A little addition to my previous “High-level talks in Sochi” post: the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel will visit Sochi for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow, January 21. Main topic of discussion will apparently be energy security and EU-Russia partnership agreement. You can read more on this on your favourite news portals. Here are a couple of links: Merkel and Putin will spend a weekend in Sochi (RIA “Novosti”), Energy but No Chemistry for Merkel’s Visit (The Moscow Times).

“Ves’ Sport” quotes Ed Hula, the Editor of the Around The Rings – american analytics agency, saying that Sochi’s bid, unlike Salzburg’s and PyeongChang’s bids, got a lot stronger due to better lobby on international level.

Past October’s Power Ranking by ATR looked like this:
1. Salzburg (87)
2. PyeongChang (76) tie
2. Sochi (76) tie

I wonder if they’ll post new ranking after examining the Bid Books, or they’ll wait for Evaluation Commission to tour the candidate cities…

By the way, here is Power Index their October ranking was based on:

Read the rest of this entry »

Prime Minister of Italy Romano Prodi will visit Sochi for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 23rd. Main topic of their discussion will be bilateral economic relations, including energy.

Sochi has always hosted presidential “summer residence”, however only with President Putin our city became more then President’s “dacha“, and now, at times, looking like a center of world politics. Read the rest of this entry »

Sochi 2014 Bid Books are available online in PDF format at sochi2014.com!

I uploaded more of my and my friend’s photos from Sochi to Flickr. They all tagged, so you can see them in My Sochi Photos section.

The base for Sochi Olympic Games theme will be ancient Greek myth about Prometheus – the Titan who took fire from the gods of Olympus and give it to mortals for their use, for this he was chained to Mount Fischt near Sochi. This became know after IOC allowed the three candidate cities to make their Olympic plans public.

In Wikipedia, and many other sources, you’ll read that Prometheus was chained to Mount Caucasus, but where is this mountain today? Why do they think it is Fischt Mountain, near Sochi? Here is what I found on the internet: Read the rest of this entry »

In December 2006 some Sochi residents rallied against holding the Olympic Games in Sochi. The major concerns that they brought up were dense building constructions, ecological impact of the rapid development, and already overloaded transportation infrastructure, writes “Novaya Gazeta Kubani” newspaper.

December is not today, but this is recent, and still is of current importance. Read the rest of this entry »

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.