Once upon a time the American journalist Sally McGrane went down from her modest but nice apartment in Moscow and walked along the Arbat street. It was an authentic Russian late winter evening, fresh snow creaked rhythmically under her valenki. Slightly ahead of her she noticed a tall guy in a Russian winter cap with ear flaps who was just standing still and smiling, apparently engrossed by the play of falling snow in the light of a street lamp. "Погодка-то, а?!!"(*) - said Sally friendly to him in a pure Russian with a slight muscovite accent. "Дааа, чудесная погодка!"(**) - smiled the British philosopher Roger Smith (it was him). "Such wonderful and friendly people are those Russians, indeed!" - thought both of them, creaking away from each other along the old Moscow street of Arbat..

* "Such a weather, eh?"
** "Yeea, a wonderful one!"

(с)