Declaration of War

 We're at war and we don't know it. 

 For a long while now we've been at war. And it's a world war. And we're losing it. It's a war with casualties from mostly one side only, but it's a very civic war. In this war, most of the time, it's not like someone will come to us and shoot us, oh no. That's not polite. In this war we lose little by little, our lives and our time. Although in some areas you do get shot, where the fight is in its worse shape. It's an asymetrical war, both sides are rather different in numbers and power. But it's a war nonetheless. 

This war has been raging for all our history. Sometimes there's calm periods and truces. Sometimes there's small victories. But lately it's going worse for us, after a period where it seemed we could achieve some level of victory, or at least a reasonable truce. 

 We've had recent battles in plenty of places. In Brazil, we lost to ignorance and stupidity, and because of its current culture it may take some time before any victories can be achieved. In Chile there was a recent stand off that gives us hope after a long period of darkness, but it needs to be developed and to grow into a victory, and it may not be one just yet. In Bolivia we won after almost losing an important battle. Hong Kong seems lost, the battle continues but the enemy is too brutal in there. In USA we were defeated so long ago nobody remembers our side, but lately there's been some movements towards a change, although it's still in its infancy, and the latest results are not really a victory. Poland was never in our side but maybe after the latest abuse some reaction will be triggered. I'm not informed enough to talk about countries in Africa but it seems there's been an ongoing change in there too, little by little, in some of them small victories for us. Turkey has been conquered after a period of hope, and we need to recover it but won't be easy. Russia had some chances but the opportunity was not taken. Most religious-based countries mark a huge defeat for us.

Spain was lost since 1939, and is still lost to this day. Catalunya has a chance to be a small win, but Spain will fight us to the death. 

One side is always the same: Fascism, dictatorships, unchecked corruption, economic power, religious power. The other is just the average person. 

The war is simple: Average people want to have nice lives. Lives where you do work, but you also have free time, health, friends, and where you can work with what you like. Lives where you can allow yourself presents, for you and your friends and family. Where you can have vacations and visit places. Where you can have moments of rest and calmness. Where you can believe whatever you want and no one imposes their views on you. Where you can retire and you don't need to die right away. Where people help each other. and where we can collectively decide things for ourselves. Then we have internal struggles about how to achieve these objectives, but that's the idea.

The other side wants to have these things only for a few of themselves, the chosen ones, and everyone else should suffer and die slowly to provide these things to them, It's a simple as that.

 Maybe this seems simplistic or evident. But what I want to remark, is that this is WAR. When people get kicked out of their houses, people DIE. When factories are closed down, people DIE. When hospitals are privatized and medicine is not affordable, people DIE. Those are casualties. When some rich or powerful bastard takes a decision to withheld resources for the common people, this person is PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for the impoverishment, misery and death of these people. Same way I would be accused of not helping someone that was bleeding to death in my house if I ignored them and didn't call an ambulance nor did anything at all.

All this was to explain a few things regarding the current struggles:

 1-This war is all the same war. Catalan people wanting to vote and getting beaten by police is the same war as Hong Kong people wanting to decide for themselves and getting beaten by police. It's the same war as BLM in USA. Its the same war as medical professionals asking for more resources. It's the same war as workers asking for better conditions. It's the same war. So, support all of them and don't be blinded.

2-A lot of idiots are supporting the wrong side because in their little evil minds, they think they're part of the powerful side and that they will get better lives through it. The reality is that they will be squashed and discarded with all the rest, but since they will not be the first ones and the first ones are a group they don't like, they think this is good and later they'll be spared. 

3-Being neutral or equidistant, or "centrist" here means support to the powerful. As they say in Germany, a table with 1 Nazi and 9 people that let them be there is a table with 10 Nazis. And thinking the one doing the beating is the same as the one being beaten is morally abhorrent. 

4-Civility is not an option when it results in one side always winning because they're the only ones that can be nasty and violent and brutal while the other side is expected to put the other cheek and accept their fate and "be nice". Doing a "smart" economic operation that can force a building full of people to be kicked out to the streets should be responded with the same rage and pain that it has caused and the person responsible should suffer horrible consequences for it.

5-The current health crisis is making everything on hold, but we should not forget that we're at war, and you can see whose lives have been the most affected and who's reaping benefits from all this, and understand then who needs to be defeated. 

Any approach that doesn't take this into consideration, that doesn't understand this is a war, that doesn't understand that we're all going to suffer and die unless we turn the tide strongly to the other side will not succeed. To go back to USA, the current election results will not achieve anything at all, things will just get worse a bit more slowly in there, the important defeat there was in the democratic primaries and after that one the end result would be bad or horrible, but never good.

The "agree to disagree" and moderation is for cake, not for the worth of human lives. And Nazi Germany was not defeated with hugs and good intentions.

Gangneung: First Contact

So, I’m in Gangneung now:


This is situated in South Korea. I’ll be here until this Friday, and then I’ll come back at the end of November.

