Arrival to Rio

I've finally decided to write a little again, because we finally have two basic requirements: a permanent apartment, and our own internet connection.

So, we moved to Rio De Janeiro this August :) .

Our first impressions are mixed, as usual. Rio is a big city, with lots of people, lots of cars, lots of neighbourhoods. It’s a busy city, much bigger than Barcelona. It has lots of mountain ranges, lots of green areas, and lots of residential zones and places to walk around. It’s also a nice change from Adler, since we have more options of apartments, shops, and things to do in general. 

However, Rio also is a very dirty city, with greyish buildings, lack of efficient public transport, old constructions and styles…and there’s a lot of poverty around (no, we haven’t visited any favelas, but we have seen quite a lot of them from a distance), and it’s also less secure than Sochi or Barcelona.

People are really nice here. Most people are helpful and attentive, and they love children. Strangers usually stop in the street to say something to Elay, and everybody treats him quite nicely. Most people smile a lot when attending you. 

At the same time, traffic is terrible and aggressive. They don’t respect pedestrians like in Adler, while driving in a similar way that causes huge traffic jams. Motorbikes, meanwhile, ignore any type of rule, security or common sense and beep around as if that would be enough to get right of way.  Personalities change a lot when they are behind a vehicle…

The weather has been rather nice. You can see it is normal to have some clouds around and sometimes its rainy or stormy, but we arrived in the middle of “deep winter”, and that only meant that it was rainy and that temperatures went below 20° Celsius (even reaching 18° clearly a cold wave). When it’s sunny we easily reach 30°. That’s “Winter”. We don’t want to imagine “Summer”….At least, it seems it is not as humid as Singapore or other such regions...

The first month and a half was not the easiest period. We started in a temporary apartment, but it was booked just for a week. Then we had to move to a second temporary apartment, where we luckily stayed until we found our permanent one. The temporary apartments were…barely adequate, to say it politely, but it was enough for us, for a while. 

We had to do a lot of paperwork. Brazil loves bureaucracy, and the amount of useless papers you need to make is insane. For example, you may need to notarize your signature and notarize documents. But nobody really cares about it, they don’t check signatures and who are you that closely, they just want to have a stamp from a notary. To live here you also need 3 different documents, and to work you need a 4^th one. Most of these documents are fast enough to make, but you need to queue first, and that can take several hours. Which makes no sense, because they have timetables and numbers….

Lots of people here are really inefficient. It took us a lot of time to get the apartment, and lots of this time was wasted in administrative steps or going through agencies, which have hundreds of other clients and cannot attend your demands, while a simple direct call to the owners would be enough.

You can also see that there is lots of corruption, since lots of apartment owners want to rent the place without declaring it, and even get angry or increase the price when mentioning that you will do everything legally. 

My office is pretty awesome, new and nice (with cafeterias and a small terrace/garden), and it’s next to the subway so we needed a place connected to the local subway. The subway in Rio is quite limited, it has only 2 lines so far, and they share a big amount of stops. Most of it communicates the “Zona Sul” with the actual centre of the city, so we have been searching apartments in the Zona Sul, Rio’s posh area for tourist and expats. 

Initially we wanted to live in Ipanema, which is extremely nice, but it is also more touristic, less safe and further from work. It is also very expensive, so in the end we found a nice place in Botafogo, further from the beach but still 10-15 minutes away from Copacabana or Ipanema in subway. It is a very residential are, with plenty of shops and a couple of shopping malls around. 

The ideal area, where everybody wants to live now, is called Barra. It’s extremely residential, very nice and clean, with lots of commerce, clean beaches, new buildings, and cheap rents. It’s also 2 hours away from the centre by car thanks to traffic (unless you wake up at 05:30 and go to the centre at that time), and it has no subway, so we discarded that option quite fast. Botafogo is older and not as nice, but our building is quite new. 

In here it is very normal to have common areas and services in the building. You usually need to pay some extra for them, but even in buildings that have nothing you may pay 100 euros or so for them, so it was worth investigating, to find a building with nice services. The one we have chosen has, among other things, 24-hours security, a park for kids, a swimming pool and a gym, so we’re quite happy it^^. We haven’t used the pool yet (we have been less than 2 weeks in the building, and last 2 weekends were annoyingly cold or we had other things to do), but it’s nice to know we can go there if temperatures get crazy.

The apartment itself is quite new, and while not very big, is more than enough for us, while having room for visits too. (So, everybody’s invited^^). 

