Internet Dating - One Bloke's Experiences: My first Internet Date - Olga in Moscow

With my first couple of days out of the way, I wanted to see if there was any potential with Olga. We'd arranged to meet on Monday evening for dinner and I was going to ask some probing questions...

It was the third time we had met up and I was more than a little peeved that she had made minimal effort and probably told me a pack of lies about herself and her situation. So I asked her to book a nice restaurant for Monday evening. We'd had another stab at eating Russian food the night before, but I'd drawn a line under that one. 'Which type of meat is this?' to which I got the reply 'meat, you like meat, you want morrrre?'. I have no idea what it was we ate on Sunday night but it was as tough as old boots. Olga seemed to enjoy it though.

On Monday evening we met at the hotel again and we flagged down a passing motorist who took us to the restaurant for a few rubels. The restaurant, was more to my liking, tablecloths, napkins, waitresses without beards and edible food. Olga warned me this was going to be expensive. It was about the same as you'd pay for a meal in a good restaurant in central London. She told me she had been here once before with work when they celebrated getting a big contract.

I asked about ex-boyfriends and she went to some lengths to tell me about how mean Russian men were and how badly they treated their women and yes, she'd had a few boyfriends, but nothing for a while and nothing long term (this worried my, if a woman hasn't had a long term relationship by her mid-thirties, is she ever going to have one?). She asked more about me and for the first time we had a fairly relaxed two way dialogue which we both seemed to enjoy.

Next day, I did more sightseeing and bought tickets for the Bolshoi. It was ballet rather than opera and I had misunderstood my orders for buying tickets at the front of the box, I thought she had said the best views were from the back of the box. At the second interval I suggested we left and went for a drink.

Boshio Theatre on my first internet date

Bolshoi at night

We did and she took me to a really swanky place (I paid, of course).

A pleasant enough evening we had, although I was thinking that it might be better to look for someone a little closer to home as I couldn't imagine a long distance relationship (Paris would have been alright, if it had been the truth).

I think I had guilt tripped her in to taking my final day off work and we went sightseeing around Moscow, she showed me the monument to Yuri Gagarin and then we walked around Gorky Park for a bit. I went back to the hotel, checked out and we went to the airport together. She kissed me quite intensely for a while, which was more than I was expecting and it was if to say 'maybe there is something there'. Then just before I went to the gate she said, if we are going to see each other again, it will need to be after you divorce.

Okey dokey, I thought, there's not time to have this conversation now. I kissed her again and said goodbye for now. Whilst I didn't really see a future for Olga and I, I did enjoy my trip to Moscow, I probably would have never gone otherwise.

We kept in touch for a while and it became clear to me that divorce was a big thing for her, separated was not enough. Oddly, a couple of years later I was driving between Glasgow and Edinbugh and I received a call from her, she was now living in the US (or was she?) and wanted to tap in to my Private Equity connections. I said I'd get back to her, but never did.

Anyway here are some more photos from Moscow and my first internet date: