St. Petersburg

I've made it to St. Petersburg with no trouble. I flew on Aeroflot, the Russian airways, and it was a great flight - much better than the crappy Delta flight I took across the Atlantic. The Aeroflot jet was new, huge overhead cargo area, individual video screens and connections in the seat for a laptop - I wish the flight had been longer. I was met at the gate, right on time, by my driver Maria. I can't so too many good things about the Nevsky Grand Hotel, although the staff is very nice and they speak very good English. The room is just about the tiniest room I've ever had - only my amazingly small room from one of my trips to Madrid was smaller (I even devoted a separate posting in honor of that room) - in this case the TV, bolted to the wall, is just as small, and while I have a few more channels, they're all in Russian - and why is MTV Russia playing Project Runway and Ugly Betty? I'm nostalgic for having access to the Russian Hallmark channel from my stay in Moscow. Oh, and the wireless connection, even though I'm only about seven feet from the lobby, is really weak. That said, I'm only paying $88 a night and the location is fantastic. It's less than a ten minute walk to the Hermitage - I walked over their tonight just to check out the location - just being in the courtyard blew me away. On the way back I stopped at a little place and had some traditional Russian dish, which was some sort of stuffed pasty with, of course, sour cream (my friend Katya tells me Russians eat sour cream on everything - I even started putting it on my eggs during breakfast in Moscow - obviously, this isn't the healthiest diet). Tomorrow is the first of a couple days worth of meetings with an university here in St. Petersburg that I'm trying to bring into our Global Modules network.