NOTES, COMMENT AND BUZZ FROM EUGENE KASPERSKY – OFFICIAL BLOG
March 31, 2016
Novorossiysk is also my hometown! I was born here 50.5 years ago. My family lived in this here building – 21, Revolution of 1905 Street – for many years. We moved away in the early seventies to Khlebnikovo in the Moscow Region, which is where I started going to school.
Here’s number 21:
In this yard I played in the sandbox, rode my first bicycle, and climbed the apricot and mulberry trees… Oh, the nostalgia!
March 30, 2016
The other day our executive director (E.D.) received a note with the agenda of an upcoming business trip of mine:
Attached thereto was a receipt for prepayment of rental of a helicopter to get from Krasnodar to Novorossiysk. The name of the company that owned the chopper? Abrau-Durso – the well-known (locally) wine-and-champagne producer!
“Aha. I get it. And you call this a business trip?!” joked E.D. :)
Alas, there was no time for us to fit in a visit to the winery for a tasting. See, it was business, E.D. :)
The views from up above were rather spectacular:
March 29, 2016
I like lists. I like comparisons. So when, a while back, I drew up a list of the cities I’ve been to in Russia, I was rather surprised to discover I’ve been to more US cities than Russian ones! Ok, just two more – 16 against 14 – but still. How so? Why for? Is not normal. (Here’s the methodology for the calculation and the lists of the respective cities.)
Aaanyway, I’ve just added another city to my list of Russian ones visited: the city of Krasnodar.
What can I say? Krasnodar is a real nice place – especially in the center. It’s clean and tidy; it’s bright and colorful; it’s nicely maintained and furbished; while the bright sun up in the clear blue sky imbued the city with a fresh, spring-y mood. In short: my impressions were extremely positive.
March 17, 2016
Getting from Cancun in Mexico to Sanya in China, will never be one of the simplest routes – even given the most favorable of weather conditions. All the same, it will never be one of the longest. Still, that route does belong to the category of the ‘trickiest air routes in the world’, i.e., between South America and Southeast Asia (flying in either direction) : the distances are always big, and the air routes are rarely straightforward.
For example, flying from Hong Kong, Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur to Santiago or Buenos Aires will always be an avia-endurance test both in terms of total journey time and the number of connections. I say always, since all available routes – all four of them – all take approximately the same number of hours to complete.
My question:
What are these four (very different) ways of flying (on a commercial flight) from Southeast Asia to South America? (incidentally, one of them I’ve yet to fly myself). Let’s say, from Hong Kong to Santiago and from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires?
March 16, 2016
Your attention please! This is Tijuana Airport broadcasting! I’m now now starting a reality show about the adventures of a traveler trying to fly from Mexico to China. Welcome aboard!
So, the most convenient way of getting from Cancun to China is to fly Cancun -> Mexico City -> Shanghai (with a stop to refuel). This time, the attempt to follow this route was a total failure. Shanghai Pudong Airport closed for technical reasons – that is, due to some dense dog fog. So I’m sitting in Mexico’s most northeasterly city, Tijuana, waiting to depart.
This is a very remote part of Mexico, most people will never make it here and you’ve probably never even heard of it. Which only makes it all the more interesting! It’s known as the third most prosperous city in the country (after Cancun and Mexico City). Perhaps, that’s thanks to the United States, right across the border, which has set up all sorts of manufacturing plants here, uses the local inexpensive (but decent) medical facilities, etc. It’s also one of the most criminalized places in Mexico, supplying drugs and illegal immigrants to the States. Bad stuff…But it looks (downtown, as seen from my hotel) pretty decent – could be somewhere in California or Florida or suchlike.
March 5, 2016
It would be a real shame to come to the Alps, to the home of Italian alpine skiing, and not put on a pair of skis and personally try out the slopes in the surrounding valley. It’s been quite a while since I last put on mountain skis… way back in 2012!
I used to spend a week or two in the Alps each winter. These days, too much business things that can’t be missed, so I don’t really get the chance to go on a proper skiing break till my legs start giving way beneath me and my hands start shaking. However, this time I was in luck: three and a half days of slopes and enjoying alpine landscapes! The Alps are truly fabulous in winter! // Chances are they are just as nice in summer, but I’ve never seen them at that time of year :)
March 4, 2016
I’m not sure who exactly came up with the idea, but the first I heard about “Ferrari F1 on a ski slope” was about half a year ago. The very thought of driving a racing car on the ice and snow is so ridiculous that we just had to do it – that’s how we and Ferrari roll :)
This is what the event looked like at the Livigno ski resort at an altitude of 1,800 m, in front of a huge crowd of skiers, local residents, tourists and racing fans.
