What do you want for Christmas? -a tow rope.

How could I live for so long without a tow rope? You may think it is good only to get out of snowbanks, but today I used mine to get out of... the covered parking of the Auchan supermarket. When I came out of Auchan with my shooping cart loaded with nice food for the holidays, for some obscure reason, all the cars in the parking lot of Auchan had their remote alarm disabled. People were out of their cars, helpless...It looked very much like a scene in a super-hero movie where the bad guy comes up with a new weapon that disables all electonic devices.
What sucked is that I had left my big winter jacket in my car because it is too cumbersome and too hot to wear in the supermarket, and I could not open my car with my remote. So I was freezing my butt. I tried to use my manual key, but for a reason that is too long to explain here, I had to pour hot tea on the keyhole the day before, which then froze, so there was no way I could open my car. So I went back to Auchan to get de-icer, which allowed me to open my door. But that was only half the work, because my alarm prevented me from starting the car. A nice couple helped me by towing me with my towing rope, out of the covered parking lot to a safe radio-wave free zone where I could start my car. Whoever you are, nice people, thanks to both of you for helping me out tonight.
So in the end, that was a good reminder that this place is always full of surprises. Lesson learned? don't stop the engine when you go shopping...

The great country of soups

More on the food that I depend on to keep warm and fit... this time I'll write about the russian soups: soups are to Russia what pastas are to Italy, cheeses to France, and Frito pies to USA. The variety of soups is quite large in Russia, and I am on a mission to try them all. Tough mission, particularly cuz I already have my favorites. Here they are.

1- the Logman
I like the name of that one, which sounds like a soup made for real men from the logging industry. It is not a genuine russian soup though, I think it may be kazak but I am too lazy to Google if it's real true. It is a mix of meat, potatoes, pasta, carrots and water. It is hard to eat it without staining one's shirt, because the pasta drips all the time on the way from the plate to the mouth. That's why I recommend to eat it with a brown, orange and yellow shirt.



2-The solianka
I like that one very much too, because it is a chunky one. It is tomato based, with plenty of meat and a nice layer of oily fat on top, and water. That one keeps you warm. They also put olives, a slice of lemon, and a spoonful of cream. A little bit like a warm bloody mary, with more meat and with the vodka on the side...


3- The borsch
You probably heard of that one. I think it is Ukrainian. It is a beetroot soup, with chunks of meat and water. They usually add a spoonful of cream on that one too, just to make sure you get your load of calories.


3- The unknown soup in a bread bowl
I don't know the name of that last one: it contains cabbage, other veggies, dill (the favorite herb in Russia), and water. It comes in a bread bowl a bit like the clam chowder that I got in San Francisco, except this one is not sourdough. You don't have to eat the whole bread, because that is a lot of food... and the soup is only the appetizer, so leave some room for the beef tongue that's coming.


I wish you all a happy holiday. Stay warm. Eat more soup.

Nightlife

A scene of my exciting life in Novosibirsk, with the baby boomer generation. No comment.

dT/dt very steep

In 24 hours, the temperature went down 26degC. That was easy to calculate, because yesterday it was zero degC. Good bye, leather gloves and one-layer winter hats. Any good side to this cold, dry weather? Well, tonight, the dry air had my nose bleeding, but the blood froze inside my nostril so I stayed clean.
And more generally, in the morning I will get an early notice when my fly is inadvertently left open before I arrive to the office.

It is the same mistake...

This week, I decided that classic cross-country skiing sucked, and that skating cross country skiing must be so much better. For my friends unfamiliar with the subtle differences between classic and skating skiing, I am providing a graphical explanation below:



