You'd expect that Moscow, Russia's biggest city, would be run efficiently, maybe even in a military fashion, but that wasn't the case. There was no order at all, and shakedowns were the norm. The cops, the military, the airport personnel, everybody wanted our rubles. It was the first time any of us had been to Russia, and we did feel a little unsafe there. We stayed at the Kempinski Hotel, a five-star gaudy, gilded, marbled oasis in the middle of a strikingly poor economy. Everything in Moscow was gray, gray, gray. The sky was gray, the buildings were gray, the streets were gray, the bushes were gray. There was this heavy cloud of Stalinesque gravity that suffocated the place.