Saturday 12^th April

I take a taxi to the office and meet Katia.  It takes only a few minutes to fathom out the network and call in the awaiting support back in the UK.  It’s 1am back home so I am conscious to minimise the time taken – a simple IP address change, a few tests, and we’re up and running.  The end of the previous day in the UK, the start of a long day for me in Vladivostok.  It’s quite strange really. 

Katia heads out to town leaving me with the key to the offices and I just get my head down and get on with configuring the network and server while copying data from the PCs.  It looks like 4 of the 5 systems are in good shape and just need the usual configuration changes and tedious updates, whilst Katia’s laptop will need a rebuild.

First Julia, then Artem and finally Tatiana (Tanya) put in appearances – I get the feeling I’m a bit of a novelty, and after a long session, I decide to leave another batch of updates running and head out for another brief city tour, and a stroll along the Pacific shore with Tanya.  She explains, as Katia had the previous evening, how Vladivostok is only a small city, in Russian terms, of around 700,000 population. 

I am beginning to get a feel for the place already.  The Japanese cars, the typical soviet architecture, some terrible roads due, I am told, to the fact that Vladivostok actually has no city government at the moment.  It had been in mafia control for some time and apparently one ex-official who had been caught with his hands in the till was now spending some time in the “monkey house”.  A term which I believe to be similar to spending some time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

We meet up with Tanya’s friend, another Ekaterina (Katia) and head off to a Bavarian type place where we have a good mixture of fish dishes, salads and sausages all washed down with some house beers and settle in to watch a local rock band put on a good show consisting of fairly mainstream covers. There is a bit of a boogie session afterwards and I am dragged up to strut my stuff and show these Russians how your typical English male can trip the light fandango.  I think they’re either impressed, or just incredibly polite.

We spend a good few hours just eating, drinking and chatting about our respective lives, the similarities and the differences.