We haven't done much toursim yet, because with Elay it's not as easy. There are very green and tall mountains (like the Pao de Açúcar or the Corcovado) that make the landscape look awesome, and the combination of these weird mountains and the beaches is beautiful. However, we do have walked around, and gone to plenty of restaurants. Local food is pretty awesome, and the fruits and juices are simply incredible....

After the first days of paranoia, the city does not seem as dangerous as you would think. There is plenty of people in the street most of the time, and the Zona Sul and the workplace are quite busy all the time. I don't doubt that walking in areas with less people is not healthy for you or your wallet, but things are not as bad as one would imagine, and we're told the city has imporved a lot in the past few years.

All in all, it's quite an interesting place :). We'll see how it goes...

Russia And The Occidental Media

Olympics went very well, and now we're taking care of Paralympics. We've had some issues but during work hours we had not much to do, apart from checking that everything worked (by watching TV and comparing what we see with what we have in our systems).

Summing it up, we've been watching Olympics all the time at the office, and that's what we're supposed to do. 

While Olympics happened, and with the current problems in Europe, we've noticed that the media is being quite harsh about several things that are happening around here in Russia. There's a number of things that I didn't want to comment right away, but seeing that most media has already reported it, I see no problem in commenting them. At the same time, there are things that were not true, and that is turning out to be surprisingly annoying as well. Russia and Russian government does bad things, but when they get criticized for things that are not true I feel like defending them too. 

So here's some facts that were said about Sochi and Russia, and our own experiences about if they're true or not, plus other stuff about Russia :

-Installations were not ready. 

I believe this to be true for the hotels. I believe lots of hotels in the area were done by private companies and owners. We have noticed that in this area, all these people are incredibly greedy and selfish. Our landlords are nice, but just before them the first apartment that we checked was owned by the boss of a construction company. His stupidity and greediness level was incredible, and costed him around 500.000 RUB, we calculated, lost by trying to gain an extra 50.000 RUB.  

Apart from that, construction companies in Russia have terrible, terrible planning. Lots of people have renovated or changed things around their houses and apartments during 2013, including restaurants and hotels. We have noticed that most deadlines are not just passed, they're basically abused, dismembered and their corpses are set on fire. One restaurant that we liked to go closed "for a week" in 2013 for improvements. 2-3 months later, it was opened again. Some friends searching for apartments were shown empty shells, and promised that in a week they would be ready for living. 2 months later they could still hear the construction tasks. One shop in a shopping mall was promised to be inaugurated on November 15th. On November 15th,  they change the text so it would say January 15th. One of our own offices was promised to be available on May 2012. People were able to move there on December 2012. The apartment in top of our current home started renovating in April 2013, and until December 2013 we could hear daily lots of drilling (and there's just so may holes you can make before you end up without walls). And it goes on and on...

These delays are caused because the owners and constructions managers do not care, and the workers are barely illiterate, really dumb, brutally exploited and not properly supervised. This works fine for the managers. If you build a perfect road, you will have to work hard on it for one year and then forget about it for the next 10. If you build a defective road, you will have work every time you need to fix it, every 2-3 months. Of course, in a fair competitive market that would mean not getting hired again. However, in Russia (like in Spain) this is not the case, friends of politicians get the contracts, and only in extreme cases of pure incompetence a company will not be asked to do something again.

Finally, constructions in here are really really bad at the fine details. Materials and solutions used are of a very bad quality, and the end result sometimes breaks before it was even used. For example, in our home we have lots of little lamps. Instead of using special light bulbs with low power consumption, these lamps use very hot and small light bulbs. The end result is that these bulbs overheat and break the lamps.

This adds up to a situation where the impression is a really bad one, specially in private-owned residences and hotels.

However, things like the villages for the athletes, the offices for the reporters and the venues themselves were ready for the athletes since long ago. It is true that some venues were not ready for anything else apart from the athletes (as in no food, no toilets, no transportation, no equipment) until 1 or 2 days before the Olympics, but the competitions would have been possible, and in the end things worked out somehow in there as well.

-Sochi is next to a conflictive area.

This one was one of the things the media loved to scare people about: "Sochi is near the Caucasus, a very politically unstable area, with Islamist groups and small republics that are conflictive. There was a terrorist attack in a city nearby. It's also next to the territory Russia stole from Georgia that became independent".

It is true that Sochi is in a region that includes these parts. However, people forget that Russia is mind-blowingly supidly big. As in the biggest country in the world, with no competition whatsoever.

