people, finding new friends and letting the mind and discussions run freely.

Yours truly,
Christian