The last weekend

Due back in UK Friday 3rd February, but travelling back via Moscow on Wednesday & thursday as we have to report to HQ on our activities for the previous month.
So the task this weekend is to complete our monthly report ready for translation Monday. Get a bit done on Saturday, but it's over to the 'clubhouse' for a couple of hours billiards to pass the time, then cook tea, have a beer and watch a film.


Russian TV was supposed to be showing Man Utd v Liverpool in the FA cup but there was boxing on instead so that was a bit disappointing.
Sunday we finished off the report and decided to have an early dinner, so Al B goes down to the kitchen to start and meets 3 Russians in the kitchen who are having a liquid lunch. Friendly guys one of whom speaks a bit of English and before you know it he's had a few vodkas. Al G turns up, introductions all round and he's catching up via the Russian hospitality. Before we know it, there's an international billiard tournament arranged and it's over to the 'clubhouse' after dinner. Another bottle of vodka appears, top thrown away as it's not needed!!! Our hosts show us the proper rules of Russian billiards and it's a game of in offs and straight downs., so now we know the proper rules. Host says we now drink more vodka & beer downstairs, have some raw fish and then into the sauna where we can be naked together and beat each other with birch twigs. At this point we decided an exit strategy was in order as an all night session beckoned, so we had a few more drinks and then bottled out and left them to it!!!! Lucky escape as they were still at it at 01:30. Seems the 'clubhouse' is hired out for private functions and they get to use the billiards & sauna etc, these guys were regulars as the hotel ladies seemed to know them well. No doubt we'll meet again!

Colder

It was -31 this morning. When you go out in that temperature you have to cover up exposed areas around your face, head & neck as it gets painful after about 10 mins.


You'll note the thermometer stops at -40, local knowledge says we need one that goes to -50!!!
You get told off by the Russians if you haven't got a hat on or your big coat on when you venture outside and they know best.
We spent about 20 minutes checking out the freezing on the cooling tower today, and even the russian guys were running back to the warm office afterwards. It was the coldest I've ever been. I felt it in my hands and cheeks, although I had a balaclava on and gloves?


I think the fact that we were in a bit of a draft and there was a windchill factor accounts for it.
They send a team out to knock the ice off when it gets too much- rather them than me.
The walk to the canteen takes about 10 minutes, this is the road we go down. Nothing like a brisk walk in the fresh air to work up an appetite.


By the way, the road surface of packed snow & ice is typical of all the roads around here. Our driver has complete faith in his studded snow tyres and we are learning to have faith in them as well! I'm amazed at the amount of traction they have.

Turn me over.....

........ I'm done.
Hotel ladies noticed us with a bit of a chesty cough so virtually threw us in the sauna.


This is one we didn't know existed and is on the floor below. Half an hour was enough and another highlight was the space age shower with it. One of those with floor to ceiling nozzles, neon lights, LCD control pad etc. Full of surprises this place.


The door at the end opens onto a vertical drop of around 3m. We reckon its onto a swimming or plunge pool and they haven't got round to building the platform or steps into it. You'll be glad to hear it was locked - like I said, full of surprises!!!

Taste the coal

Bit of a random visit to the coal plant of the main site - "do you want to taste the coal?" they said. Anyway, trip to the stock pile which is in a long strip virtually the length of the site. Overhead grabs, mobile plant, dozers, various other augers and drills which we think break the frozen coal out of the trucks which come 1000km and two days by train from further east Siberia.


That's about 3 feet of snow covering the stockpile.





Beautiful clear sky, not a breath of wind, but around -22.

Tea time

Tonight the hotel ladies decided that our cheese & onion omelettes will not be enough to keep us fighting fit and offered us to help ourselves to what was on the table. The large jar has a lard type substance that was scooped out with the tea cup thus allowing you to dip the raw onion & shallots and garlic cloves into. The other option if fish is your fancy was the bowl of anchovies. Making sure of our five a day is the shredded pickled carrot with some black slimy stuff in it - I think it was sliced mushroom - at least that's what I've convinced myself what it was.
We picked up a pack of cheese yesterday - we reckon it's a safe bet to be Edam.


Ambient temperature update - we cracked -30 deg c first thing this morning and didn't get above -22 all day.

Home from home...

Well sort of! A bit about where we are staying.


It's called the hotel Usbada, which translates as Manor House.