And I also decided that buying the required gear must be the most difficult part in starting this new activity. So I went and spent my money on a pair of skis which look very much like the skis I bought last year for conventional skiing, but twice as expensive, and a new pair of shoes. This is not the first time I spend my money for expensive gear, thinking that the technical know-how will come naturally... and then realizing that either I don't have the skill, or that I don't like the activity. Had I paused for a minute to reflect, this is what I could have recollected from my history:
-at the age of 9, I was designated goal-keeper by my classmates for the recess soccer games (Designating someone as a goal keeper is a diplomatic way of conveying that you are really bad on the field and that one more demotion sends you playing with the girls). The first thing I did was buying a pair of goal-keeper gloves, convinced that with those, I'd be the next "Joel Bats". Next thing I know I was playing "Dungeons and dragons" with the other nerds of my school.
-later in life, I picked up tennis. I had very promising skills, and clearly, my progression was only limited by the low quality of my gear. So I bought a new racket (brand "Lacoste")... Later, I quit tennis after a long 5-year "plateau", with the highest reward being the finalist in the double mixed tournament of Miribel.
Other examples of impulsive purchases of sport items include my clothes for triathlon (I never ran a triathlon), a high-end heart-rate monitor loaded with cool features which I never used, the expensive clip pedals for my bicycle which I must have used 5 times in total, my russian sports car...
End of the story: the new skis specially made for skating don't make skating easy. I can't really say yet I like the sport... any activity where I fall in public more than 2 times within 30 minutes is not likely to be my favorite activity. And I can't get that duck-like step right. Maybe it's because I don't have those lycra stretchy pants that look really cool and don't impair the leg movement?

Siberian Exiles

Ilia contacted me for an interview about living in siberia: it is all here:
http://metkere.com/en/2008/11/siberian-exiles.html

Lost in the dark

It fell over a foot of snow since last week, and it was time to inaugurate the ski season. So I brushed the dust off my cross-country skis and went for a tour in the forest. What a great pleasure to glide on the white snow, accompanied only by the squishing sound of the skis, and the light friction of my socks against my skin at the heels... It felt so good after 2K that I decided to deviate from the usual route and follow the 10K track. That's where things got wrong: unfortunately, I did not realize that it was well after 4pm when i took this decision. Soon enough I could see the light fading as I passed birch tree after birch tree, and intersection after intersection. I kept on pushing, as the tracks I followed became less and less defined.
It was nearly dark when I saw a very debatable indication for the 10 vs 15K track... I reflected for a minute before choosing left or right, knowing that a wrong decision would cost me a finger or a toe (did I mention I overestimated the temperature when I left, so I did not wear clothes warm enough?). I took a left, which turned out to be the right decision and kept on pushing, and at that stage I did no longer enjoy the friction of my damn socks against my heels. It is not such a good feeling to be alone out there in the dark, not knowing if I was on the right trail, with no friend or wife to blame for the bad situation.
In the end, I made it safely back to civilization, with little damage other than some more erosion of my confidence in leadership skills, and of the skin at the back of my heels.

Note: the supporting pictures I took with my phone for this story got corrupted... blame Motorola for it.

Food food food (#1)

Long time no see. I was out of the country for work, using the last opportunity to travel before the economic crisis has the local airlines lowering their safety standards. I just made it back, and to my surprise, no snow is yet sticking on the ground, but as I am typing, snowflakes are starting to fall and I expect to see the first patches of snow sticking to the ground sometimes today. However... snow falling in Siberia in November is no longer an event that deserves a blog post, so let's move on.
With absence of interesting facts to report, I decided to start talking about the food that we can find in Siberia. This first article is about the food I had in Buryatie, in central Siberia. The pictures below should wake up your appetite, so grab something in your fridge before going further.

Below, you can see a typical meal that you can have in many restaurant in Buryatie.

On the left, a fish salad: yes, this is Omoul... served raw with onion, green onion, and a bit of seasoning. This is appropriately called "Omoul salad".
On the right, you can see "posies": these are giant raviolis filled with meat and onion, and greasy juice... Mmmmh. Note the absence of silverware: you are supposed to eat that thing with your fingers following a well-defined technique: first have a small bite and suck out the greasy juice (watch your shirt). Then just eat the rest and lick your fingers, and say "Vkusna!" (that means "delicious", and saying it will keep you out of trouble).



