Welcome to the new Hotel Development

A year ago in New Mexico - on a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair - warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air. Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. I was looking for a new job and someone asked me to travel East. My head was heavy and my sight was dim. I said, yes, why not, and I travelled East. I had to stop for the night - at Aurora.

The next day I headed for Lesteva and the Hotel Development. I was not on the list and they would not let me in. But suddenly, there she stood in the doorway - I heard the mission bell - and I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell. Her name was Katia and she knew I was coming. Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way to the fourth floor.



There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say...

Welcome to the Hotel Development,
Such a lovely place!
There was not plenty of room at the Hotel Development.

A year has passed and we have moved and moved and still we are at the Hotel Development. Any time of the year, you can find it here in the Pirog Street. This is a modern international hotel with a new modern logo.

The mind is tiffany-twisted, and the hotel got a Mercedes Benz and an Audi, and a lot of pretty, pretty girls. You may say that there are some pretty boys as well, but most of all there are very brave men that trust important tasks like unveiling the logo to a woman. Men sometimes get medals for their bravery. I'm sure these will as well.

Then the music started playing and we danced in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some danced to remember, some danced to forget. One called up the captain, please bring me more wine. The wine was plenty. He said, we haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine.

Now we have a new logo and we are an international hotel with international service and practices. Last night I dreamed that we got a new hotel manager called Basil. He brought with him a guy called Manuel. He was from Barcelona. It seemed he would fit well in administrative services. Could even be head of..

Last week was dedicated to local culture. An interesting history lecture confirmed the main trends of a previous blog post with only minor differences regarding the significance of battles.

The week was concluded with food, folk music, and dance and posing. The locals love posing for the photographer and we all did some posing to get a picture with a local flavour.

Welcome to the Hotel Development.
Such a lovely place.
Such a lovely face she had.
They’re living it up at the Hotel Development. What a nice surprise!

We have mirrors on the ceiling, and pink champagne on ice. It's hard to be an expat in Moscow.

However, some of us chose to leave. One of our friends left a couple of weeks ago and last week one of our French friends was checking out. It's hard to get and equally hard to cancel a work visa. Our friend had to come all the way from Stavanger to get his visa cancelled. He had a return flight the next day. They took his passport and told him this takes six days. As we are all just prisoners here, of our own device. And in the master’s chambers, they will gather for the FID.

I have to find the passage back to the place I was before.
Relax; said the night man, we are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!