The area that is considered conflictive and that includes a city that received an attack? It's as big as most European countries. It's like fearing for the safety of Tolouse after Madrid received an attack. It's like considering that having Olympics in Seville is not safe because it's close to Euskadi, where terrorist operated until recently. The distances we're talking about are similar to these.

That doesn't mean nothing can happen in here...but things need to be taken with perspective. And the important perspective here is that Russia is huge, and its "regions" are easily comparable with most European countries.

As per the the areas stolen from Georgia, as usual the situation is more complex than that. Abkhazia was a region inside Georgia with its own culture and traditions, and tension between ethnic groups caused that the region rebelled and became independent. In the process, the most radical Abkhazians took control and performed very stupid acts (like expelling anybody who wasn't Abkhazian, or even people who were Abkhazians but had more moderate views). Sure, Russia supported Abkhazia in this conflict, but it's not as if the tension was created by Russia, or as if Georgia did not do stupid things as well, that increased the problems in the region and caused a breaking point and a revolt. And whatever the rest of the countries say, Abkhazia currently is independent, and the people who live there want to keep it this way.

-Sochi has subtropical climate and it's stupid to do winter sports in there.

I've heard this one several times now. When people hear"subtropical", they imagine high temperatures, sun, and such things, and think that's it's a really bad idea to do winter sports in there, and that all the snow was brought from somewhere else.

I don't know the exact details of why this climate is categorized "subtropical", but I can tell one thing: It's slightly colder than in Barcelona, and slightly less humid. With this in mind, it's clear that the place is warm, but not warm in the tropical way, with 27 degrees all year long and no seasons. In winter, we have reached temperatures close to 1 or 2 degrees in the worst days, while keeping between 5 and 10 degrees all the other days. That's in the coast, of course, next to the sea. In the mountains it's much easier to reach temperatures below zero.

The climate is similar to Vancouver I believe, rainy in winter but not very cold.

Therefore, it's not so weird to have winter sports here. Actually, the place have several ski stations, that were open long before the Olympics were set here, and some of them did not even participate in any events and were open for normal use.

In the coast it doesn't snow and in summer it's very warm, but the mountains are close and very high, and therefore we've had snow in there several days.

It is true that the conditions are not optimal. It gets too warm for snow fast, and lots of times there are big areas in the stations that are not usable for skiing. The optimal months are probably just January and February. However, you do get snow in the area, and therefore it's not some crazy idea instigated by Putin, it's similar to most other winter Olympics, where the city was in one place and the mountain area with the snow competitions was some kilometers away.

-Russia has lots of corruption, and this has influenced the Games.

This is sadly true. Russian culture is very similar to Spanish culture in several aspects, and one of them is this (although in Spain not everybody participates in it). Lots of public sector workers participate in this, and it is normal to give extra money to people so they pay you better attention and finish some tasks faster. In here it's very common that police officers stop people to get bribes, which is not helped by a strict and stupid legislation that assures that if you're stopped they will find something to accuse you of not complying with it.

You can see it daily, by the prices of the apartments, by the services in the hospitals, by the state of the roads and the transport. Russia has a big corruption problem coupled with restrictive laws, that makes it very hard to do anything unless you start bribing people. When you actually feel its effects in your daily life, you know it's too big and deep. And it's evident the Games have been organised between some old friends that have split all the money used for them.

-Russia is very sexist and intolerant.

This is also sadly true. It is evident with the latest laws regarding homosexuality and how gays are treated, but it also affects the relationships between men and women, and what is acceptable or not.

In Russia men are still "real men", who have the technical jobs and bring money home, while the women need to stay at home taking care of the house, food and kids. Of course not everybody is like that anymore, but the general culture is still very similar to this idea. Women are nice decorations that later on will manage a household. To attract a powerful man, women will keep their looks as good as they can, and once they are married they will keep the looks to fend off competition. Men consider women weaker, in need of care, and they will recommend women to not bother with difficult tasks (like technical studies).  Advertisements asking for only one sex are common (as in, "a company is searching for a man that has IT experience"). One of the most popular Russian songs form last year basically was saying "you're such a cool man that I want to have your son, and also a daughter".

I was explained by a Russian friend that the saddest part is that this is considered to be some cultural value that needs to be preserved. In order to do that, for example, Russia produces thousands of series and movies that overflow the Russian media to avoid poeple getting used to "occidental" ideas. Of course, this means that most of those thousands of Russian productions have abysmal quality since they are rushed and mass-produced, but the point is to sink foreign movies in a sea of Russian traditional values.

I believe that's it for the moment, if I get some more ideas to comment about Russia I'll make another post at some later date.