This is the view from the hotel driveway back towards the village. Yayva is basically a couple of dozen of these apartment blocks arranged in a grid pattern of streets. Shops etc occupy the groundfloor on half a dozen blocks and there is a district heating scheme with a network of 18" pipes above ground distributing hot water all over town.
The hotel only has 8 rooms, we are in rooms 4 & 5 which take up all the second floor. The rooms are actually a suite with sitting room ( fridge, microwave, kettle , tv settee, table & chairs), bedroom and en-suite.





Very clean and comfortable but no restaurant facilities or bar etc!! Heating is on all the time, controlled by us opening windows if it gets too hot - which it does, even though -15 or less outside. It's self catering and they have given us the use of their kitchen downstairs - Al B is chief cook, Al G head bottle washer. With self catering, we are regulars at the little supermarket in the village and doing wonders for their turnover.
Out the back their is a log built building which appears to be mainly used for private functions. It has the billiard table ( kept us occupied for 4 hours last Saturday), a banya- a Russian sauna & plunge pool, and a kitchen/dining room. We can't quite work out the etiquette for the banya so haven't tried that yet - need the lowdown from the locals to not commit the equivalent of peeing in the pool or getting chased down the road for going in on ladies night!! The bear lives behind the log cabin. Amazingly there is also an outdoor barbecue - we saw it being used on the first weekend. BBQ in 3 foot of snow and -15, we'll give it a go when we get back to UK in February - not sure it will catch on.


Found this in the kitchen the other night- answers on the back of a 500 ruble note as to what its for - we have no idea and are really baffled as to what it translates as!!!!!!
The other thing about the digs is no wifi, broadband or any of that western decadence. Limited Internet via dongle or mobile phone tethering. Expensive, slow and intermittent. This is Al B in optimum position for best signal.


The Turkish warranty engineer sorted us out with a fast wifi connection at the site - great guy. To get it to work Al B managed to get into the modem and ended up changing the password, hence weve had a procession of guys trooping in to see us having got wind we have an unrestricted wifi connection and asking for set up details!! Got to be careful with that one.

Its not more grey hair..............

........on my 'tache, its icing up!! Personal record low for us at -28degC this morning, Russians say thats normal, last year was -46 so man up!!

Just given our regular update to the Chief Engineer this afternoon about what we've been up to and just about to have conference call with our boss Steve in the UK to touch base with him.

Little bit more involvement with stuff, but as ever translator availability holding us back slightly. Translator is just as frustrated as we are and its one of the issues we've raised.

Life in the freezer....

Just got back from lunch in the canteen, and it's very cold today, thermometer outside office door says -23.


Certainly felt it around the legs as I've come without my lagged trousers today - don't intend going outside again if I can help it.
Bit more involvement today with what the Russian team are up to, but interpreter not feeling well and is keeping a low profile. Pretty much hamstrings us somewhat. Alexander, the deputy chief can speak a little English but mostly conversational and will help out where he can, but he is a very busy guy and is always in some meeting or other.
We do what we can!!!

Location:Russia

He's a domestic god

We've nearly got the self catering under control - various mixtures of pasta, rice, fried chicken, eggs, omelettes, cheese, odd bit of veg etc - even managed to find some baked beans to have on toast for that special treat - 'skinheads on a raft'! Earlier on, the site canteen would open early for us and the ladies provided a hot drink & toast but we've managed to get our act together and get our own sorted before we leave the hotel. Cereal, porridge, fruit juice, fresh fruit, bread & jam being the choice. Lunch is in the canteen, and we generally go for the chicken if its on, everything's always with mash and sometines a small side salad. We've both tried the stews and other cuts, but we haven't a clue what it is, the dinner ladies say its 'meat'. Still can't work out sometimes if its beef, pork, horse or whatever - hence the preference for chicken!!!
Favourite though is the borsch - thick red onion soup with other stuff floating in it, or a thick noodle & potato soup with a couple of chunks of bread. So we're getting our protein and most of our five a day.

