Mayor of Erevan – the capital of Armenia – Ervand Zakharyan has announced today that Sochi and Erevan will sign document in November or December making Sochi and Erevan sister cities (aka twin towns or brother cities). Currently almost all Sochi’s sister cities are major resort centers in the countires where they are located. Erevan is not, however large number of Sochi residents are ethnic armenians, and this move makes a lot of sense.

Sochi’s current sister cities:

Cheltenham, UK (since 1959)
Menton, France (since 1966)
Rimini, Italy (since 1977)
Espoo, Finland (since 1989)
Long Beach, USA (since 1990)
Trabzon, Turkey (since 1991)
Pärnu, Estonia (since 1994)
Weihai, China (since 1996)
Volos, Greece (since 2007)

Recently a new free online audio language learning service was launched. It has yummy name and provides lessons for several popular languages, including Russian.  There are many websites online that teach Russian language, this one by far the best one I’ve seen. In fact I’m writing about it only because I was impressed with it so much! It’s simple, has clean and intuitive interface, the quality of learning material and quality of audio is great, there’s a lot of the materials, and it’s free!

The course is for the beginners, and if you ever flirted with the idea of learning some Russian head on to the TryMango.com and give it a shot. The sign up process is painless, it doesn’t require activation via email, and you don’t even need a password!

There are 100 lessons available, and all audio material is done by native speakers. The Russian course is Read the rest of this entry »

This is old news, but I didn’t even know, that google.ru had logo to honour Sochi’s Olympic bid win… cool! : )

The Organizing Committee for the XXII Olympic Winter Games and XI Paralympic Winter Games of 2014 in Sochi has officially been formed today. It will be responsible for the preparation and organization of the Olympic Games, and will report to the International Olympic Committee.

As was expected, Dmitry Chernyshenko is appointed chief executive officer of the organizing committee, and the Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov is appointed head of supervisory board.

The Organizing Committee will be ensuring that Read the rest of this entry »

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that laws pertaining to the future winter Olympic Games in Sochi must be passed before the end of 2007.

“One of the primary tasks is to devise proper regulations. The necessary Olympic laws must be passed before the end of this year,” Putin said at a session of the Presidential Council for Physical Education, Sports and preparations for the Olympic Games on Tuesday.

The Russian government and the presidential administration must include Sochi and Krasnodar representatives in the working group preparing these laws “so that all interests of the residents of these areas are taken into account,” Putin said.

Source: Interfax

So, as I mentioned in my previous post I recently spent two weeks in Sochi. Actually, I spent a little less there, as I went to Nebug, a small town north of Sochi, for a couple of days with my friends.

Since I came back everyone, who heard about Sochi’s Olympic future, keeps asking me what’s being done for the Olympics, what has changed – but what could change in two month?! Not much. Nothing, in fact, changed so far. We arrived to the same old airport terminal, no major constructions throughout the city, though I haven’t visited Krasnaya Polyana this time, where I hear some road constructions are on the way.

Well, some thing have changed, but not related to the Olympic bid win. New night clubs opened, such as “Platforma” club in the sea, which instantly overtook a crown from club “Malibu” as most popular open-air club in Sochi. Many places with beautiful landscaping jobs now have green highlights at night – this makes everything look beautiful. The public transportation problem as bad ad ever, and is worsened by the increasing amount of traffic in the city. At times the traffic in Sochi is as bad as it is in Moscow or Manhattan during peak hours. I almost missed my flight to Moscow sitting in the traffic. Of course, this goes back to the “roads problem” that our government promises to fix by the Olympics.

While I was there, the preparations to host the The Sixth International Investment Forum and following visits by Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and the President of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge were on the way. This caused some roads to be closed, which just added problems for drivers in Sochi, and subsequently increased taxi ride prices for the rest.

One major change, however, did take place – Read the rest of this entry »

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) – Palm trees and sunbathing holidaymakers surrounded International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Jacques Rogge on his first visit to the city that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

It was hard, perhaps, to picture biathlon and cross-country skiing taking place here but Rogge, by his own admission, was taken aback by the natural beauty of the area and the warm hospitality of the people.

“I am not used to having this kind of weather at a Winter Olympic city,” Rogge told Reuters in an interview at a seaside restaurant during his one-day trip to this Black Sea resort last week at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Still, this is a lovely place and I must say that holding the Winter Games in Sochi is a good idea.”

IOC executive director Gilbert Felli and Alpine skiing great Jean-Claude Killy, who accompanied Rogge on his visit, were equally impressed.

“The mountains are majestic, with a proper set-up you can make a great downhill course, very demanding,” said Killy, who won all three men’s Alpine skiing gold medals on offer at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics.

Regarded by some Olympic experts as rank outsiders, Sochi beat South Korea’s Pyeongchang and Austria’s Salzburg at the IOC session in Guatemala in July for the right to stage sport’s major winter festival.

