Thomas, 2008-04-21, "Frictional Goes To MOCKBA"

[Thomas]

The 17th this month me and Jens took a plane from Copenhagen to Moscow where we met up with Fredrick and Susana from Paradox Interactive. The whole point of the journey was to meet the Russian publisher of Penumbra, "Snowball", and to hold a talk on Frictional Games and the production of Black Plague at a Russian game conferance called КРИ (That's KRI for all you non-cryllians).

Getting into Russia had been a little "adventure" in itself. Before we could travel we had to get a Visa which required a sorts of information, taking up a lot of time. We just barely got our Visas, arriving on Wednesday afternoon, less then 12 hours before we where going to Russia. Also, having read that HIV infected people cannot enter Russia I was afraid that they would start poking me with needles at the pass control...

Arriving in Russia it turns out things where not bad at all. No KGB agents paranoidly staring at you or that sorta thing, at least not visible.... my paranoia was not over yet and suspected any Russian we met at the airport. In all this stress I think I mentioned words like "bomb,"kabooom" and "terrorist" several times.... never a good idea these days....

Having checked in at the hotel we went out for some sightseeing with Fredrick from Paradox leading the way. Fredrick had been to Russia several times before and amazed me and Jens by being able to read to the strangely alien and yet familiar cryllic symbols. That did not stop him from making several wrong turns and made us travel in the subway in the wrong direction though. But apart from that and all attractions being closed the sightseeing was successful. And yeah, I thought that red square would be muuuch laaaaarger and the subway having a lot more crystal chandeliers, shame on giving false advertising Russia...

Day two it was time to attend KRI, which was held at a large hotel called Cosmos. Although it was not a huge conference it was larger than we had excepted and even had booth-babes running around (and no, there are no pictures of those...). Jens and I spent most of the day checking the booths and searching souvenir stores in the hotel. We also heard that there was this large space center just nearby but never had the time to visit

Later in the afternoon it was time for our talk. The whole presentation was a bit strange since we had to have a guy translating us. This meant that when one tried to tell something funny 99% of the audience just stared at you, not knowing what you where saying. And then hopefully you might get a reaction 2 min later during translation. Very strange indeed but a quite fun experience. At the end of the talk, it seemed like people liked it, at least the audience asked a lot of questions which might or not be a good sign.

The third final day we bought vodka, chocolates and all the other stuff that creates a pleasant evening. As we had packed our bags and ordered a cab we thought the worst dangers where over, but it seems like the worse was saved for last. Our ride to the airport was a super friendly but super crazy taxi driver who shrugged when we put on our seat belts. While driving he talked about Russia (in english! which is quite rare for a taxi driver!) and making larger hand movements. Normally it is not good when a driver is not holding the steering wheel, but it is a lot worse when he is sick-sacking between trucks at 200km/h. It turns out we survived the drive though, and arrived at the airport way ahead of time.

Now some photos:


This is me in front of that famous tetris-church. I am standing on the red square and it was pretty darn small!


My hotel room. Not that bad actually!


My view from the hotel room. Pretty bad actually!


The russian Metro and Jens's back. Notice how the chandeliers could have been nicer.


Jens is blocking the view again.


If u look closely you might spot the red square.




Misc photos from KRI. Notice how I did not take pictures of any booth babes.


It's a Russian super market! Here one can buy Putin-vodka at a fair price!


Some adds where huge! (If u are reading this Citroen, please send cash).

That was all! Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as we enjoyed visiting Russia!

[WindexGlow]

Omg did you guys talk about me :-D


But looks fun.

[Klayman]

It was interesting to read your story! Thank you! Now go back to your work at HPL2!!

[Yuhaney]

My view from the hotel room. Pretty bad actually!

Just keep the curtains closed and it'll be all right!

[Sepai]

Wow sounds like you guys had a awesome adventure

btw can you post the booth babes you secretly taken

[spukrian]

Awesome pictures!

Reading cyrillic isn´t that hard... I can do it... but since I don´t actually know any language using the alphabet it´s kind of pointless. xD

[Petike]

Seems you had a nice trip to Russia. :-)
I hope you convinced them enough to publish Black Plague as well.
Good luck on that...

P.S. Nice photos. ;-)

13. 5. 2008 : I have thrown out the quote, just to make some space.

[jens]

Please stop quoting entire posts all the time, not only to the above poster but in general as a message to many of our current users. It's a complete waste of space with all that text reposted over and over, as has become common practice in many threads as of late.

[Petike]

Please stop quoting entire posts all the time, not only to the above poster but in general as a message to many of our current users. It's a complete waste of space with all that text reposted over and over, as has become common practice in many threads as of late.

Understood, Jens. I swear I won't do it again, if it's against the rules...

[Silkworm]

Kinda funny to read all this being a russian... Anyway you were pretty lucky to have such a view from the hotel room window - especially impresses a young tree growing on the roof of the half-destroyed building. This view could easily replace everything you would have learned about Russia if you took part in all the tourists' excursions that are offered in Moscow:-)... By the way, about KGB... I guess if I was to go to USA, for example, I would have much more reasons to be jumpy. To my mind, their society is the closest one to Orwell's "1984", and here (I mean in Russia) nobody actually cares about anyone. That's why the tree is still growing on the roof, and that's why the guys who live in the apartment below won't even notice it until the roots start to poke out of their ceiling...