Work wise, we are gradually getting a little bit more from our Russian hosts to keep us occupied. All have been very welcoming but still a bit guarded as to why we are at the site, which has no hidden agenda whatsoever. Its still early days and we're still building trust - an experience that was similar to that at Shatura & Surgut. As expected, the language barrier is the biggest issue when wishing to get some info or explain something. So far, only about 30% of the info we require (manuals, drawings) has an english version available or provided with the contract, so working out how things work is challenging - our interpreter is o.k but struggles a bit with some of the technical concepts and terms, and is not always available when we need her (she has other duties but always puts them off to help us out, so we cut her a little slack). However, one or two of the shift lads do have a very basic understanding of english and can answer one or two descriptions of things.
Control Room screens etc are all russian - we can access english text control screens, but signal identifiers, descriptions & alarms on the software screens are russian, as is the text on the 'windows' menus. Might get some screen dumps of windows menus from Killingholmes T3000 to use as a crib sheet and hope the items match up!!!
Might be working out how to use the Banya out the back this weekend - it can only end in tears!!!

Cash, cash and more cash.

The hotel wants the bill to date sorted, so thats not a problem ......do you take visa? If looks could kill, we would be goners as the receptionist blankly stares at us muttering darkly 'cash'.
To be honest we were not aware at that point that we were going to settle the bill, but a quick check with HQ confirms its down to us. Next challenge, where do we get the cash, where is the bank if there is one, where is the ATM and will our cash withdrawal facility have a limit? What kind of hoops will we have to jump through to pull cash in a bank - passports, home address, mothers maiden name, last school etc etc (that was what they wanted just to buy a internet dongle!!)
Panic over it turns out there is a ATM machine on the power station site - located in the security building.
Alan's first to let the machine swallow his card. Button appears that says 'english' - thats handy so we press that expecting the remaining instructions in english, but this is Russia, so it continues in Russian!!!. The translator was with us still, so she puts us right with what to press. Now, we need 15000 rubles, but the machine flashes red and spits card out. Try 10000, same problem. Try 8000, still refusing to pay. Is the machine out of money we ask? One of the guards says try asking for 5000 three times, that should work. We try and it does. Work that one out!!!!. We'll be ringing B'card just to tell them that our cards will be getting some heavy use in cash machines over the next couple of weeks with multiple transactions in one day and for pitys sake don't block the cards or we're doomed.

A quiet Sunday......

..... Just like most of the other days really so nothing new there then.
Took a walk around Yayva as a bit of a Sunday constitutional stroll after lunch. It's not all apartment blocks...


Nearly Every property though had a dog chained up in the garden. And as soon as one barks they all do. Only -7 today so relatively mild.


Found the railway station - you have to cross a set of tracks to get to the building in the picture as demonstrated by a train trundling through just after pic taken.


This is a cafe in the town - we only know as it's the one we went for breakfast in on the day of arrival. All very anonymous and no real indication as to what's behind the door as you can see.





Quickest way to get around is to ice skate down the street.
So had a couple of hours walk as we also went to look at the river which is just ourside town. Bit disappointed to see that it wasnt frozen over and was actually in flow and steaming. Probably as a result of the coal fired power station cooling water discharge as it uses the river for direct cooling I.e no cooling towers, although the new ccgt station has a tower system. A few fishermen about on the bank but couldn't see what they were catching.
Were slowly sorting our grub out from the supermarket, not perfect but managing. Our biggest issue is communication with home, no Internet at the hotel or work(yet) so no skype etc, emails, unless we use our Russian dongle which is so slow as to be virtually like dial up, or use our Uk iPhones on edge( 3 g intermittent) at £6/ mb and £1.50/min calls!!!!!! Al G's Company phone doesn't work Over here (long story and wasn't unexpected!!!) so it's got a Russian sim in it at the moment so it's not totally useless although can't use it as a modem on the laptop as we can't yet download the appropriate software - no robust enough Internet connection. It's called catch 22!!!!

Its The Weekend

got up today and went out and about after sun rose at 10am!!. taxi into Berezniki which is about 40km away and 45 minutes over very bumpy and icy roads.

Berezniki has a small town centre with the surrounding usual Soviet sprawling apartment blocks. The intention of the trip was to sus out what the place was like with a view to a posssible relocation. I think the journey times & risks rule it out really, but the only hotel we saw looked exactly what you imagine a soviet era hotel to look like - there may be others in the town but we would need a guide to find them. so as not to disappoint ourselves any further i think we're staying in Yayva, our quiet little backwater in the forest!

Picture of little Al in front of ice sculptures in Soviet square with other ice playground slides with loads of kids on them.

