Some pictures today from afimall or, afi mall. A large shopping complex adjoining the skyscrapers at Moscow City. I go there twice a week for lessons. The tower that I visit has a bank of new-fangled lifts where you enter the floor you want to go to and a display tells you which lift to go to. The lifts don't have buttons for individual floors, just for opening and closing doors and for raising the alarm. You get in and it takes you automatically to the floor you have previously requested.
Back to afi mall, there are six floors with lifts running between second and fifth. To get to first and sixth you need to use an escalator. the sixth is reserved for a display of enormous matrushkas. There are food halls on fourth and fifth floors with an enormous selection of restaurants and fast-food outlets catering for a variety of different tastes.
Anyway, here are the photos.
A funny thing happened to me on the way to my first lesson this morning, almost at the end of the morning rush hour. The metro train I was travelling on broke down at a station. There was an announcement by the driver that the train would go no further and everybody got off and, with difficulty, managed to squeeze onto the platform. I wondered how the train would clear the platform if it had broken down but I didn't have to wonder for long - the driver got out of the front carriage, walked to the back of the train, and assumed control of the train form there. It then pulled out of the station in the direction it had just come in. I assume there was some kind of points crossover just beyond the platform so that the train could join the rails for trains travelling in the direction it was now headed. The next train which came in on our platform was already full with passengers and a platform-full tried to squeeze in too. I decided to wait for the next one. Even that was a bit of a squeeze and so I was ready with my standby phrase "Sorry madame, that's my mobile phone you can feel."
Back to afi mall, there are six floors with lifts running between second and fifth. To get to first and sixth you need to use an escalator. the sixth is reserved for a display of enormous matrushkas. There are food halls on fourth and fifth floors with an enormous selection of restaurants and fast-food outlets catering for a variety of different tastes.
Anyway, here are the photos.
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A funny thing happened to me on the way to my first lesson this morning, almost at the end of the morning rush hour. The metro train I was travelling on broke down at a station. There was an announcement by the driver that the train would go no further and everybody got off and, with difficulty, managed to squeeze onto the platform. I wondered how the train would clear the platform if it had broken down but I didn't have to wonder for long - the driver got out of the front carriage, walked to the back of the train, and assumed control of the train form there. It then pulled out of the station in the direction it had just come in. I assume there was some kind of points crossover just beyond the platform so that the train could join the rails for trains travelling in the direction it was now headed. The next train which came in on our platform was already full with passengers and a platform-full tried to squeeze in too. I decided to wait for the next one. Even that was a bit of a squeeze and so I was ready with my standby phrase "Sorry madame, that's my mobile phone you can feel."
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