By far the most common way (the only way?) to enter Abkhazia from Russia is through Sochi. For a while foreigners (except Russian citizens and members of UN) were not able to enter Abkhazia. I don’t know when it has changed, but it is not a problem now — just make sure you have multiple entry Russian visa. The only way out of Abkhazia is back to Russia, as transit to Georgia is not permitted by Abkhazian government. Actually, I’ve heard of charter boats between Abkhazia and Turkey, but I don’t know what’s the deal there.

This good information shared Sergei Bagapsh, the President of Abkhazia during an interview to the Russia’s biggest online news source Lenta.ru

Sergei Bagapsh: Citizens of third countries can enter Abkhazia with out any problems. If a tourist has multiple entry Russian visa, he can come to Abkhazia with it as well. Many foreigners visit Abkhazia these days.

Link on topic: Official website of the President of Abkhazia.

This is sort of vulgar entertainment story, if you want to skip it it’s just fine :)

While Bush’s visit to Sochi was pretty boring (Sochi’s all about pleasure, not business, you should know it by now :)), Life.ru brings us a wonderful story - with video - from the roof of Sochi’s airport. Literally.

American presidential security boys have arrived a day early and settled in around Sochi’s airport to ensure safe landing of their president. When the time came, while Air Force One was on its way down, one US sniper, located on the airport’s roof, “took it out” and emptied his bladder. Here’s a photo, and you can watch the video on this life.ru page.

Air Force One has landed today in Adler airport, marking the beginning US President’s first visit to Sochi on his two days work trip. It will most likely be the last time George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will meet as presidents, as Putin’s second presidential term will end in May.

There was no official word on what will be discussed during the meeting, but there sure are a lot of issues to be discussed between the US and Russia. Like Kosovo, anti-missile defense (many believe this one will be the main topic), NATO expansion, the Russian-U.S. relations and many other. «The Times» reports that Putin will officially propose the tunnel between Alaska and Russia’s Far East. And Russian media reports about possibility of signing a “strategic framework” document — sort of “road map” of the Russia-US relations, the guide for Next Russian and US Presidents (the next Russian President will take office in May and the presidential elections in the USA will take place in the end of this year).

The US delegation has 700 people, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and US Ambassador to Russia William Burns. Russian delegation will include all their counterparts, and president-elect Dmitry Medvedev.

The first day is over now and there was no official “business” talks, it was all about pleasure: Putin gave tour to George and Laura Bush of future Olympic areas, presented scale models of Olympic projects, sea shore walk and sunset watch (how romantic *rolling eyes*), fancy dinner with a concert in presidential residence “Bocharov Ruchei”.

Other non-political plans for Bush and Rice this weekend includes Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t know this, but Elena Vesnina, Russian tennis player, member of Russian FedCup team, lives in Sochi!

Russia is currently ranked number one in FedCup rankings. Number one, baby! :-)

«Professional partnership London - Sochi» program took its start in the end of January in Sochi. The program provides for delegation exchanges between colleges and education establishments.

On January 22, professors from three London universities met with pedagogues from the «Black Sea humanitarian academy». During their week-long visit, guests from UK will have specialised seminar on teaching medical English, and will share their experience in organizing short term language courses for hotels’ personnel.

The point of this visit was to establish contacts and find common interests of two Olympic capitals in experience exchange of preparing staff for the Olympic Games. Educational consulting firm from London also plans to monitor knowledge level of English language among Sochi residents, students, and hotels’ personnel. Meanwhile city administration has set difficult goal for city’s teachers - to teach all residents at least one foreign language! Currently, out of 400 000+ residents only 10% know foreign languages in adequate level.

Sochi teachers will visit London in April, after which a document will be signed between two cities on educational tourism.

