The class of the ETH EMBA 2011 travelled to Moscow for 6 days in February 2012. Five EMBA participants, Kean Leong Chng (Malaysian), Stefan Heinzmann (Swiss), Karl Lindström (Finn), Christoph Rochelmeyer (German) and Lioudmila Thalmann (Swiss/Russian), share their experiences.

Day 1 – February 5, 2012

By Karl
Lindström

Arrival at Moscow

This is the day, MBA SCM Course 9 will commence our first trip outside the borders of cozy & safe Switzerland.

14 of the trip participants had ended up booking the same flight, LX1326 from Zürich, and even some effort had been spent to seat all of us together.

Roughly an hour before boarding, familiar faces start to appear in the newly opened terminal section “B”, slowly grouping together at the bar close to our gate. From the outfit it seems that everyone took very seriously the warnings about the cold winter of Mother Russia.

Boarding complete. Some 30 minutes behind schedule, the Swiss Airbus A321 takes off and heads for Moscow. We would have some claims to Swiss about the flight, Georg did not get the requested no alcohol-no sugar menu, and also the side order of extra fries obviously had been forgotten, that many of us requested. I don’t even want to get started about the requested group seating, let’s just say it didn’t work out.

The flight arrived on time, and at the Domodedovo airport we were received by Anna, from Lomonosov Moscow State University. Unexpectedly, we had a bus transport waiting for us to the hotel.

The traffic in Moscow is well known for being always jammed, therefore we were happy that on Sunday evening there was hardly any traffic. After a much quicker than expected transfer we arrived at the hotel in good spirit.

At the Park Inn hotel we started to see more familiar faces, course members who had arrived via different routes, some already taking a few days head start. It seems everyone made it without being robbed, losing their kidneys, or just getting lost, so everything looked good.

In the evening, most of us enjoyed dinner at the restaurant of our own hotel, naturally with an open end at the bar afterwards. The time difference of +3 hours made it very easy to stay up late, and very hard to get up in the morning.

All in all things didn’t feel that different being in Moscow, the same group of people, drinking together, getting ready for another day at the school. Be it Moscow or somewhere else, it seems it’s our group that makes the atmosphere, not that much the location.