The Cinetrain workshop officially starts today. Yet some participants have already arrived in Moscow a few days ago. Monika, from Poland, is already shooting the film she's the camerawoman off. Together with Nikita (co-organiser of the project and director of one of the six documentaries), they went out of Moscow, looking for one of the numerous monuments dedicated to Lenin in Russia. Lenin is the topic their film is focussing on. This is the reason they are absent to the introduction meeting organised this afternoon in our headquarters during our stay in Moscow, the well-named “Russian Institute” (situated just few hundred meters from the Red Square)!
Just before this meeting, we had our first meal together in one of those popular Russian buffet restaurants. It didn't reassure so much Hannah and Shura, the workshop organisers from Moviement. Indeed, a little drama took place. Leo, from Scotland, found the food so disgusting (or, more exactly, overcooked) that he insisted on making a complaint and getting reimbursed. Of course such request has very little chance to get through here. And it didn't. Welcome to Russia! If there's problem with food already now, one better not imagine how it will turn into on the train in Siberia.
Apart from that, the project seems to start smoothly, everyone clinging quite well to each other. It has to be! We will be twenty people on the train, living 24/7 together for almost four weeks, sharing a high degree of intimacy. 14 boys & 6 girls, 14 countries represented. Everybody is surely happy to have been selected among the more than 120 applications received.
The introduction session aims at reaffirming the objectives of the workshop (we had several preparatory chat conferences via Skype in the last couple of months), to check the agenda and the material, and to arrange practical details. Thanks to the presentation of Guillaume, one of the members of Moviement, we all become acquainted with the Russian system of train timetables: all stations over Russia have to follow the Moscow time, despite the different time zones.
Just before this meeting, we had our first meal together in one of those popular Russian buffet restaurants. It didn't reassure so much Hannah and Shura, the workshop organisers from Moviement. Indeed, a little drama took place. Leo, from Scotland, found the food so disgusting (or, more exactly, overcooked) that he insisted on making a complaint and getting reimbursed. Of course such request has very little chance to get through here. And it didn't. Welcome to Russia! If there's problem with food already now, one better not imagine how it will turn into on the train in Siberia.
Apart from that, the project seems to start smoothly, everyone clinging quite well to each other. It has to be! We will be twenty people on the train, living 24/7 together for almost four weeks, sharing a high degree of intimacy. 14 boys & 6 girls, 14 countries represented. Everybody is surely happy to have been selected among the more than 120 applications received.
The introduction session aims at reaffirming the objectives of the workshop (we had several preparatory chat conferences via Skype in the last couple of months), to check the agenda and the material, and to arrange practical details. Thanks to the presentation of Guillaume, one of the members of Moviement, we all become acquainted with the Russian system of train timetables: all stations over Russia have to follow the Moscow time, despite the different time zones.
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