Greetings from Moscow! Bolshoi in Russia is my variation on Big in Japan. (Bolshoi means “Big” in Russian. Get it?) Stay tuned for my live dispatches from Russia this week.
What you are looking at is Starbucks coffee, or if you want: CTAPBAKC. In Russia, they must legally rewrite even a brand name in Cyrillic; not the way it is spelled, but phonetically. PECTOPAH is Restaurant, spelled phonetically.
Half of the fun of being in Russia is interpreting the alphabet. It is actually pretty easy for me because I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia and had to study Russian in school. This is really helpful in Russia, where only a small percentage of people speak English.
Most menus here are in Russian and all the subway signs are in Russian. If you can’t read it fast enough, it could be a problem. I really suggest studying the alphabet before visiting Russia. It is not that difficult.
Still, seeing American fastfood chain signs in Cyrillic is a little strange. Here is McDonalds and “McDrive” or McAuto, as they say here. Really, it’s MAKAVTO.
American chains are very popular here. Every McDonalds I saw was packed. The branch on Pushkinskaya Ploshad is the busiest McDonalds in the world. The trick is: it is packed because it is relatively cheap. Unlike most dining options in Moscow.