German Gref, Russian Minister of Economics and Trade, will now have an assistant whose sole job will be realization of the federal program to turn Sochi into year-round resort.

Also, three “layers” of control over how money, allotted for preparing Sochi for the Olympics, are used: (1) Minister of Economics, who will personally oversight the money flow and lead the board of directors (I guess that’s why he’d need an assistant dedicated for these tasks :); (2) a supervisory board consisting of well known public figures will be created; and (3) and Accounts Chamber of Russian Federation.

After snowless winter and record high temperatures, snow falls in Moscow – 40 cm!
Must see picture! : ) Read the rest of this entry »

Serbian company “Putevi Uzice” will remain the contractor to reconstruct Sochi International Airport‘s runway, reports russian information agency “Novosti”. In September 2006, “Putevi Uzice” won tender to reconstruct Sochi Airport’s runway, however Austrian company “Strabag”, which also participated in the tender, questioned weather the tender was done according to law. Today court in Moscow dismissed the “Strabag”‘s case, so “Putevi Uzice” will remain the contractor for this est. 200 mil Euros project.

I believe it was a Serbian construction company that built the new terminal back in early ’90s.

Sochi Airport terminal was sold to “Strategiya Yug” company, and it is one of the biggest airports in southern Russia, servicing over 8 000 flights of more then 120 Russian and foreign airlines. According to the information published on the Sochi International Airport‘s website it is number seven on the list of 35 Russia’s busiest airports servicing domestic and international passenger flights, and number four (of top 35) in servicing international cargo flights. Passenger flow during first 11 month of 2006 was 1 million 345 thousand 655 people, which is 10.4% up from the same period of the year before.

A high-level delegation from Sochi 2014 arrived this morning at the International Olympic Committee Headquarters in Lausanne, two days ahead of schedule, to deliver their finalized Candidature File, Sochi’s visionary proposal to host a technically excellent Winter Games.

According to Sochi 2014, 150 people worked nearly 70,000 hours over a 17-month period to produce a “highly comprehensive and technically excellent plan”.

Russian TV channel NTV had a nice video clip talking about the event. I’ll post a few screenshots below. Read the rest of this entry »

When I started this blog, I was wondering if many people in my target audience would want to see Sochi hosting Olympics if Olympic Games were to be this year and why, what people know about Sochi, and what do they think about other candidate cities’ advantages and disadvantages over Sochi. So, I’ve posted my question on a few travel boards and got a few answers. One thing I noticed is that many Europeans would prefer Austria’s bid over other’s for the reasons of convenience – geographical proximity means cheaper travel, no visa requirements, etc. And I can relate to all that. But I couldn’t help myself thinking how short-sighted this line of reasoning is. And, I think, partly this comes from lack of information.

Here are my thoughts on how Olympics in Sochi will benefit Europeans over Olympics in Salzburg. Read the rest of this entry »

I uploaded few more photos from my summer trip to Sochi. Check ’em out in “My Sochi Photos” section.

Starting January 15, “Aeroflot-Don” airline opens new destinations flights: Sochi – Istanbul (Turkey) and Sochi – Dubai (UAE).

Flights to Istanbul are scheduled twice a week, on Mondays (morning round-trip flight) and on Wednesdays (afternoon round-trip flight). Flights to Dubai are scheduled once a week on Tuesdays. Source: Travel.ru

“Volnaya Kuban” newspaper quotes Viktor Kolodyazhny, Sochi mayor, saying that 800,000 foreign guests had visited Sochi in 2006.

That’s pretty good! Im guessing this includes visitors from CIS countries as well.