Why am I allowed two?
Before I clear these off of my GPSr:
The hotel at which I stayed in Moscow was at 55d44.780,37d34.848
The Market that we went to on Saturday morning was at 55d47.701,37d44.972 (You'll need to zoom out a click or two before there's reliable data.)
The little church that I wanted to go to, to find a geocache was at 55d44.737,37d09.864. In case I didn't mention it before, I didn't make it out there. :-( (You'll need to zoom out on this one, too.)
It turns out that, just like in 2000, the USA was the only place where my request to get Daba's passport stamped was refused. In Moscow, the first person that I asked simply didn't appear to understand what I was saying, because I didn't speak his language, and told me to ask someone else. Finally, on the way back through the airport, I was able to get someone to stamp it. But in the USA, no, can't do that, because it's not an official document. It could be used for fraudulent purposes, don't you know. I protested that it's a teddy bear's passport, and the chances of someone pretending to be a teddy bear were relatively low. He didn't think this was funny.
I left my hotel in Moscow at about 0530 this morning, and got home at about 1730, which is 0130 Moscow time, making about 20 hours of travel time. I am really really (really) tired. There are roughly a zillion things that I want to write about. The last few days were amazingly cool, in what I saw, who I got to hang out with, and some of the conversations I had.
Meanwhile, you can see the rest of my photos. I had a Russian soldier say "Hi, Yankee" to me just outside of Red Square. :-)
Right now, I'm going to get something to eat, then sleep a bit. Hopefully tomorrow I can unpack and get back into this timezone, as well as writing about some of the amazingly cool stuff that happened.
I just got done giving my talk, and I don't feel very good about it. Between starting very late, technical problems with the projector and a strange malfunctioning of my mouse during the talk, I got progressively more flustered, and I'm not sure I said quite what I wanted to say. There were still some good questions, and I think I did ok with them. But I feel kind of bad coming all this way and not doing my best.
Yesterday was pretty cool. There was a press conference that I attended, where several folks fielded questions from the Russian media about why Open Source is a good idea. The questions were really good, and the answers very coherent. I'm coming to really understand that Open Source makes even more sense in non-US places than it does in the USA, for all the reasons that have nothing to do with monetary cost.
At the end of the day, several of us went off in search of dinner. We went down Arbat, and came to a Georgian place. Fortunately, Henri was with us, since none of the rest of us were able to communicate beyond the level of grunts. Even more importantly, he knew what to order. It was fantastic. I wish I could remember what everything was called.
By the time we came back, it was somewhere around midnight. 4 of us went to a cafe to chat some more. It was after 1 by the time I got to bed, but I was still up at 6.
I still can't get used to the idea that I'm in Russia. Walking down Arbat last night was just great. I hope to get to the Kremlin and St. Basil's this evening, but I understand they are all closed off in preparation for Victory Day, as well as for the visit of Mr. Bush.
Time to go attend the opening talks.
