Day 3 - St Petersburg, Russia — Captain Father John

I awoke to the sound of snow plows and snow shovels outside my hotel window in St Petersbug, Russia.

I always sleep well the first night after a long trip. Getting acclimated to the new time zone is easier when I arrive at night. Staying up until midnight helps in the transition. My trip to Russia was quite uneventful except for the one hour delay in Munich. Having flown over 2.5 million air miles during my career I have a motto that “any flight that arrives on the same day it is scheduled is a good flight.” I have only had a few occasions where I was delayed a full day. I was at Tokyo airport when the earthquake hit on March 11, 2011. I was also inconvenienced by the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland that shut down air traffic in Europe in April 2010. I was in Russia at that time. You can read about these international adventures by cutting and pasting this link in your browser.

http://www.captainfatherjohn.com/category/x-international-travel/page/4/

A highlight from one of my previous trips to St. Petersburg was to sing a karaoke duet with the Russian queen of Pop music Tatyana Bulanova. My Russian distributor Zurab was a very good soccer (football) player and knew Vladislav Radimov who played for the Russian national football team. Vlad married Tatyana Bulanova and they live in St Petersburg.

Tatyana Bulanova and CFJ

Tatyana Bulanova has the title of the most crying Russian singer because her first hits were sad songs like a lullaby of a single mother. She started singing in the beginning of the 1990s and she is still one of the most popular singers. Her music genre is called “sorrow-pop. Her latest album was released in 2010. Overall she has 27 albums to date, making her discography a staggering 27 albums in 20 years.
She is now performing in the “All-Stars” shows instead of solo concerts. Unfortunately for me, she is on tour in Lenningrad this month and was not in St Petersburg. Tatyana is the Russian equivalent to the likes of Paula Abdul and Cyndi Lauper in the US.

Watching TV in Russia there is lots of praise for president elect Trump. There is a high degree of optimism that Russian / US relations will improve. The photo of Putin and Trump was accompanied by the Sting song “The Message” which has the verse “the Russians love their children too.”

The other two Rust-Oleum folks arrived on Tuesday. President Tom Reed and VP International Kurt Hardy connected through London and arrived at 4:00 pm. Zurab and I met them at the airport and took them to visit DIY stores to review the Rust-Oleum display and see the competitive products on the shelves.

Zurab Mishin, Tom Reed, John Simons and Kurt Hardy

Bonus photo

King of the hill – Tom Reed