A couple of scattered notes from day two of the Spasskaya Tower Festival:

* Tonight’s service is gonna dwarf last night’s, as the Soyuz Coffee Roasters Red Square pop-up cafe opens its doors to a full public service – last night’s packed house was Super VIP only, whereas tonight will be open to all event attendees. Right now, the Russian Travel Channel is filming Pan-Hellenic Superstar Barista Stefanos Domatiotis and United States Barista Champion / Midwestern Hawaiian Transplant Pete Licata, asking them questions, filming their latte pours and generally making a fuss – who could blame them?

*Between the public pop-up on Red Square and the VIP service in the Super VIP lounge (behind the dancing pony court, beyond the falcons, right there, you can’t miss it, just walk past the Kazakh marching band), there is truly a herculean amount of coffee being served at this event. Portland amounts of coffee. It’s actually pretty impressive, watching these 7 National Champions handle an absolutley ridiculous rush, pulling shots and making signature drinks. Soyuz chose National Champions for their stories and name appeal, for sure, but also to guarantee themselves a crew who can bust ass in a rush. God bless any city in the world where the best, brightest and richest upper echelons of the urban polity are lined up like 9am workadaddys for macchiatos at midnight.

*Stefanos Domatiotis would like to get you drunk:

(That’s vodka, folks.)

*We’ve been to two absolutely fantastic coffee shops during the afternoon hours – Kaffein yesterday and Coffee Mania today, both serving coffees in the ballpark of anything you’d find in America. More on that later – look forward to a Sprudge Guides: Moscow in the coming weeks.

*Restaurants in Moscow have enormous menus, large enough to put even the most labrynthine Cheesecake Factory spectacle to shame. And they all serve sushi.

*Coffee service on Red Square means bumping the EuroTechno. Stalin would hate it, exiled Trotsky would laugh, and Lenin’s entombed corpse approves…probably…

*As gorgeous as those onion domes are, St. Basil’s Cathedral is even more beautiful from the inside…

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