Then comes dessert: The traditional dessert all over Russia is a "blin", and when you have several of them, you use the plural form and these are "blini". It is filled with whatever you like, but last time I suggested to fill one with ice-cream, I was met with uncomprehension, so just ask for honey to avoid any embarassment. Also, don't even try to have blini without tea, or people will look at you like you have ink on your nose. On the right, this is a picture of typical "buryat" tea, which is mixed with milk, butter and salt, so don't order it if you are lactose intolerant (I don't recommend lactose intolerant people to come to Siberia overall, as they put cream absolutely everywhere). You can try this buryat tea at home and tell me what you think. I don't like tea in the first place, and the dairy products they mixed it with did not make it better.


Good appetite. More siberian food is coming your way in the next weeks.

I am not a leper

As part of my Russian visa renewal, I was tested for leprosy last week. This was in addition to my HIV and tuberculosis tests. No need to argue that I still have all my fingers and my mere skin problems are a bit of redness after shaving, I had to go. So I hid my little bell and left my long coat at home and complied with the rule. It turns out I am not a leper. Even if it did not really come as a surprise, that was still a relief. The doctor made a visual inspection of my arms and back, and in spite of his expertise, could not detect any more symptoms of leprosy than I did. So I was able to go back to work.
I shall come back with more interesting story next time. Maybe about a medical test for bubonic plague or scurvy. Russian authorities would help me making better plots with more suspense if they actually tested diseases that are still around in the 21st century.

Happy first year anniversary!

Already 1 year that I am in Siberia. Geezz, time flies by. So I guess it is time to look back at the 2007/2008 season and make a small assessment. Let’s go with the really obvious first: this first year was full of discoveries: dipping my skinny body in the frozen Ob Sea, spending days and nights in a cave, exfoliating my skin and clean the clogged pores at the bania… One thing I can say is that I changed my hobbies since I arrived. No more jogging in lycra in the steamy heat. Overall, that’s fine with me. Running in Houston is actually boring like hell, I just did it because Men’s Health magazine said it was cool to suffer. Here, I might have less free time (yes, I have a job that keeps me busy), but I spend it more wisely, as suggested by my captivating blog .

It has been refreshing to live in a place with seasons, it is really like different worlds between the summer and the winter. I like the summer better, but I did not realize that before moving here, so I can’t really complain. The winter is also fun, as long as you don’t mind runny nose, cold fingers and wearing 4 layers of clothes….and the winter in May is really at the edge of what my sense of fun can support.

One thing I don’t talk about too much in my blog is the people I have met here, and whom I hang around with. In my blog, it seems like all Siberia is centered around me (which is almost true geographically speaking). But in reality, I have met really amazing people and I have very good friends here. I won’t name them just because they all begged me never to mention their name in my blog (that might endanger their future political career, who knows?), but they exist, and they’re real humans, not just bunnies like before. Still, my good ol’ friends are what I miss the most, and there is plenty of evenings that I would rather be spending on a good ol’ food fight rather than staring at the buildings from the Soviet times. But I don’t regret being here, and sometimes I feel there is nowhere else I’d rather be than here, where I have time to contemplate and procrastinate while eating cheese.

I can’t really mix very well with the locals yet, though… only with those who use regular verbs at the present time, who articulate very well and don’t mind repeating things twice. You probably understand it reduces my potential circle of acquaintance to a very small population… But I work on my Russian skills. One day, I will speak perfect Russian, and then everything will be easier: I’ll be able to order my steak medium rare on one side and rare on the other, and complain when the salad is served after the soup.

My secret to live here happily? Develop a taste for cabbage and take things lightly. The inefficiencies of the system are just there to make things more fun. It would be so boring to live in a place that does not require a stamped printout of a e-ticket to travel, that does not ask to register by the authorities when being in a city for 3 days, that provides hot water every day, that provides electricity without cutoff, or where you don’t have to register your car at the army. That’s how I look at it.

Thanks for reading my blog and for keeping up with me for the coming year… As for US presidents, the second term might really be the f....d up one. Let's see...

