Interesting stats for who's been following us this month - we're quite popular in the US it seems

Planes, trains & automobiles - home again.

Leaving the snow behind and heading back to sunshine in the UK apparently.

Our trek home starts with leaving Yaiva at 08:30 for the 3 1/2 hour drive to Perm, to get the flight to Moscow. The flight is just over 2 hours long, but due to the 2 hour time zone difference we get there 15mins after we take off!!

This is Bolshoye Savino airport in Perm on the day we left. Landing again at Domodedeovo, Moscow, but this time the traffic is lighter for the car journey to the hotel and it only takes 1hr 10 mins this time. So today we've had 7 hours travelling with a couple of hours waiting around and tonight someone else is doing the cooking for dinner. We meet up with Arthur from Surgut at the hotel.

The next day we have a meeting at HQ, but Friday we're on the move again with a taxi & train journey from the city centre to the airport. Its a 1/2 hour taxi from the hotel to Paveletsky Station, where its then aboout 45minutes on the Aeroexpress to Domodedovo.

As you can see, wet, grey, and horrible in Moscow at the train station, but Arthur does battle with the ticket machines (the manned ticket booths are all closed) we get our tickets and the train is waiting, and I'm glad to be on it as we are a little tight for time.

Our flight leaves at 14:00 for Dusseldorf, but Arthur has a longer wait as he's getting a flight to Heathrow. Moscow to Dusseldorf is 3 1/2 hours, then we have another clock change - two hours back- so we get there 15:30 local timeand then a 3 hour wait for the next plane!!! This is the 18:40 to Birmingham which takes 1 hour 20mins and gets into Brum at 19:00 local time so we have another hour to wind back on the clock!!! After sorting a hire car out, its an easy 1 1/2 hours up the M42 and A46 to Lincoln and I'm in the house for 21:00. Overall about 8 hours travelling and 8 hours hanging around various airport business lounges, and once again thanks to the ladies at Westwood who book the plane tickets and sort out the cars at the Russian end.

Back to Russia 28/29th April.

The end is nigh!!

This visit nearly at an end, we leave site tomorrow and head to Moscow for a meeting before catching flight home on Friday. German airports are having a bit of trouble at the moment due to ground staff strikes, but hopefully all over by Friday.

We've heard that UK is unseasonably warm at the moment so that'll be a novelty. The last two mornings we've seen -21 and -16 first thing, but warming up to -4 and zero by the afternoon and some of the snow is melting away - mainly from the mainroad and leaving them virtually flooded. After saying that its been snowing all evening!

Our transport for the journey to the airport in Perm is going to be a Russian built Volga car - we've been in it before and its a few years old. Favoured vehicle as a police interceptor and as a status symbol with the 'nomenklatura' , with a special version available for the KGB in Soviet times.

Went over to Berezniki for the evening - a few beers and a couple of games of russian billiards. Passed a scottish theme bar on the way in - looked like a tartan and baronial theme going on so that'll be worth a look and beats the tired old irish bar angle, so might try that out sometime when we return.

Weekend again

And the last one for this trip. Both of us ready for a break as it seems to have been longer than the 31/2 weeks we've had so far. Be nice to see abit of greenery - last time we came back at begining of February, it snowed in UK the day we landed so we had snow for a further couple of days!! There's not much chance of that happening again in early April you would hope.

A trip to the local shops for weekend essentials - Saturday night and it's a chinese for us, chicken in black bean sauce courtesy of the stuff we brought with us, and a beer or two.

Tomorrow its the F1 grand prix on TV, so thats an hour or two taken care of, then probably a stretch of the legs and some fresh air. If the banya is not in use, then a game or two of billiards might be on the cards.

Snow is still thick on the ground and some falling every day, but the sun is gradually beginning to start the melt and the main road through Yaiva is clear of ice but now full of deep muddy puddles.

All the other roads are as before, but a little more icy on top as it thaws a bit then refreezes. Makes the footpaths a bit dicy as well.

Early morning call

This came clanking and grinding up the drive this morning just as we were getting up. Wondered what the hell it was until I opened the curtains.
Driver had cleared the drive and then politely left it running under my window whilst he wandered off for 15 minutes to find some more fuel. Ah well, time to get up anyway.

Not what you want to see in the rearview mirror..

..or in front of you either. Russian cops manning a speed trap near Berezniki. Apparently anything up to 60km/h above the limit attracts a fine of up to 1500 roubles on a sliding scale, after which it's disqualification and a bigger fine!

Equating to english roads, doing 80mph on a 60 limit road gets you a £32 fine, which would get you around £500 fine and 6 points in UK.

Not condoning speeding or moaning about penalties, but I think I'd rather get done by an anoymous speed camera in UK than getting a stern talking to by a Russian speed cop.

By the way, we didn't get done, our driver had pulled over to ask for directions - the cops didn't know where the place was either!

A grand day out

Victor, one of our Russian colleagues, took us out for the day to visit a town called Solikamsk famous for its cluster of 16th century churches which survived the Soviet era intact. Its about 60km north of Yaiva and is the third largest town in the Perm reigion.The churches/cathedrals are not used for worship but house museums - the Troizk cathedral and the Bogoyavlenskaya church where the most interesting ones we visited. Very different to English churches but not much bigger than parish churches really, but quite spectacular with their numerous onion domes etc. Don't forget that I come from Lincoln, so I know what a cathedral looks like!!

This is the Troizk cathedral, but houses a museum and doesn't look anything like a church inside. all the internals were destroyed destroyed during the Soviet era. One of them was turned into a brewery of all things.

