I went to a dinner last night at Stormont. The third speaker, the Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson MLA, was amusing. He promised to keep it short bearing in mind we had already heard two speeches and were keen to get going on dinner. He went on for longer than the first two combined.
The guy opposite me had travelled a lot in the old Soviet Union and had some great stories to swap about his days in Moscow and St Petersburg. He did some pioneering work in the early 90s trying to teach them entrepreneurship - not something that came easy to people who had for so long laboured under a communist regime.
There's always a bit of a glint in the eye of someone who has travelled to Russia - like they know it's tough to do, hard at times but really fascinating and always likely to lead to memories you'll treasure for ever. The conversation did make me want to go again and soon but somewhere different. The Russians laugh at the Western European obsession with the Trans-Siberian railway. We think it to be one of the great romantic journeys. They know it to be a journey from hell. Plain food, flat countryside smelly toilets. What could be worse they ask? Suddenly I felt better about sitting through a long speech and waiting for great food.
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