Moscow, what a city!
I just remembered one! I went to Moscow to work for about 4 days.
We flew in and met our fixer who tells us that due to the relative short notice she'd had, finding a suitable hotel had been
tricky so she shuttled us off in taxis to a central location on the Moskva River.
We get out at the entrance to a floating hotel. Whatever, we think, looks fun.
It had a big flashing casino sign and a restaurant and a night club.
Fantastic. We check in, we get cabins! Cool.
We stow all our gear (check the nautical terms there) and head for the restaurant.
We are in Russia to shoot part of a documentary about fighter planes and tomorrow we are scheduled to head out to the Sukhoi factory.
So we eat. And since we're in Moscow, we decide to have a few vodkas.
We had a lovely time. Food was ok, vodka was great.
Turns out the only toilet that served the restaurant was 3 decks down and through the onboard nightclub.
No problem.
As each of us made innocent use of the facilites we began to collectively notice
the overwhelming presence of alot more ladies than men on this barge?
And they were all rather lovely.
Now most ladies in Moscow are lovely as it happens but in the ultra-violet
night club they weren't really wearing very much either!

So it dawns on our dumb English arses that this is a certain kind of leisure facility.
Still no problem.
There is no apparent pressure or atmosphere, we're men of the world. Oh and so was the female producer with us!
So we laughed and drank more vodka.
We ended up with enough courage to think fuck it, lets retire to the nightclub to continue drinking! Huzzah!
We had a right old time, chatting to the lovely ladies and drinking vodka.
Nothing untoward happened, we couldn't have afforded it anyway, 900USD apparently! :)

Thats kinda the end of the story.
We slept on a floating Russian knocking shop.
(However I did drink possibly more than I had ever drunk before,
ended up throwing up all over my cabin bunk, being undressed by the producer then locked in my cabin from the outside cos
I had all the camera kit in my room. Then in the morning suffered the worst hangover in history whilst waiting at the gates of Sukhoi,
where they steadfastly refused to let us in. Can't imagine why. Flew home the following evening without shooting a frame.

But, Moscow what a city... )

*Looks up*
God, thats long!
( moosecow and that was... Karate., Thu 4 Jan 2007, 20:45, Reply)