After working for a while on Xfce, I found out about Gnome 3 fallback mode. That is almost exactly what I needed – old style Gnome. Obviously not completely like Gnome 2.x, but very very close to it.
Will work in Gnome 3 under this mode for a while to see. At least I have all my menus, applets, proper system tray and whatever else I am so used to in their correct places :)