Mushrooming

Today I tried another very popular hobby in Novosibirsk: Mushrooming. It may sound like I was just passively growing mould and funghi on my body, but it is in reality an activity that consists in picking mushrooms. It is done in the forest, at the fall season. I thought everything worked pretty much as planned... we found a forest (not very difficult around here)... but I did not realize that October 5th is already the end of the fall season under this latitude. So we did not find a single mushroom. Still, I had decided that this post was going to be about me picking mushrooms, and I was not going to give up that easily. So we took a picture of me acting like I am picking a mushroom in the forest. Then, I blew in a plastic bag to pretend I had a full bag of mushrooms, and I showed it to the camera. The best part of the day was when I was offered lunch by an expert mushroomer, who picked his mushrooms a few weeks ago, and opened a can of mushrooms just for me.
I hope this proves skeptical people that I am not wasting my time here in Siberia and that I always find something constructive to do with my week-ends.

A real fall

Since I was told last year that I arrived in Siberia one week too late to see the best season, I was looking forward to the last week of September to see what it would look like. It looks really good. Other things I was told and I wanted to check:
"In Akademgorodok, there is a season called Indian summer. It lasts all September and it is warm ..." That is true, given that this statement was given to me by -20C in December. But coming from summer, it is cold.
"In Akademgorodok, in the fall, the sky is always blue." That's true only if we assume that the fall started and ended last Saturday. Otherwise it is gray, dark, windy and rainy.
"In Akademgorodok, the trees are wonderful in the fall". That's right. And i am embedding a few pictures to prove it. But with the wind and the rain, it does not last for very long.
"After one year in Russia, you will speak Russian very good". No comment.

The first snow!!

Believe me or not, today, we saw the first snowflakes of the season... It is 3°C outside, and they still look like heavy and wet rather than light and fluffy (Damn global warming, it even spoils snowflakes). I tried to take pictures with my cell phone, but they are not good, so I just stole a picture from someone else (see below).
I guess that marks the end of the hurricane season here. My friends from Houston, I am thinking about you and I hope Ike did not affect you too much. Cheers...

A cool place to chill out

The comments on my last post clearly indicate that, by letting my soft side coming out on my blog, I am confusing my male-based audience, and this without expanding my female-based audience by the slightiest epsilon. So back to more male-oriented posts: The pictures below include alcohol, a blond girl at a bar and a furry animal, which should satisfy my redneck friends who like watching girls and drink alcohol and shoot critters. It is a bar in Novosibirsk, which is not that great, primarily because it is -15C inside. The staff is nice enough to give away some coats and gloves, but I wasted a new haircut and ironing my dressy shirt by going there and looking like everybody else. Anyway, there was nobody else... too cold... And they only serve Vodka and strong drinks. I think this place is not going to last. We did not last there too long either...

A Sunday at the datcha.

Finally I got to go to a datcha. A datcha is a kind of cabin,where the locals spend their week ends and sometimes their whole summer. My coworker and friend Dmitry invited me to his datcha near the town of Isskitim. There we had the last shashliks of the season in a beautiful garden, full of exuberant flowers which show off their colors before the long and cold winter. You can see the pictures of my quiet Sunday afternoon below, with a few shots of the garden flowers.
By the way, i do not recommend to try the berries that almost look like blackberries on the picture. It doesn't taste like much first, but then it leaves a sour taste for very long in the mouth. I should have listened to my friends when they told me these berries were not edible... but they looked so good and juicy. You guys don't realize how lucky you are to have a friend who is nice enough to try all these disgusting things and share his experience with you.

Fallready

Just when I started to get used to the summer... what do I see? Leaves that turn yellowish, signature of the fall season to start. This was a short summer. If only I had known, I would have spent more time outside rather than on my computer pretending I am writing something informative while I am only procrastinating.
Bye bye summer... Thanks for passing by. Just give me a ring next time so I make sure I don't miss you. Here's a short salute to the new season:

Ferns are getting brown,
Mama deer has abandoned her fawn
Squirrels are busy getting the last nuts off the ground
Fall has arrived and I am feeling down...yawn.

-B. L.

