Tag Archives: russia

Hi folks!

It all started in… Magadan…

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It’s getting to be a tradition feasting here at the airport before the long-haul east…

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Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature.

Rounding off our MYB winter road trip, it was time to change mode of transportation. We parked up the tired Land Rovers, and headed to Baikal Port. As in – for ships and boats; with a Lake Baikal completely and utterly frozen over. Confused? Well, actually, Baikal Port also features a rail terminal. And it was there that we were to board a train for an excursion along the full length of the Circum-Baikal Railway to the town of Slyudyanka. But this isn’t just any old railroad. This happens to have been one of the most difficult engineering feats when it was constructed, and also happens to be one of the most scenic in the world. See for yourself! ->

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The other week a group of colleagues and I were up in St. Petersburg on business. And in among our busy schedule while there we paid a useful and informative visit to the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. And it was there I got my first glimpse of Cherenkov radiation (and you thought radiation was invisible?), which I’d dreamed of doing for years. I also stood on the roof of a working reactor of RBMK (Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalniy, meaning ‘high-power channel-type reactor’). An unforgettable experience!

Note: since there’s absolutely no photography allowed at any nuclear facility, the photos below are all taken from the internet.

So, the main thing: Cherenkov radiation. In case you haven’t clicked the link, here’s what it says about it on its Wikipedia page: ‘Cherenkov radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity (speed of propagation of a wave in a medium) of light in that medium’ (the links –added by me).

And you can actually see this wonder of physics – and beautiful it is too: a fluorescent blue in the core of a nuclear reactor in cooling fluid. The spectacle is a cosmically fantastic one…

(photos from Wikipedia and here)

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Not heard of Khanty-Mansiysk? You have now!…

Don’t know where it is? You do now!

And I would have thought that… Australians wouldn’t have heard of Khanty-Mansiysk, wouldn’t have known where it is, and certainly wouldn’t have been there. However!…

It was back in 2011 (10 years ago?! Where’d that go?!), and a group of K-people and I found ourselves attending to various business matters down in sunny Melbourne in Oz. Meetings, the start of the Formula-1 season, koalas, Castlemaine XXXX, this, that.

We were in town for several days, and of an evening after each day’s business we’d all meet up for eats and beers in the hotel’s bar-restaurant. And every evening the same waitress waited on our table. Already by the second visit we all smiles and hellos and nice-to-see-you-agains. And on the third we got chatting and she asked us where we all hailed from.

We answered: Germany, the U.S.A., and Russia (there were a few locals among us too).

“Oh, Russia?! I want to go to Russia!” came the response.

“Oh, nice. Well, you need to do Moscow of course – in maybe two or three days – then there’s St. Petersburg, where you’ll need at least a week to do it justice.”

“Oh, yes: must do Moscow and St. Pete”, agreed the girl.

Then she added: “So far in Russia I’ve only been to Khanty-Mansiysk!” 8-( )

Now, Khanty-Mansiysk – to a Russian, it’s a bit… backwatery. Like… Billings, Montana, in America; or… Pontefract, West Yorkshire, in the UK. Nice places, but hardly tourist destinations. So you can imagine our surprise when a Melbourne waitress said she’d been to the Russian version of Billings or Pontefract (and not, say, New York or London)!

“WHAT?!” we asked, all agape and wide-eyed in astonishment.

“Yes – Khanty-Mansiysk. I’m a competitive chess player, and there was an international tournament there once.” Check… and mate!

I mean – even I hadn’t been to Khanty-Mansiysk, and you know how I travel all over the place. And it was a full 10 years until I would finally make a visit – just the other week…

Khanty-Mansiysk is just over the Urals from Europe, not far from where the two mighty Siberian rivers the Ob and the Irtysh meet – here:

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Still up above the Arctic Circle, after our excursion of the phostpates mine, it was back to the town of Kirovsk. It’s not only a mining center, it’s a skiing one too. I really hoped we could get a half-day of downhill skiing in, but it wasn’t to be; as often is the case – ‘we’ll have to do that next time’. The ‘cultural program’ this time was somewhat more modest: a visit to the town’s museum! It’s rather small, but all the same there’s plenty to see.

In room 5 there’s a collection of mineral stones – around a thousand of them! Wonderful! It reminded me of my once uttering ‘Mom, I want to be a geologist!’

Oh my geology! So many! All different somehow – in terms of chemical make-up, color, shape. Odd names too – many I’d never heard of:

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Hi folks!

I’d heard a lot about modern mining equipment that works autonomously, i.e., without a miner nearby controlling it. Well now I’ve seen it in action too – the other day, when I paid a visit to Phosagro in the Khibiny Mountains on the Kola Peninsula – inside the Arctic Circle! – in the northwest corner of Russia, not far from the Finnish border.

Here’s a robo-miner drilling into rock, all on its lonesome:

Whereas today’s ‘miners’ sit in a brightly-lit, air-conditioned office operating joysticks occasionally and checking the progress of the robots on a bank of screens:

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After Irkutsk, our next main stop was the large Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. But since it’s a long way – 1100km – we broke the journey up, staying overnight in the town of Taishet, whose main claim to fame is that the Baikal-Amur Mainline (railroad) (BAM) starts out there.

In Irkutsk we were up early, and off – in a pea-souper reminiscent of the one in Yakutsk. No doubt the steam emitted by the cooling towers of the Irkutsk power plant had something to do with it. Ouch: that must mean it’s like this all the time in winter. Still, at least the road was a good one: traditionally fresh (recently repaired/re-laid), smooth, and with two lanes going each way. Ouch: but those four lanes only lasted around 30km, and after that it was down to just two lanes – for the next thousand kilometers! More ouch: the fog remained. More ouch: we were stuck in the slow-moving traffic practically the whole day – zero chances of safe overtaking. OUCH OVERDOSE.

Mercifully, toward the end of the day’s driving, the fog did abate and rays of sunshine started to appear; accordingly, up went our mood.

// Btw: Below and in future posts, the photos you see are a mix of mine, DZ’s, and travel-blogger Sergey Anashkevich‘s.

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Now, where was I? Ah yes, in Irkutsk!

We had a full day in the city, combining business with pleasure: in the morning we headed over to see the good folks at the Irkut Corporation, and in the afternoon – museum visits! ->

At Irkut we got to see the testing of the MC-21:

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Onward we drove. And drove, and drove… on our Magadan–Moscow road trip. Today’s stretch – further along the Baikal Highway, heading for Irkutsk (not Yakutsk, though I’m sure they get mixed up a lot:).

The road is smooth and mostly straight (like most highways in this part of the world), the views all around – outstanding, and the drifting snow on the road – spookily stunning:

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Brief intermission in among the Tales from the Permafrost Side!…

Moscow for the tourist: there’s plenty to do and see. But after several days filled with Red Square, St. Basil’s, the Kremlin, the Arbat, Tverskaya, the Park of Victory, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum… what else is there? Well here’s one worthy suggestion, which I can now share with you after visiting the place myself for the first time the other day – the Mosfilm studio! ->

This legendary film studio complex was founded in 1923 – so in two years’ time it’ll be its 100^th jubilee!

Mosfilm today is also a museum dedicated to itself and the movies made there. In we popped…

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