Burlaki on the Thames

A colleague of mine noted the other day that Brits are famous for talking about the weather a lot, because, well, “all we have is bad weather”. I am clearly assimilating, then, since I feel compelled to start this entry with an observation that it seemed as if the entire June was one endless rain…
Continue Reading »

Who would’ve thought that we’d need to turn on the heat with summer in full swing?
Continue Reading »

Resuming our London-based activities, we went to the Taste of London festival on Saturday.
Continue Reading »

Do you know the most common form of greeting an acquaintance in England? It’s Are you alright?
Continue Reading »

Riding in a limo from Heathrow this morning, I had a rather strange feeling of being back home. It was most likely a function of spending a few nights in a hotel coupled with anticipation of getting to sleep in my own - or, at least, familiar and warm, - bed. But it was also a clear symptom of an established residence - home is what you come back to after having been away…
Continue Reading »

My short business trip to Chicago is coming to an end. Seeing my parents and my brother’s family was a bonus; going to a baseball game with co-workers gave me a necessary jolt of American culture; further socializing with said co-workers was mostly fun; otherwise, I could have probably stayed home.
Continue Reading »

No sooner did I mention in my previous post that I had never personally encountered a manned police speed checkpoint, that I came upon one on my morning school run.
Continue Reading »

After promising it on several occasions, I am carrying on with my expatriate experience series of articles. The first entry dealt with relocation package specifics. This post is about UK driver licensing.
Continue Reading »

Our official travel program for the foreseeable future is completed with our return from a weekend trip to Brugge.
Continue Reading »

I have ranted on several occasions in the past about British approach to customer service. While the problems that I described before - particularly, incessant handovers from one department to another, with attendant need to go through “security questions” and the description of the issue at hand again and again, - still exist, I am starting to realize that my view of the American approach may have been inexplicably tinted in rosy undertones.
Continue Reading »

We perused our Amsterdam pictures and practically threw our camera away in disgust. The pictures come out unfathomably noisy. Even - or, rather, especially - the ones taken under more or less perfect lighting conditions. Natasha will work her magic and probably rescue enough to put together an album (in a couple of weeks), but this is completely unacceptable. We will be looking to replace this stupid camera with another one in short order.
Continue Reading »

It may come as a surprise to many, but in England, a person cannot watch TV unless (s)he is licensed to do so.
Continue Reading »

We are back from our trip to Amsterdam, and I am happy to report that it was another resounding success.
Continue Reading »