South Korea is a very interesting place. After Brazil and Russia, I really wanted to try and live in a country more technologically and socially advanced, just to check the differences and enjoy the better level of live.  We lived very well in Russia, but Adler had plenty of issues. In Brazil, we lived adequately but the problems of the city and the country really affected us, and we managed fine but we would not want to live there for long periods again, we would go back just for tourism and in a while….so, South Korea sounded attractive. The only thing is that my son has started school and after considering this and other variables, we decided that this time I would go alone. This is not the best thing in the world, but just for a year and 3 months and with a total of 5 trips back while being there we thought it would be ok after all…

The trip itself was nothing special after having done plenty of other transoceanic flights, but it’s true that Turkish airlines is really good, nice food and nice movies to watch while flying^^.

The first contact I had with the country was of course in Incheon Airport (Seoul). On the passport control, after scanning mine with a machine, an automatic voice told me in Spanish to put my index fingers in two fingerprint readers. IN SPANISH. After that the check lasted 2 minutes, if that much. This is the first thing I loved.

The second thing I loved was free wifi without registering anywhere. Just connect to the open network and use it….after other airports, this was amazing. The third thing I loved was going to the airport shops and seeing signs about leaving the suitcases outside to not bother people…and people doing so, with suitcases in the corridors, unsupervised, while the owners could not see them. Do you know how that feels, especially after Brazil??

At this point I knew. Whatever happened later, and whatever problem I found in the country, culture or in the project, I was going to love this country….

Since Gangneung is actually pretty far from this airport, I went to the information post. I had been told there was a bus that went directly, so I asked about it. They told me its timetable, which exit to use to get there and what to do and wrote everything in Korean, so no problems there^^.

The bus was pretty awesome, its seats were huge, only 3 per row, soft and comfy. The only problem is that the trip was more than 4 hours…the last 2 felt very long, especially because we got a couple of traffic jams.

During the trip I looked around, but I got a bad day for sightseeing since everything was covered by a low cloud and it was raining. I could see it’s a very green country, but not like Brazil (which is green but clearly tropical, with really huge plants and trees), more like France or Germany, but with different vegetation. There was a surprising amount of agriculture going on, I could see plenty of people working in small fields under the rain, even if it was Sunday. And lots of lights and leds in the road indicating different things, I noticed that too, they seem to love leds and lights….

Gangneung is a coastal city after the mountains where the Winter Games will take place. The mountains themselves are rather low, 700-1000m, but I’m told it snows enough in winter to do snow activities in there. The feeling I got was like a big town or small city, with some main roads but afterwards plenty others with no sidewalk, areas with small houses and not much people or traffic. Unlike the airport, nothing was in English and people don’t really speak it apart from at the office and at the stations (and even then, at the office I’m really surprised by the fact that plenty of people working for Olympics do not speak English well enough to communicate without help, which is not ideal….), so I realized it would not be easy to live there without getting the basics of the language…but I had been warned about it, so it was ok.

The first days were very nice and interesting. The area is very calm,  as I said like a small town, with some particular details that you associate with east-asian culture like plenty of neon lights, (k-)pop, cuteness everywhere, typical school uniforms, some big shopping malls (but it's a town so it's shopping streets full of little shops), very well packaged food even if it’s fruits, extreme politeness, face masks, etc…. It has stuff to do around, with bars and clubs, restaurants, bike paths and parks, and a curiously varied expat community, bigger than usual because in this country English teachers need to be native and there’s plenty of people from abroad teaching.
I found a very small apartment for me on the second day, small but ideal for this period, and it even included a bike (well, “included”, it was the bike of someone that lived there before and left it, and the man renting the place said he was going to throw it away, so instead I’m able to keep it^^) I will be using to move around. I also already ordered some furniture online, which is currently travelling towards it, and in general this first contact went very well.

The only thing it may still cause issues is the food. Food is amazing, similar to Chinese and Japanese, really tasty and healthy…but there’s plenty of things that are spicy, very spicy. And I cannot handle that…so unless I’m with a local or an expat with experience, I go to a place I already know and order the same thing, which may make me bored of the thing fast if I don’t manage to get a wider selection of places…

I’ve also heard that some processes of the burocracy are very very slow, and for example getting a simple SIM card will not be easy…but there’s open wifis with really good speeds everywhere, so it’s not a big concern at the moment….

Anyway, all in all I’m very happy with this new place I’m getting the chance to discover^^

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....



  

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...

Getting used to Adler

After some time in Russia, we can say we're starting to get used to it.

We've been here less than two months, but it feels ages, with all the things that have happened and we have done. Lots of people say that time perception depends on how many new things you do during the week (if everything is new, time feels longer), and moving to another country with a new different job definitely stretched our time quite a lot. Now, after almost 2 months, things are starting to get "normal"...and even then, there is new things happening every week, job-related or not...

First, we finally got a nice apartment in the centre of Adler, and did all the paperwork and payments necessary to rent it. It was not the original one that we wanted, but now we think this one is much better, since it came with almost everything (furniture, dishes, pots, etc.) and it's right next to the office and the main streets and markets. There were a few missing things, but we bought those.