Oh, just a small comment about Ukraine: Occidental media is bashing Russia as the evil in the world. Russian media is reporting the incident as the saviors of the poor people who have Russian culture in Ukraine.

What I believe to be the reality is that USA and EU are really big bastards that want to control Ukraine to have a better control of the gas that goes through it. Russia is another really big bastard that wants to annex some territories and keep control of Ukraine as when it was ruled by the corrupt last president.  Both sides are bad, and both sides are perfectly capable of terrible things. USA is an expert in invading countries whenever they like and putting friendly dictators (friendly to USA, of course) in power. EU and the FMI are experts in destabilizing regions and condemning areas to levels of poverty and debt that no one can recover from. Russia is an expert in silencing protests and suppressing people and ideas or lifestyles. All of them are experts in corruption at the highest levels. Between them, there's the Ukrainians who would like to be able to travel and work in Europe without visas, and to have more freedom than what they have now.

Hard to choose a side when they're all bad....



  

Our Lasts 2 Months In Russia

We're starting the last phases of the project.

Next month we will be very busy, at least when it comes to the amount of hours we will be working. We will be doing lots of long shifts, including night work. This always destroys you, and by the end I will be completely exhausted, regardless of how good or how bad the final result is.

Depending on how this goes, I'll write a post later on about our last impressions in Russia, but I can already say we're happy to go. We have lived well here, but it's not an easy place, and we prefer to live in places where, for example, you don't usually need to worry about having electricity.

These last months have been a lot of fun with Elay. He has grown a lot (as all babies do, but once you notice the changes in past photos and behavior, it's amazing), and for a long time now he reacts to us, smiles, laughs and "talks" with us (well, he makes sounds in your direction, and he's clearly trying to tell you something).

It's really funny^^.

He has started to be more mobile, but we don't need to worry yet about him crawling. We just have noticed that sometimes we leave him on a little carpet with drawings and toys, for kids, and when we look again, he has moved 180 degrees.

He has also learned to grab things, and even to throw them away. He still hasn't enough control, but he has a clear idea. For example, when we put him in bed to sleep he starts grabbing his pacifier and raising it while staring at it. Then he tries to put it back into his mouth, but it usually ends up in his neck, or even in his nose. Of course, this prevents him from relaxing enough to fall asleep, and we need to grab his hands sometimes so he doesn't keep grabbing the pacifier...then again, when he wants, he just spits it.

He started to like toys, with clear favorites that get him all excited and nervous. There are also certain movements (like flexing his legs, or tickling him) that usually makes him laugh, and it's really nice to hear^^.

Apart from enjoying our baby, this next two months we will need to prepare to move out again.

This time we will have the help of our company, but the process is very stressful and we get tired just of thinking about it. Of course, one of the main problems is that we do not have enough space in Barcelona for all our things, and we don't know what are we going to do next so it's unclear if we should rent or use some storage service...oh well...

Right now, we will just enjoy living here together a little bit more^^

And Now We're Three

Our son Elay was born 3 weeks and a half ago.

On Monday, 16th of September, a day before we had a visit with the doctor, contractions started apparently and we went to the hospital. Contractions calmed down, but the doctors told us that everything was ready and it could start at any moment. Since even when it started it would take long (4-5 hours probably), I was sent back home, since in Russian hospitals nobody apart from the mother can enter in the normal rooms, and you can only be during the birth by special permission.

While at home, my wife called me and told me that after analysis, doctors decided that a C-section was necessary and actually urgent, and they were preparing her for it. In 2 hours it should be done, and he should be born. After waiting at home for more news, I finally was told that we were parents.

However, given the fragile condition anyone is after surgery, my wife had to be one day recovering before seeing our son. I could not really visit, so I had to wait to see them both. While working and waiting, my wife finally got to be with him, and sent some pics and videos. These days were a little bit frustrating, but the pics were really nice. Both were doing very well, and recovering very fast.

On Saturday they got permission to leave, so I finally went, together with Misha (who helped us by driving us in his car), and I finally met him. It was a very weird and exciting moment, and I noticed I had a stupid smile for quite a few minutes after holding him for the first time^^. After all, before this moment, I was not fully aware that I was a father...I knew I was, but I had not seen him or held him, so the feeling was similar as if he was still inside the belly...

Since that day we've been happily living together, and adapting to this new person^^.

