Editor's Letter - Moscow expat Life

John Harrison, Editor, Moscow expat Life

The spring is here! At least it should be. No more long grey days for another six months. Time to put away the warm heavy clothes and get ready for summer, although don’t put the coat into storage yet; Moscow’s weather can be capriciously unpredictable.

One community of expats, which does understand Russian weather, and thus Russia, is of course the Canadians. In this issue, we are very happy to present interviews with seven of them, in our special ‘Canadian Section.’ These interviews hopefully represent in a humble way the hopes, aspirations and the raison d’être of the Canadian community in Moscow.

In this issue Marco Bravura, a quite brilliant Italian mosaicist and sculptor presents his work, the French Marie Giral talks about adulescants, Brit David Maltby instructs on how to obtain a temporary residents’ permit, and another Brit David Morley talks about his old rock’n’roll days (David, we never knew!) and his Russian musician friend Yury Stikhanov. American Stephen Lapeyrouse sings a song of woe about moving belongings out of Russia, and the inimitable Australian David Wansbrough reveals a deep and well-kept secret about who actually runs the show here – Babushakas!

Contrary to the usual negative opinion of Moscow expat life at the present time, there are amazing events taking place. Just before we went to print, we attended the quite spectacular ‘Moscow Hospitality Awards’ ceremony, in which 437 hotels took part from cities all over Russia. Some of the ‘EcoHotels’ or ‘Boutique Hotels’ are in cities, which I associate only with the dark old ‘SovDep’ days where the only hotels available were worse than terrible. Things have indeed changed. Most hospitality venues are now Russian owned and managed, but the branding is – still mostly foreign, which is an indication of our ‘deep structure’ importance.

The week before, the ‘Foreigners’ Life Exhibition’ was held in Moscow. Surprisingly for many, this was quite a success. In short – don’t write off Russia, and don’t write off our involvement in this country.

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Community:

Features:

Canadian Section:

  • Lou Naumovsky
    Vice President and General Director of Kinross Gold Corporation’s Moscow Office and Chairman of the National Board of Directors, Canada-Eurasia-Russia Business Association (CERBA)
  • Nathan Hunt
    Director of Rep Office, Ronald A. Chisholm Ltd. President of CERBA
  • Kelly Allin
    Partner at Deloitte & Touche Moscow
    and The Moscow International Sunday Hockey Group
  • Neil Withers
    President of the CFA Society (Chartered Financial Analyst Society) in Russia, and on the board of the Canadian Russian Business Association
  • Joel Koczwarski
    Canadian photographer working in Moscow
  • John Schreiner
    Vice President, Theatre Development. Russia, CIS, Middle East, and India, IMAX Corporation

Why not pickup a printed copy of Moscow expat Life from one of our Premium Distribution Partners!

Travel:

Sport:

Lifestyle:

Legal:

  • Luke Conner
    Knowing your rights following lay off or redundancy. Conner & Company LLC, in association with Alexey Kokorin
  • Chet Bowling
    CEA of Alinga Consulting Group. Customer outreach is about creating value

Business:

Education:

Culture:

Food:

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