My friend Arkasha, who works in Krasnaya Polyana, sent me recently a few photos he took there with his mobile phone. Check ‘em out:

Larger images inside. Also, “Aibga” Hotel fire photos » Read the rest of this entry »

Tender will be announced for the constructtion of the high speed railway between Sochi and Moscow in the near future. «Russian Railways» in partnership with Canadian Bombardier and Italian Finnmechanica announced that will compete for this project. Their $19.6 bln plan is to modernize existing infrastructure, and have trains going with max speeds of 200 km/h (125 m/h) and reaching final destination in just 15.5 hours. Night time rides will be setup, so passengers could get on the train in the evening, and arrive to Sochi next morning.

As you may know, past Sunday was elections day to State Duma - lower house of Russia’s parliament. If you knew that you most likely to know that the United Russia party, headed by current President Vladimir Putin, won big in every region (including foreign voting location), however the results weren’t quite the same everywhere. For example it’s reported that in Chechnya 99+% voted for United Russia, while in St. Petersburg, Putin’s home city, “only” 50+%. Other parties’ support wasn’t even all around either. But Sochi residents as a whole, it seems, represent average Russia’s opinions — take a look at the results*: Read the rest of this entry »

Dmitry Kugarov published a few photos of future Federation Island — artificial island in the Black Sea:

Here’s how to write «Sochi» in various languages!

Сочи

Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian

Сочі

Ukrainian

Sochi

English, Spanish, Italian

Sóchi

Portuguese

Sotchi

French

Sotschi

German

Sotsji

Dutch, Norsk (Bokmål), Afrikaans

Sotji

Swedish, Danish

Soči

Slovak, Czech, Latvian

Sočis

Lithuanian

Sotši

Finnish (Suomi), Estonian

Soci

Romanian

Soçi

Turkish

Soczi

Polish

Szocsi

Hungarian

Σότσι

Greek

სოჭი

Georgian

索契

Chinese

ソチ

Japanese

소치

Korean

*Data taken from Wikipedia.

This is the list of Sochi.* domains that are still available for registration.

I made this list back when news were hit by someone trying to sell sochi.info for 3,000,000€ - see my July post on Sochi domains (btw, the new price is $630,000 :)). I didn’t publish this post back then ’cause while I was making I thought it’d be a good idea to register a couple for myself first - I did so, I registered two… and ran out of money - one probably will become available next year :) . Anyways, today Russian media was hit by news that olimpic-sochi.ru was sold for 1.8 million dollars, and sochi.pro for $300,000 - both “news”, in my opinion, are total bull… I don’t know how this even makes it to the news sites.

So, below is the list I compiled - it’s current as of October 29, 2007. Some domains are no longer available sine I made the original list, those are marked by an asterix(*). But there still are a few interesting ones available. I can see people want to use .bi, .bj (adult), .cd (music), .pr (public relations).

This is NOT a complete ccTLD list, as many countries require local residency or business registration in the country to register a domain in their zone. However, for some of those you may be able to find agencies that will register it for you through their partners in those countries (for higher price, of course). The list below includes a few of those, but most domains on the list can be registered by any individual or company. Also, a couple of ccTLDs I threw out as I couldn’t find registrars for them, and there could be some that I don’t know about (the original list was taken from Wikipedia).

So, here is the list of “sochi” domains as of October 27, 2007: Read the rest of this entry »

Sochi joins The Freeride World Tour! So, the five events are:

• Nissan Mammoth Challenge (USA), 22 to 26 January
• Nissan Caucasus Classic in Sochi (RUS), 31 January to 5 February
• Swatch O’Neill Big Mountain Pro, a mobile event in the Alps from 24 February to 2 March
• Nissan Freeride de Tignes (FRA), 9 to 12 March
• Nissan O’Neill Xtreme in Verbier from 14 to 23 March 

After the final event, the four Freeride World Champions (ski/snowboard/men/women) will be crowned. The Tour is endowed with a purse of $300,000, the highest sum ever to be paid in ski or snowboard freeride contests.

Read full article with information about the tour on xtremeverbier.com

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! : )