Made it

I'm here in St. Petersburg at about 9 pm Sunday night, having left Kansas City about 8 a.m. yesterday. I'm thankful for Internet Wifi and barely functioning voltage converter here in the Hotel Rakhmaninov.

Amazingly, I missed the U.S. to Europe leg (not a fun experience, and partly my fault) of my ticketed flight but was blessed (and lucky) enough to get the next plane out of Chicago to Frankfurt, and then on to St. Petersburg. I doubt if I will be posting a whole lot this week, but I will post some pictures and commentary from this trip. The main focus is to profile the Russian marketplace and its growing hunger for U.S. exports of apples, pears and grapes.

Tomorrow a small group of U.S. exporters will tour St. Petersburg supermarkets made possible by the help of the USDA FAS office here. The tour is scheduled to see the OKEY hypermarket, the Lenta cash and carry chain and the Globus Gourmet, a chain of high end retail stores.

Also, I expected to interview the director general of the Sunway Group tomorrow afternoon.


Later...