March 4, 2016
In a follow-up to my plane trip, this post is about my recent jaunt in a helicopter.
I had really hoped our plane could land closer to our destination, which was deep in the mountains, but, unfortunately, the Alps were covered in clouds, and we weren’t allowed to fly to Samedan (am I the only one who hadn’t heard of this place before?) So we were diverted to Malpensa airport, Milan. This white helicopter came to Malpensa to collect us.
Which came as a huge surprise to me. Usually, helipads are either located outside international airports, or miles from the terminals, runways and taxi tracks. However, this time the helicopter landed close to the civil air terminal – in the photos above you can just make out the plane tails with the logos of Emirates (A-380), Lufthansa, Alitalia, Swiss Air, etc.
Then there was the most curious part of all – takeoff.
March 3, 2016
Fourth day on the road, third country: Moscow -> Barcelona -> Nuremberg -> Milan. A new city means a new agenda: business meetings, interviews, presentations. From morning till night. Then a mad dash to the plane, a new hotel, you unpack your suitcase, you hit the sack, the alarm sounds, you pack your suitcase – and you’re on the road again. Groundhog night. ‘Night’, because the days are all very different and each of them amazing.
With regular flights, getting on top of this schedule is problematic to say the least, so my chance companion A.B. and I flew this Cessna Citation-2 ‘hummingbird’.
Once, a while ago, I felt like counting the cities I had visited – in Russia and the US – and comparing the numbers. You can follow the link to see what came out of it. I used the same approach this time – had a good look at the map of Germany and began to compile the list of cities I’ve been to… Here’s what I came up with:
Hamburg, Hannover, Berlin, Magdeburg, Bochum, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Eisenach, Würzburg, Nuremberg, Ingolstadt, Munich – a total of 14 cities, just like in Russia. Oh, and the brief stops in Wolfsburg, Cologne and Koblenz don’t really count.
I had passed Nuremberg a few times (on the route Hannover/CeBIT <-> mountain skiing), but I had never visited the city itself before. Well, now I have. Very nice German city. Specifically, Bavarian city. Or, more precisely, Franconian. Here’s what it looks like:
By the way, I ran into a problem here that tends to happen to serial travelers like me: I forgot my room number at the hotel. Actually, this is typical of people who do a lot of traveling. The funny thing is that you have no problem remembering the room number at the hotel where you stayed yesterday. Sometimes you can even remember the password for yesterday’s Wi-Fi connection. But you can’t for the life of you recall those numbers on the door you’re supposed to use today :)
Hopefully, an awkward situation like this won’t happen today. The hotel is really small – they remember all their guests’ faces and personally hand each guest the big iron key to their door.
The rest of the Nuremberg photos are here.
March 2, 2016
Herewith, my personal ‘Top-100 Amazingly Beautiful Must-See Places in the World Split up Into the Continents Thereof‘ is coming to a close.
To date, I’ve given you Place Nos. 1–90 of my Top-100. There’ll be a further four coming up below (Nos. 97–100). That of course leaves a mysterious gap – from 91 to 96…
Actually, no mystery at all here. It’s just my not being able to nail the nice round figure of 100! I mean, I could fill the gap with some of the bonus tracks, or I could wait until someone – hopefully in the comments (below) – comes up with some must-sees I’ve scandalously not considered for whatever reason. So really it’s a gap that leaves some room for improvement/perfecting, not knowing for sure how exactly to improve and perfect it now.
That potentially awkward caveat out of the way, let’s get those last Tops, er, out of the way…
97. North Pole.
Perhaps you could have guessed this one would be in this post scriptum installment of my Top-100, as it isn’t a part of a continent – ain’t no country even – so it was always going to be tricky ‘fitting it in’.
You can get to it on an icebreaker on a tour (pics only; Russian text), and I’m told it’s a really worthwhile excursion – not to mention an extreme one.
One thing you won’t see here but might have thought you would are… penguins! Nope, they’re on the other side of the world – on Antarctica (and nearby southern extremes of South America and South Africa).
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