First thing that we've noticed is that he's very funny to look at^^. He's still very small, of course, so he makes all this faces and movements. When he's hungry, he usually sticks out his tongue, makes little sounds and eats his hand. He keeps twisting his lips in weird ways, and he's very awake when not sleeping, looking everywhere. He focuses his eyes on you, crossing them a little and making a surprised face, and he's very funny^^. We have already taken some funny pics^^. At the same time we're trying not to hunt people to show them pics, and we're managing well in that aspect.

He's quite calm, if he's not hungry or uncomfortable he doesn't cry much (he just makes this single cry for attention when he's hungry or when he just woke up and we're not there with him, most of the time). We're lucky so far, and he seems to like to sleep deeply during the night (which means 4-5 hours, which for a baby is a lot), and until there's light, he just wakes up to feed a little and then he continues to sleep. During the day he's awake quite a lot of hours, just feeding and looking all around, with very curious eyes.

We're unsure about resemblances, but then again we're really bad with faces, or we don't care that much about these things...he clearly looks like his mother in lots of things, but recently we saw a picture of me when I was a newborn too, and since then we realise he has also a strong resemblance with me. He's too little anyway, and his features have changed a lot in just a couple of weeks (and will change even more).

He makes quite a lot of funny noises, grunts, little cries and other sounds that are quite cute^^. He moves his arms and legs not very coordinated, but you can notice when he's stressing about something,  because he squirms and moves all extremities. It's quite funny to see how he doesn't control them well enough yet, and sometimes he bothers himself with his hands, or pushes away my wife's breast while being stressed and trying to grab it with his mouth^^.

For the moment I still feel quite useless. My wife breast-feeds him (of course), so at night she needs to wake up, and I'm rather useless and go back to sleep (or not even wake up). Also, I'm still not good at changing his clothes and pampers, mainly because I'm too slow. Oh well...I do hold him, and walk him around the apartment when he's awake, and I managed to put him to sleep several times when he was not hungry. I try to speak with him in Catalan, explaining thingies that we're doing, and my wife is trying to use Russian, but some times we get back to English because we're used to it...

We're still learning lots of things, checking articles and books regarding what to do, what not to do, what's normal, what can we expect, and all those things. We try not to worry too much, and I think we're so far doing good in that side (for example, we know that when he's sleeping is normal to make sounds, and we don't take him any time he makes a little cry, we wait until he's really awake). Of course, things are still complicated and we don't know a lot, but we're trying to learn.

One very funny thing that we've noticed is that he hates not having some clothes on his body, and that he doesn't like baths at all. After the first bath, next time we undressed him he started to cry a lot and to make a devastated face. It was quite funny and heart-breaking at the same time, and we tried to calm him down and tell him everything is fine, but we couldn't help to laugh at his exaggerated reaction. Since then it has been the same every time we change his clothes, clean him while naked or prepare him for a bath...but well, we hope he may calm down and also learn to enjoy baths when he's more aware of his surroundings and he's able to hold his head without problems.

At this point our lives haven't changed much yet, only thing is that we're staying more at home. Since he's so small and sleeps so much, when he's sleeping we keep watching series and playing games, with the only difference being that we check on him, and that, of course when he's awake, we try to talk with him, and give him attention.

So far we're managing quite well with him, and we're starting to have fun together^^. It's quite a weird feeling, to have this little person to take care of and educate later on...but we're enjoying it a lot^^.

While we were adapting to this new life, here in Sochi it has been raining a lot. In the usual Russian way, several old and new roads "forgot" to have any kind of good drainage, and there was severe flooding (even when the rain itself was not that intense). We happily avoided it by taking care of our little person without moving from home, but I did have to go to Sochi once, to get papers from the hospital, and it was a terrible experience that I hope not to repeat...

Anyway, we're quite happy with our new lives, and waiting to discover more and more things together^^.

The Stroller

Tomorrow we will enter the period in which, if the birth takes place, it will be considered that the pregnancy had normal duration.

Being so close to having a son (probably) is really exciting. They bay has grown a lot and for several months my wife and I can "play" with him by touching the belly in parts where his legs or hands are pressing , and noticing all the movements. It's really funny to notice how he stretches or how he reacts when we touch his feet^^.

We have finally prepared the emergency bag for the hospital, and we believe we have everything more or less ready. We have lots of clothes that everybody has been giving us, several toys and things that other expats have offered  to us, a bed and a stroller.

The stroller took a lot of time and effort. When we first checked what was there in the market, we visited some internet pages, read recommendations and such things. We created a certain picture in our mind, about what exactly did we want for a stroller.