The next church - Bogoyavlenskaya Church (church of the epiphany) had a museum of russian religious icons which were quite a thing to see, plus the church internals had retained wall & ceiling murals left in place as a museum in Soviet times. Very interesting in a cultural way and we surprised ourselves in taking such an interest in biblical paintings on bits of wood!

On the way back from the last church, we passed an old lady digging a trench out of the snow. She looked 70+ and it looked like it was hard physical labour clearing a 3' wide by 3' deep passage through the snow. Felts boots on and muttering away she was doing a sterling job. Couldn't quite work out why though?

The other thing that Solikamsk is famous for is the salt mines - Sol is russian for salt, and its on the river Kama. We passed the salt mines on the way into the city and they are massive in scale. All around this area - Solikamsk, Berezniki etc there is a hell of alot of heavy industry. The salt mine alone in Solikamsk employs 11,000 people, then there is the magnesium works with another 3500,so plenty going on.

Popped into Berezniki on the way back for some lunch, and then a look at the frozen river Kama. Fisherman trying hard through holes in the ice, and judging by yesterdays catch, very successful they are too.

Another week gone and another two to go

Reasonably busy week at work after all the excitement of the outage shut down. Everything settling down again and back to day to day life. A few emerging issues which we have had an input - by that I mean solutions to and not creating issues!!!!
We have had a birthday celebration this week, Al B ticked off another year on the planet and we celebrated by getting a bigger bottle of vodka than usual to toast his health and as a special treat I offered to let him stay up late to watch ice hockey on my 42" tv. He even managed to have half a dozen birthday cards to open - all I can say that Mrs Al B must be the organised one to sort that out and sneak them in the suitcase two weeks or so ago.

Its a Friday so that usually means fish on the menu and we found this waiting in the kitchen



Unfortunately, neither of us knows how to gut them, so we declined to help ourselves and had our fish courtesy of Tescos



We're having a trip out tomorrow to a town called Solikamsk courtesy of one of our Russian colleagues - old churches and a salt mine apparently. Should be interesting

Location:Russia

Back on line

A few Internet connection problems but we're back and posting!!

Location:Russia

A day or two off

It's International Womens Day today apparently and so it's a national holiday in Russia. They also have Friday off as a bridging day to make it a decent 3 day break if you include Saturday as most return to work on Sunday to compensate for having Friday off.
Are you with me so far??
We've had a lie in, sorted out the laundry, done a bit to do with work on the laptops and watched a film. It's an exciting life we have and no mistake.
We weren't aware of the impending holiday weekend until the day before, so if we had known would probably have made arrangements for a change of scenery for a few days - a weekend in Perm perhaps!!
It's a thought for the future though.

What's on TV?

As you know - well you probably don't! - but Russian TV is not our first choice of an evenings entertainment.
So after a delightful evening meal together, theres nothing better than the two Als enjoy more than a night at the movies.
Don't worry, no male bonding going on here I can assure you, but Al B has 200 or so movies on his laptop and we manage to get two a night in after catching up on reports, preparing a delightful supper, phoning home, wash & brush up etc. At the moment we are working through the TV series "The Pacific" and it's tempting to watch it all start to finish in one go. Next on the list is "Boardwalk Empire" season 1 which none of has seen.
All on Al Gs 46" TV.
It seems that when we get back to UK we will do nothing but try and catch up with season 2!!
Don't think that will be appreciated.!!

It's not what you do....

.....it's the way that you do it.
In this case it's what we brought with us this time. To make our meals a bit tastier Al B was 8 kg overweight on his baggage allowance - tins of beans, tesco tikka and jalfrezi curry, various other delights, and Al G tended to gravitate towards the Mexican sphere with fajita mix and sauces plus a dash back to europe for pasta sauce. It's not that it's not available in Russia, it's not available where we are!!
So we are sorted for tastier meals, but again all with a pasta, chicken, spud, egg, bread, tin veg, banana or whatever fruit looks ok, rice combo you can think of. We are pretty conservative in our tastes so recipe suggestions on the back of a 500 rouble note please. We are not averse to trying something new but we have to work out what it is in the shops!!!The remains of chicken jalfrezi and rice - as you can see enjoyed by all and weve resisted licking the plate.

"Back in the USSR......."

As the song goes we are back in Yayva again for another month. We actually came over a couple of days ago before we were scheduled to make sure we were on site for the start of a shut down and the associated work that comes with it. It's what we are really here for, to give the benefit of our experience with these activities as we have done this a few times before, and this is pretty much the first time for our Russian colleagues.


This is Al B having successfully blathered his way through Immigration Control at Perm airport
Been a full weekend, been at work for all of it since we landed last Thursday in fact.
One change is that our driver now has a new car to transport us in - out with the Toyota Camry and in with a Land Cruiser no less. However, the weekend is his days off, so we had the pleasure of the works bus at our beck & call for transport. To be fair, it was organised just for us so that's good of them as the alternative is the 2 mile or so walk in the snow.
Talking of snow, weatherwise it's a bit warmer, -15 to 0!!!. This means it's does snow and we've had about 4 inch or so fallen since Thursday.
Were back in the Usadba guesthouse, Al B is back in his old room, but Al G is now in the penthouse a floor above which has a 50" tv and a shower that works with the bonus of hot water!!!! (trust me, it's not quite as palatial as it sounds but its fine).
We have a Russian colleague from Eon staying in the guesthouse, and he is saying that the locality is renown for alot of wolves in the vicinity, the population being sustained by interbreeding with the local dogs to some extent. Bang goes our plans for treks in the woods when the weather improves, and I'll not be wearing anything with red in it that has a hood.
"Oh what big teeth you have", as someone once said.