We live in the same block as lots of other people from work, and it's nice to be able to visit them, or invite them, and do something at random, with no need to plan in advance, or spent time getting there first. Reminds me of some friends that all live in the same area of the city, and I understand them much better now, why they're always meeting without planning, it's quite natural if you're 2 minutes away from them...

The apartment is really big, it has several terraces, rooms and toilets, and we have adapted things to our liking and moved furniture a little. The main terrace, that has an extra kitchen apart from the main one, has sights to the sea, and receives a lot of sun. Even in a cold day, if it's clear enough, the place feels warm and nice.

We have received our things finally (the same day that we decided to buy and mount furniture for the TV that was coming....furniture that came with no instructions whatsoever about how to mount it, a thing that may require another post...), and we feel like at home now.

As I already said, Russian is a very curious place. There is a clear cultural shock. With people in the office we have not many problems, since these positions imply a certain level of education or experience that also guarantees a bigger mind, and a person who probably has travelled more or entered in contact with more different cultures.  However, that is not necessary the case with random people in the street, and this is kind of noticeable sometimes.

In general, Russian society reminds me at the moment of Spanish society, 20-30 years ago more or less...it's clearly not an undeveloped country, and the culture is similar to the occidental one, but there's still a long way to go to resemble other european, cosmopolitan places like the U.K., Sweden or Denmark (they have their faults, but in some aspects they have incredible advances). Spain is not there yet either by far, but in some aspects Russia seems to have a lot more room for social and cultural improvements, apart from things like infrastructures, public transports, etc.

For example, we already commented that traffic is awful. The principle behind it is that everybody is on its own, and to help other cars is to show weakness. A social improvement would be the change of this mentality to something where solidarity is more important....if drivers were nicer, everybody could probably move faster around intersections.

Other things that we've noticed is that everything is under construction right now. Our current building itself is half finish, even if our apartment is clearly done. It seems people are preparing for Olympics  and there's a rush to build more of everything. After all, Adler is very, very small, and Winter Olympics are supposed to happen in here...they need more roads, more hotels, more shops, etc. The current shops and restaurants also need to get bigger to compete with all these new ones. The end result is that we have the feeling sometimes of living in a construction site all the time. Even the office has this problem, the official desk were we are supposed to have a little place is in a building that only has the 6th floor finished, and the other 5 are a mess of unpainted concrete and dust. Our other workplace is not much better...it's more finished, but every day you find cables hanging from somewhere  a hole in a wall that opens to the street, and other such things.But well, these things just cause minor inconveniences...

Major inconveniences are caused by the fact that all these constructions are messing up some basic services (like Internet). It's normal that, when it rains or it's windy, cables break, things flood, and electricity wavers or stops for a while, water doesn't reach our floor, internet does not work...

So far every week I think we've had some interruptions in the electricity, even if just for a second...and other times we had electricity, but the company that provides internet did not.

In general the effect can be a little bit annoying, but oh well....

For the moment, we're quite happy living in our apartment in Russia^^

First week in Adler

After some time of instability, we're finally living in Russia. Right now we're still in the hotel, but this Monday we're supposed to sign the contract for our apartment.

The first impressions have been good, but Russia is indeed a curious country. The place where we will live, Adler, is quite small. It has 3-4 big streets, and the rest of the town is made of little passages and houses. There are a lot of little shops, and we have two shopping malls, that can be reached by a 10-minute walk.

Traffic is awful, there's way too many people using cars to move around, and they drive aggresively, plenty of times ignoring preferences, lights or lanes, and always competing for spaces with other cars. The result is that you can see daily deadlocks in the main street, created by cars trying to turn while other cars are in the way, with no one giving away any ground, and other similar situations.

Luckily, as mentioned, we do not need to use the car in here, we walk everywhere and it takes only a few minutes.

If we feel like going to a bigger place, Sochi's centre is 40 minutes or so (if there are no big traffic jams/deadlocks) away from here using the public buses. We've been there only once, but it's true that feels more like a city. However, if we analyse it, it's a similar situation than in London, where the centre was 40 minutes away, and around our house there was almost nothing, just some shops.

The apartments we can rent are pretty awesome and big, and the one we want to have will give us enough space for guests and parties (so we hope to have people around from time to time). We're meeting new nice people who already live here, and the feeling is similar to London, or to Sweden, where you usually keep meeting people in a similar situation, and since we do not know much of the place we band together. We've already gone to a couple of parties where we've met co-workers, Russians or from other parts of the world.

The hotel we're using right now is quite nice, but it has a major drawback: no internet in the room. This means that we need to go downstairs every time we want to connect, which means that we cannot check things as much as we usually want, or watch series and such things. Anyway, soon enough we'll be able to get internet in our apartment, and we're told it works well enough.

The weather, at the beginning of November, has been quite amazing, sunny and nice, while being temperate and not very hot. At night it's colder, since weather is drier than in Barcelona, but it's still very nice for the month. Before arriving here we had to stop one day in Moscow, and we were at around 3 degrees, it was raining like hell, and when it stopped raining it was to start snowing...

All in all, we believe we can live well in here, we'll see how it goes^^