First of all, we wanted a 2 in 1. This model has two different baskets, one were the baby lays on his back and is meant for small babies, and another one that is more like a sit, but that can be rearranged in several ways, for older babies. These two baskets needed to be of good quality and with several settings, while being able to protect the baby from the sun, the cold, or from insects. Then we wanted big wheels, since Adler has quite hard streets, and we needed something resistant and able to move with obstacles and bumps. We also wanted to be able to turn the stroller without having to lift the front wheels. We wanted a basket under the stroller with easy access, and finally we wanted it to be as light as possible (the lighter ones are around 11 Kg). We would also like nice colours in the stroller, but we were more flexible in that aspect. Finally the price should not be very expensive.

This was clearly impossible to get.

First thing we did was visiting all the shops we could find in Adler and Sochi. We actually did several trips to Sochi, to one big shopping centre, so we could see a selection of strollers. However, most shops in that centre had a very small selection. In Adler things were not much better, but there was a couple of shops that had some more strollers.

All of these strollers were not even close to our requirements. Most were transformers or 3 in 1. Some 2 in 1 had big wheels, but could not turn them at all. Even the expensive ones were bad, without turning wheels or with terrible handlebars. One of the most decent ones had a stupid bar that did not allow access to the basket, and most of them were almost 20 Kg in weight.

We have spent close to 2 months visiting these shops, from time to time, and with no luck. After a while we decided to turn to internet, to see if we could order the stroller from there.

In shops outside Russia there were awesome strollers, but also really expensive ones. However, the sending prices were huge, and would take months to reach us. If that wasn't enough, to enter the country we would need to pay taxes, and the price easily doubled.

As per the Russian on-line shops, prices were not much cheaper plus we had no trust in them. It seems in Russia it's still normal to put a website and then cheat and trick people out of their money. In normal countries these practices are mostly eliminated, because they're not productive at all, but well, it's Russia.

We've also heard that deliveries in Russia may take 2 months, and you may find your package open and missing something. Besides, since the country is so big, maybe they don't even send things to the place where you live.

We couldn't trust on-line shopping. We were already thinking we would buy a second hand transformer for a cheap price, and get a good stroller in Barcelona.

However, a couple of weeks ago, we were in one of the baby shops trying to buy other things for the baby, and we checked strollers one more time, just for fun. In the middle of the usual ones, there was one that looked new, decent, and that had all the things we wanted. After asking about it, it turned out it was really new, just arrived to the shop. They had it in a couple of colours.

We checked the stroller, and it was really good. We really liked it. We ordered one in a different colour, and picked it up the following week.

It was a great release. We were not thinking about it, but we were very tired of trying to find the ideal one, and we felt very lucky to have found this by random chance.

However, this showed us the difficulties of buying anything in here. They don't have consistent deliveries, they don't have the same products, they have very limited stock, and you cannot trust on-line shops.

All in all, we're really glad we will not be living here once the Olympics finish...

St. Petersburg, Sochi and Abkhazia

During the last month, we've been doing a lot of travelling and visiting. We've been very busy, and we're not done yet by far. First, our trip to St. Petersburg.

My wife has a cousin living in this city, so they invited us to see them and to be able to visit. We used some national vacations in May, and went there.

St. Petersburg is a big city, with wide streets, public transport, big buildings, etc. The city itself is pretty new, it was made around 300 years ago, and you can notice it. Even in the centre, streets are wide and nice, with lots of space. The city is beautiful, but the streets are like any other big city. Maybe the architecture resembles Paris, since lots of buildings were done by French architects.

The thing that really makes a difference is the palaces. In the centre, if you raise a stone you will find a palace. These palaces are all impressive, loaded with details, and really luxurious. We visited several of them (including the Ermitage, which doubles as huge art museum), and we did so in the right order: when we thought that we had seen the most crazy luxurious palace, the next one was always proving us wrong.

We were very lucky, and we had lots of sunny and warm days. We were told that was some kind of exception. With the palaces, several big and curious churches, museums, the streets of a big city,the water channels, the tours and the family visiting, we had a great time, and we did lots of things.

After St. Petersburg, we had two visits in Adler in rapid succession. First it was Fatima and Marius, two of our friends. Then it was my uncles, Jose and Silvia.

In both cases we played games, spent time together and had fun. But the other effect of their visit is that we finally spent some time visiting Adler, Sochi, and the places around them.

Adler is small, and we really could not offer much to visit apart from a small tour in the centre and around the coast. Sochi is bigger, and we manage to see some more things (not many, but some). Sochi really gives the impression of a small coastal city, not unlike the ones you can find in Catalunya's that are not extensions of resorts (those resemble Adler).