Read the rest of this article at Reuters website »

IOC President Jacques Rogge was told during an informal meeting with President Vladimir Putin earlier today, that Dmitry Chernyshenko is to be appointed as the CEO of the Sochi 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Organizing Committee.

Commenting on the news, Chernyshenko said:

“Managing the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Organizing Committee is a great honor and responsibility for me. In the next 7 years we have to create the best possible conditions for hosting the Games at the highest level. To this end we have formed the most effective project management structure for achieving this result. Our cooperation with the IOC and our Games preparation process had not stopped for a minute since Sochi’s victory in Guatemala. Since then, we have been building upon the experience and international contacts gained during the bidding process to ensure we meet and exceed the highest standards of the Olympic Movement.”

As a part of the meeting, Vice-premier Alexander Zhukov was named as the Head of Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee’s Supervisory Board, while Semen Vainshtok was named as the Head of State Corporation responsible for development of infrastructure and Olympic construction.

The official announcement of the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee’s senior management will be made next week at the meeting of the President’s Council on physical culture, sport and 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Games preparation. The council will include premier minister Viktor Zubkov, vice-prime minister Zhukov, Minister of Regional Development Kozak, Veinshtock, Minister of Finances, First Vice-premier Kudrin, businessman Vladimir Potanin, President of the Russian Olympic Committee Leonid Tyagachev, Minister of Sport Vyacheslav Fetisov, representatives of Sochi City and Krasnodar region administration. Dmitry Chernyshenko is also to be announced as Secretary General of this council.

Sochi2014.com press release

I apologize for not posting for a long while. I was in Russia since the beginning of August ’till past week, including two weeks in Sochi! St. Petersburg > Sochi + Nebug > Moscow. Unfortunately my camera was stolen in St. Petersburg first week I was there :) , so I didn’t brought many pics back. But I will continue posting real soon!

WBFK World Champion Anatoly Nosyrev (RUS) will meet Kelly Leo (USA) for the ISKA Kickboxing World Championship Superheavyweight title fight in Sochi on August 17th.

Anatly Nosyrev (RUS)

Previously promised program for monitoring forests and effects of “olympic” construction projects in Sochi and Krasnodar region has been launched. Monitoring data will be published and publicly available on official website of the Federal Forestry Ministry, any violation will be reported to the government authorities.

The digital data gathered during this program will also be used to create new maps and locate places with high risk of avalanches.

This program is part of wider federal program for monitoring environment in Sochi during realization of the Federal Targeted Program for the development of Sochi.

S7, also known as «Sibir» Airlines, will start operation of St.-Petersburg — Sochi flights for the first time. Three and a half hours flights will operate every day starting September 17 with starting price of $145 (3700 rub); «Sibir» also offers lower cost tickets online – web-price for these flights will start at $80 (1990 rub).

Another flight, Novosibirsk – Samara – Sochi will start operating on September 19th and will also be a daily flight. These flights will start at $225 (5700 rub) one way.

«Dexter» Airlines will also start operating flights to Sochi, as well as several other southern cities, from Rostov and Krasnodar. «Dexter» is Russia’s first airline to offer “on-demand” flights. With prices “by kilometer” and park of Swiss-made Pilatus PC-12 and Russian-made M-101T airplanes, «Dexter» offers on-demand and regular flights from Business and VIP terminals, with registration times under 15 minutes. Prices for flights to Sochi will be $0.6-1 per kilometer for regular flights, and $4-5/ km for on-demand flights.

I thought I was special. But I guess I’m not… :)
There are a couple of comments from chernyshenko@mtu-net.pp.ru in my previous post on Sochi Olympic mascot, I was wondering if it could possibly be from the Sochi-2014 team. But then found this same text on few other Russian sites, mostly forums and news discussion boards. It’s someone’s way to reach to the Internet community to get as many votes as possible, let’s just hope this “someone” is on Sochi-2014’s organizational team :)

In any event, I’ve translated this list, and added some comments for things that may not be obvious for foreigners, hopefully this helps you understand some of those picks.

So, what do you think should be Sochi’s Olympic mascot?!!

Read the rest of this entry »

Several newborn girls in Chelyabinsk were named Olimpiada (“Olympics” in Russian), reports First Channel TV. I knew something like this would happen… really! This name is used in Russia, but it was never popular (well, actually, I don’t know what was going on with baby naming during Olympics in Moscow :)). Diminutive form of this name is Lipa.

Edit: I apologise, Valeria was Viktor’s daughter, not his granddaughter.

Five years old daughter of Viktor Kolodyazhny died today in a hospital after road accident on Friday. On Friday night, Kolodyazhny with his family was taking a ride in tourist carriage in St. Petersburg, when their carriage was hit from behind by a car. Valeria Kolodyazhnaya fell out of carriage and under car’s wheels. The driver is arrested; he did not try to evade the place of the accident.

Sad :-(

Video: Viktor Kolodyazhny and his daughter Valeria support Sochi Olympic bid.