Tag Archives: russia

Hi all!

Ahhh – July: always tons getting done in the KL camp before the August lull when lots of us are on vacation – myself included! We’ve had our birthday bash already; there’s all sorts going on corporate-wise, which I’ll not go into here; and here’s the latest July event: the opening – finally! – of our corporate eatery @ our HQ! It’s called BarKas. Yes – the ‘Bar’ of ‘Kaspersky’. We decided on ‘bar‘ as, though it’s more of a restaurant than a bar, it is, in true KL spirit, informal and relaxed just like a bar, only nicer, if you follow me. Also, ‘Restaurant-Kas’ hardly has a ring to it. Plus, there’s the curiosity value in the fact that, in Russian, a ‘barkas’ is… a paddle boat! ‘Perfect’, we thought :).

The ‘beta testing’ of the paddle boat was back in March of this year. And just the other day it finally opened its doors to all and sundry (it’s not a KL-only canteen kinda thing), which I guess includes us – so we decided to give it some ‘alpha testing’…

Read on: First impressions? Nice.

Privyet droogs!

When asked where I live in the world, I always answer Moscow. However, I only live here something like four or five months a year (the rest of the time (I’m on the road on business). And in those four or five months a year I see little of the city besides the well-trodden (by me) routes between my flat, the office, and all three of MOW‘s international airports. Occasionally I’ll go downtown for this or that occasion like the dentist’s, our Christmas/New Year bash, or the clinic for my booster shot against yellow fever (needed for certain Latin American countries and Africa). But apart from that, I hardly ever see the place. Who’d have thought it? Me – practically a non-stop business traveler-cum-tourist – and I never get round to being a tourist in the city I live in?! Odd. So at the weekend I decided to change this state of affairs. Accompanied by two other Moscow-dwelling fellow ‘tourists’ who I’ve traveled a lot with far and wide, it was time to ‘do’ Moscow – at least, some of it – in a six-hour quick march…

We started out at Sparrow Hills, and finished up at Molochnyy Pereulok, or Dairy Lane:

Read on: A very special weekend…

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!

Read on: And this is how the building looked in 2002…

The other day our executive director (E.D.) received a note with the agenda of an upcoming business trip of mine:

• Krasnodar: meet with the regional governor, sign a cooperation agreement;
• Krasnodar: meet with our Krasnodar business partners;
• Krasnodar: give a lecture at Kuban State University;
• Flight to Novorossiysk;
• Novorossiysk: meet with our Novorossiysk business partners;
• Novorossiysk: visit the city’s seaport.

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:

Read on: A real nice place…

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.

Read on: Been there. Must return one day…

I find myself in many different far-flung places on this planet, but quite often they’re… predictable: world capitals, business hubs, Must-See places…

But occasionally I also get to less obvious spots. Example: Sviyazhsk. Heard of it? Probably not!

Well, it’s an ancient town, now a village, located at the confluence of the Volga and Sviyaga Rivers.

According to our excellent excursion guide (I normally trust good guides more than, say, Wikipedia), the short history of the town is as follows:

Read on: Ambitious!…

Last week I stayed at the Déjà Vu hotel near the Sviyaga skiing complex in the city of Kazan (dubbed the third capital of Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg). And though there was just me in my hotel room, the shower was most certainly designed for two persons. I have to say it was the first ‘erotic shower’ I’ve ever seen out of all the hotels I’ve stayed at. Most innovational. Good idea!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBZolHKuiUQ/

Read on: great location, questionnable breakfast…

Hi folks!

On we go with my journey around what are to me the 100 most beautiful places in the world, all of which I reckon need visiting at least once in a lifetime without fail – so as not to live the rest of that lifetime with regret!

Next up, the world’s largest country!

Russia’s East European Plain doesn’t have anything outstandingly must-see when it comes to natural beauty. Of course, there are beautiful places – and many of them, but none quite make their way onto my Top-100. Then, east of the Urals there’s the West Siberian Plain – a rather plain, er, plain, this time all tundra/taiga/steppe (from north to south, respectively), marshes, rivers, lakes, oil extraction and mosquitoes. Things only start getting Top-100-worthy still further east. But I’ll get to that in a bit. For now though…

39. Red Square and the Kremlin.

Many of our foreign friends who come to visit us here in Moscow tell us that Red Square – with St. Basil’s at one end, the Kremlin to one side and GUM on the other – is the most beautiful spot in Europe, especially at night when lit up. And who am I to argue? I too am a big fan.

Note: St. Petersburg was in the Cities section of the Top-100 series.

Source

Read on: Shambala, Kondyor, Pillars …

All good things must come to an end: that’s it for at least another year. Time to go home.

In all we’ve trekked/climbed/clambered/slipped/tripped around 300 kilometers, been up five volcanoes (though not always quite to the very top), scanned hundreds of square kilometers of phenomenal natural beauty, scared (or maybe just surprised) dozens of bears, and fed a zillion mosquitos. We’ve also used up kilometers of Kodachrome gigabytes of memory cards :).

https://instagram.com/p/7FAR9GuiWS/

Read on: Good-bye Kamchatka!…

As our An-Kam-2015 inexorably approached its end, we had just one more volcano to check out: Koshelev – actually pronounced Koshelyov (accent on the lyov).

Though the name is in the singular, this isn’t a single volcano – it’s a set of five different volcanoes, each of which erupted at different times, and which together make up a single massive construction of varied volcanism. Since all the volcanoes are old, they’re all partly collapsed. But that’s just what makes them all the more photogenic.

The parts of Koshelyov we checked out (the western peaks) consist of lava stacks (the centers of former craters) colored with multicolored volcanic remains. Various shades of black, white, red and yellow almost glistening in the bright sunlight of the clear day we were lucky enough to be here on.

Read on: It was getting really tough towards the end of the trip…