The best discovery was what's around these cities. We knew there were forests and excursions, and we knew that it was considered a nice area, but we had not checked personally.

We did several trips around, organized and otherwise, and now we know what's around. There is lots of very beautiful and dense forests, small rivers, lots of waterfalls, mountains and nature. It's really awesome.
Some of the places were clearly too touristic, charging you to enter an area of forest and with annoying shops and people. However, they were still very nice. We also discovered two things:

1-Most excursions spend a huge amount of time passing by small areas that produce wine, honey and other things, and make you try them. This becomes bothersome, specially when you spend too much time in then. However, its a price to pay to have a cheap excursion, and its true that the products are handmade and usually very good.

2- This one I suspected it, but we confirmed it. Culturally, lots of Russians seem to be afraid of silence somehow. In restaurants, they put music channels with very loud music. In touristic places, they sometimes put speakers and some background (or not so background) music. And when you're in a tour with a guide, the guide NEVER shuts up. They speak constantly, in a stream of words, repeating themselves, advertising stuff, explaining what's around at that moment...but without pauses if they can do so. It gets tiresome really really fast, and plenty of times you would prefer a shorter explanation and more quiet time to just enjoy the place...

Anyway, around Adler and Sochi there's lots of things to see, lots of nature, specially lots of small rivers that look awesome.

Finally, during this weekend that is ending, we went to Abkhazia.

For those who do not know about this place, Abkhazia is a region inside what's considered to be Georgia. However, this region is independent from Georgia, and considers itself another country. Russia recognises it, among other countries, but Georgia doesn't, and in general it's not officially another country. Georgia and Abkhazia made war against each other several times, and rather recently (it seems the main war was at the beginning of the 90s, but there was another one 5-6 years ago). Right now you can't cross the border between them.

Abkhazia, therefore, is a country with not many laws, and not much money. It survives for the moment, until next war. During USSR times, it was part of it, so it has buildings and stuff from that time.  Between the wars, the location and all that, the country is half abandoned, half being reconstructed. However, people said it was very beautiful, and worth a visit (in Adler, we live around 8 km away from the frontier with Abkhazia).

We booked a hotel in the capital, Sukhum, and we went with Jordi Gomez, Jordi Nadal and Misha (who had the car to go there).

It's one of the most beautiful places i've ever seen.

First, the country is half abandoned. There's not many people around, much less than in the Sochi area, and you notice it. Second, since it's a poor region, there's less industry, clearly, less things going on. There's construction, and lots of places are not maintained, so there's trash sometimes, or really bad and rusted structures, but the nature is extremely clean. You don't feel the dust that covers everything in Sochi.
The water in the sea shore, and in the rivers and lakes is extremely transparent. When the place is deep, the water looks blue, as in light clean blue, incredibly intense.

The mountains are very green, and there are high peaks and awesome views. The zone lives from tourism and tours, so there are zones with some people and lots of guided excursions, but still there are looks clean and impressive.

The main road is in a very good state, much better than the Russian ones. Smaller roads are much worse, half abandoned and destroyed, but you can see that there is some effort of rebuilding, at least in the main road.

The driving is crazy in here, people go very fast, they advance people with no visibility, or with cars coming from the other side. It's also normal to find cows and goats in the middle of the road, just laying there. The buildings and structures, as I mentioned, can be half new or almost abandoned, in very bad shape. There is no security whatsoever in lots of places, and clearly if you do something stupid and hurt yourself (like jumping to the sea from one dock), well, nobody is going to stop you, and it's your problem. There is lots of surreal things. You get the feeling that most things are abandoned, and people is using ruins. Nature is clearly taking back some areas, while there's some constructions going on too.

However, even some buildings look beautiful abandoned (but not all, of course). The cities are like some kind of mixture of classical structures with some soviet buildings and lots of ruins and half-build things.
The things that are new, like some lights, buildings and roads, look very new, clean, much better than anything you can find in Sochi. The dust cloud that you can notice in Adler is nowhere to be seen in here.
In the capital, the street next to the coast was full of people, occidental-looking and apparently happy. It's a poor region, but it seems they live relatively well. The only thing is a permanent war thread, that paralyses things. It seems some buildings are abandoned because they don't want to waste resources in them to be destroyed again soon (and you can see bullet -or shrapnel- holes in some of them).

Of course, not everything is perfect. I mentioned the crazy drivers, the animals in the middle of the roads, the secondary roads in extremely bad shape, the region insecurities with Georgia...but there's also the lack of personal security, the trash, the burned and destroyed things that are common around the region, or the recommendations to not go around alone, specially if you're a foreigner...

