Back in the USSR

Fifteen years after my first visit to Russia I returned to Moscow last week. Back then it was for pleasure, this time it was for business. And clearly not only the reason why has changed, also the city of Moscow itself has changed a whole lot. In Moscow they are really picking up the pace and as usual, when markets start picking up, they do it fast and skip a few stages compared to the track Western countries followed. When seeing only Volga, Lada, … in the early nineties, you still see those cars driving around, but now mixed with Mercedes, Volkswagen, Ford, … and even Porsches Cayenne and other fancy luxury cars.

Especially for advertising Moscow seems a pretty interesting city. Somebody said that in London typically everybody receives 4.000 advertising messages a day, while in Moscow they are already at 3.000. Also Moscow could as well be known as "billboard city" while there are 24.000 billboards in the city. I don't know how this compares to other cities in statistics, but just by driving through the city you instantly see the city is covered by billboards. You wonder whether the medium still works this way…

I hope I get a bit more time for sightseeing next time so… to be continued. Thanks for the warm welcome Seva.