It may be getting colder

Today we've spent a bit longer outside than we have so far. One of these was the 15 minute or so walk across site from the ccgt to the coal site canteen. It's only -16 today but my 'tache and beard froze in the time it took to walk to the canteen, and makes us appreciate that we are not expected to walk the 2 miles from the hotel to the edge of town where the plant is, although many of the Russians do!! Our translator said it was - 40 this time last year, and it's expected to get colder again later on. Don't bear thinking about.
Getting onto site is another experience - armed guards in big lace up boots & furry hats, and walk through metal detectors like at an airport, plus the thing with the handheld where you ' spread'em' if it beeps.They didn't look pleased on day two when we turned up and they hadn't got our passes ready and got a mouthful from our driver who ended up being late for his canteen breakfast. How to make friends and influence people and I'll never think bad about our security staff ever again.
We eventually get to our desks and proceed to graft as you can see.

Meet the neighbours...

We are staying in a hotel in Yayva called Usbada, which means Manor Hotel. Each of us has a sort of suite of 3 rooms - bedroom, ensuite and a lounge/diner (settee/chairs, tv, dining table, fridge, kettle, microwave)


The hotel doesn't do meals, so it's stocking up at the supermarket for evening meals and self catering as the hotel have kitchen facilities downstairs which we can use. There are one or two cafes in the village but the translator doesn't recommend!!! As long as we can get a decent lunch in the works canteen (mmm...more on that later) we shouldn't starve.
As the title suggests we met our neighbour today, the other long term resident, the hotel mascot. Now, I've been places where they've had a parrot, fish tanks, a cat, a dog or maybe a few rabbits running around but this place tops them all with their BROWN BEAR.


It's in a cage behind the wooden building in the other picture above, but something tells me it's not a petting zoo. We'll find out it's name and let you know. One of the old ladies from the hotel took us over at feeding time and spoke non stop about gawd knows what and totally ignored our replies in English,so we just continued replying ' really' you don't say' ' well I never' etc etc. Bit of a panic on when we thought she was bringing it out of the cage but she was closing & opening partitions to put the food in.
A challenge to keep ourselves occupied of an evening, but after finishing our daily logs, Al B has dozens of feature films on his laptop, plus a hdmi cable to connect to tv, so it's film night every night!!! Won't take us long to get fed up with that I'm thinking.

A long day 10 Jan

Finally get into Perm at 05:00 local time - 23:00 uk so that's 15.5 hours or so all in - 4 hours in airports, 2 hours in car getting to Birmingham, 7 hours in the air over 3 flights and 2 1/4 hours drive Perm to Yayva. We had arranged for a driver to meet us at Perm, expecting him to be in arrivals with a sign, but can't find him! Rang his mobile, but guess what, doesn't speak any english. Anyhow it turns out we were inside the terminal waiting for him and he was outside waiting for us!! We eventually hook up an hour later and were on our way. It's -14, pitch black and ice & snow on the road. We soon see a sign for Berezniki 190km and Yayva about 30 km further on. You do the maths for the average speed we're not letting on about the max we saw but We were relieved to see studded snow tyres on the car and eventually the hotel. To be fair, the guy was very quick but competent and guess what? He's our driver for the duration!
We book in and get some sleep after arranging with the site to meet up with our translator and get to the plant for 14:00.
The translator is a very nice ex school teacher of English and is quite excited about meeting two real english speakers!!! She speaks excellent English but has never conversed with a native English speaker - only germans, Turkish,etc plus the written word for translating documents - this is a common occurrence with the two other English speaking Russians on the site of 550 or so. We'll leave an impression with some Notts/Lincs slang by the time we're finished.

Waiting in Frankfurt

One hour delay from birmingham so we were beginning to wonder if we would make connection in Frankfurt for Perm if it was much longer.






As it happens no problem and we get to sample the business lounge for 90 mins or so. Al B kindly gets Al G some complimentary beauty products that he reckons is much needed. Now, do you swallow, chew or spread it on?







We really are being a bit spoiled. Reality will hit I guess when we get to Yayva.
Arthur in Surgut has been in contact wishing us luck - only trouble is that he isn't back in Russia yet due to visa delays. Be good to see him in Moscow at end of month on the way back to Uk

We're on our way

In Birmingham waiting for 1230 flight to Frankfurt. We then get 1750 to Perm. Lufthansa all the way and sampling the delights of the executive lounge as we've got business class tickets





Complentary snacks, coffe, tea etc, and a help yourself bar!!! It's the way to travel. It just may be the last chance for some decent grub for a while.