However, the feeling we have gotten in the end is that it's an extremely beautiful area, calm, very clean, with gorgeous nature and landscapes, old ruins, and "funny" things happening around you. We liked it a lot, and we would recommend to go there, if you manage to make all the paperwork to visit it and go back to Russia and you have a local guide...

Things one notices living in Adler

These days we're in St. Petersburg, visiting relatives and the city. The place is very nice, and so far we're enjoying the trip.

This has also allowed us to see another part of Russia, a big city this time. After seeing these two sides of the country, one can start knowing what may be usual and what is just happening in Adler (or maybe in little towns in general).

First thing, i already commented it, but in Russia, looks are very important. There is clearly a lot of time and efford dedicated to it. Our apartment looks like an old palace, and other apartments in the same price range had similar styles. If they didnt resemble a palace, they resembled an executive secret apartment for lovers and parties. Practicality is ignored when there's money, and the important thing is to look impressive. More normal apartments look like anywhere else, practical and cozy.

The importance of looks also applies to women (not so much to men). Its not the same for all of them, but lots of women wear very high heels, little dresses, make up and complex hairstyles, etc. For office work it may not bother, but we were rather surprised by a hairdresser with 10cm heels, which we cannot understand how did not hurt her enough to change to slippers after the first client.

We've been told by Russian women that they're not really integrated yet at work, and people usually treat them as mere decoration in worplaces, so i guess that's part of the reason...

We can confirm that driving is rather aggressive everywhere, but i believe Adler has proven to be much worse than a big city. In here traffic seems more normal. In Adler it was easier to see people burning tires in preparation to start moving their cars at high speeds...to stop 5 meters later and let people cross the street.

There is a lot of soviet-made blocks. In Adler it was harder to see this type of building, but i've seen the same type of neighborhood in Vilnius. These buildings look in bad shape from the outside, and they seem to have been made from small cubes. You can still see the lines of union quite clearly in the outside. Inside the apartments, they can be very nice. However, any public part (elevator, stairs) are usually not in good shape. The buildings are usually tall, 15 floors or more. They are separated from one another with wide streets that serve as parking spots for the cars of the people living in them.

There is lots of poverty. Sometimes not very evident, but still there. Lots of little cheap shops, lots of shady-looking markets, lots of people with clearly low-qualified jobs. These same people seem to have had no access to good educations (lots of low-level workers here do very, VERY stupid things, specially in construction).  Lots of these workers wear leather black jackets, dusty and old. Feels like some unofficial uniform sometimes. Lots of these people follow a curious clothes-conservation system. In order to avoid damage when cleaning clothes, they don't clean them. The result is....not good. In Adler it was much more noticeable, thanks to all the workers brought for the olympics, but in here we've also noticed cases like this around the city.

On the other hand, there are lots of luxury shops of one kind or another. Its easy to find jewelry shops, expensive restaurants, bosco shops (which charge a lot for any simple sports clothes), electronics, etc. You can also see lots of clients of these shops, and it seems lots of people also have a lot of money. There are lots of very expensive cars in the streets (specially in Adler, considering the total population). It seems that there is little middle class in here, just lots of lower and upper class.

There's lots of flower shops, that seem to be doing well. It's common to give flowers for lots of dates and reasons after all...

There's lots of dust in the streets. As mentioned, maybe as part of the socialist years, people pay lots of attention to personal possessions. Public things are more abandoned, and less clean. The subways in St. Petersburg are impressive, and the center is very clean. However, less turistic spots, or turistic for russians only, are more abandoned in general (Adler is very dusty).

St. Petersburg is a normal city, like Vilnius or London. Adler, in comparission, is more like the result of providing shops and services for a few hotels and resorts that happened to be there. These services needed their own houses, and more houses were build around them. It doesnt have a city feeling, or a town feeling, it's more like something that spontaneously grew, and now they're trying to adapt it so it works as a town.

Adler has a weird weather. In general, it is warm and nice, while having rainy days, more than in Spain (which is normal). However, it can be VERY windy. This winter, there were 2 days when we had strong warm winds. Walking in the street felt like being under a giant hairdrier. Temperatures went from 10 to 30 degrees, and the wind was strong enough that one of the dish antennas that we have in our apartment (and we don't use) got ripped off from its metallic hanging place. That was an extreme case, but other times it has been windy enough to make it hard to close windows.

And well, thats all for the moment, just some impressions and things we've noticed around here...