I’m going to Sochi for the New Year, yay! I just hope the flight won’t be delayed, as my flight is at 7pm :) The only comforting thought is that it’s Aeroflot flight, and in my experience they’ve been very reliable in being on-time. Unlike SkyExpress. Since I moved to St. Petersburg two month ago, I’ve spent most weekends in Moscow, thanks to the reasonable rates at SkyExpress . However every flight back to SPb was delayed! On the last trip the flight to Moscow was combined with another SE flight that they delayed for several hours, and on the way back my flight was delayed 6 hrs. The good think they did sent me text message about the delay, and I ended up meeting my friends from Sochi Music College (now called Sochi College of Arts, or something like that), who now live in Moscow. So, this time it worked out Ok.

All cheap tickets to Sochi for Dec 30-31^st on all airlines were sold out about a month in advance. My Moscow-Sochi-Moscow tickets ended up being 515€. If you’re looking for tickets now, check out Aeroflot first, they have many flights there on 31st, and probably will still have tickets.

I’ll be in Sochi from 31st to 8th. No particular plans yet, we’ll probably go out clubbing with friends, or get together at someone’s place. What are your New Year plans?

Vladimir Putin, working as the Russian Prime Minister these days, invited countries of Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) to build hotels near the future Olympic park in Sochi. He suggests they name hotels by the names of their country’s capitals, and use it to promote their countries and cultures.

Besides Russia, members of EurAsEC are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. If they accept the idea and join the project, Sochi can have complex of hotels where visitors will learn cultural specifics and traditions of these countries.

Detour road in Sochi, December 2008

This is an approximate map for the previous post about new section of the detour road around Sochi‘s central district. Just help to visually understand whats going on.

The map was made by user Dali of the forum at allsochi.info.