guys had a guitar and after much persuading treated us to a tune or two. The lad was only 18 and had been playing for just over a year but wow could he play, all blue’s type stuff, he had large amounts of pure natural talent, not only on the guitar but harmonica as well, so of course we were all extremely merry by this point all was good an we got the hotel reception rockin! Steve, Gary an Russ you would have loved it! Various Russian’s came over and played there thing, it was top, the next minute 10 bottles of beer appeared bought for everybody by a very appreciative Russian guy, so we invited him over, Rob shook his hand and introduced himself and I dunno what happened next but the next minute the Russian guy is over at the bar ordering a bottle of vodka!!! As you can imagine things got very messy and we were up till god knows what time drinking vodka and singing away to our hearts content!!! It was just one of those incredibly superb unplanned nights the ones that money can not

buy!!!

Awoke the next day feeling a little worse for wear the saving grace was that breakfast was served until 11 so at least we didn’t need to get up too early. Rob was overjoyed as the breakfast buffet included fish chips and peas so yeap you guessed what he had!!! The breakfasts were quite bizarre they always seem to include dessert type things oh and in Moscow fermented milk! Can’t say that either of us tried the fermented or had a beer with our breakfast as did a lot of the Russian’s, it was quite amazing to see how many beer bottles were left on the tables after breakfast, to some drinking beer morning, noon and night is quite the norm! Once you get used to seeing people drinking at all times of the day it doesn’t kinda of phase you as much but at first I must admit I found it a little alarming! My first impression was that it seems such an unhealthy lifestyle but then again I’m looking at it from a rich western point of view, not that I