Always too soon for tarasoon

I realized I closed a bit prematurely the chapter about my vacations on the lake Baikal, so allow me to come back to it and relate some stories for you, even if it is already 10 days old. Today I will tell you about one of the worst experiences I ever had under the sun: trying tarasoon.

Tarasoon is a drink that may look harmless when presented in a small innocent glass... and since it is a buryat specialty you have to go to a yurta to go drink it, and the whole thing is almost attractive and you would be tempted to try. Even when the locals tell you that it is made from milk of a mare, that has been curdled and then distilled, you may still think "Well, why not? Curdled mare milk might just be a source of nutrients that has been mistakenly overlooked in the western world..."
Mares can sleep quietly out of Buryatie. Tarasoon will never be popular. Proof? Type "tarasoon" in google and nothing will come up. Only under "tarasun", it comes listed in the 3rd page. And what does it say? Here you go:
"Prayers are offered and sacrifices made to all the Heavenly Burkans [...]. People [..]ask the spirits, especially Sagadé U!gu!gun, for rain, good crops, and children. When they ask the gods for children they offer Sagadé U!gu!gun twenty pots of tarasun [...]"
(from http://www.sacred-texts.com/asia/jss/jss14.htm)
See? Even the buryats don't drink it! They give Sagade U!Gu!Gun 20 pots of it! And I can tell you that Sagade U!Gu!Gun must be sorry. I am sure he regrets not having applied as God in other places such as Scotland or France. I tried Tarasoon... from the glass you see on the picture, I drank about 1/10th. From the face I made after drinking it, I kept wrinkles that will never disappear. Describing the taste while remaining polite is a challenge, so I will just say that it tastes like someone already drank it before. I guess it tastes like distilled curdled mare milk is supposed to taste like.
May this blog serve as warning to all tourists who feel adventurous enough to try Tarasoon. Let Sagade U!Gu!Gun have it, and have a Stella instead.

Tough time for Niva

I have not talked about my Niva for a while, so i thought I'd mention it again today. Niva had some small issues with the transfer case when, in an attempt to show off the 4x4 abilities of Niva to my parents, I must have inadvertently damaged the transfer case over a stone in the Altai mountains. I also inadvertently drove about 800km with it before going to the mechanics, which apparently did not help. No matter how much progress i made in Russian these last 4-5 days, it was still difficult to convince the mechanics that breaking the transfer case and driving the shortest distance that was separating me from him should have been covered by the warranty (the same warranty that did not cover filling up the car with diesel... I definitely should have read between the lines when I signed up).

Well, anyway, I figured that, since my car breaks down so often, I should enjoy it to its full potential in the short periods when it is good shape... So I went out with my friends Tim, Cedric, and Mandy, all of them enthusiastic owners of Niva, and we kicked around some mud. My Niva definitely showed better performance than theirs, mainly because of the new roof rack that I installed and which looks pretty damn cool.

Below, a failed attempt at going up a muddy hill. I wish the movie showed better how steep that was... It was so steep, and I was going so fast, that when I finally passed the hill (not shown, for some reasons) I literally experienced zero gravity for a few seconds. That's how bad that was.

Si c'est si bien, Baikal les voir!

A place like lake Baikal deserved a good French pun as a title for my short section about it. Enough poems, songs and legends have already been written about Lake Baikal and there is no need for one more stylish account of how nice that is. So I'll get to the point: The lake is nice and big, and there is a shitload of beautiful sceneries of landscape not yet spoiled by man.

During the 4 days we spent there, our HQ was located on Olkhone island, where we (we=my parents and me) had all the comfort we needed: a room for three, a bania at 2km for our daily session of sweating and exfoliating, and ecological restrooms across the potato field. We lived like kings. Food mainly consisted of omoul, the infamous fish from the lake: so we had raw omoul salads, steamed omoul, grilled omoul, smoked omoul, dry omoul, fried omoul with potatoes and finally, omoul soup. When omouls are not on a table or in someone's stomach, they roam freely in the lake where they serve as food for the "nerpa", the freshwater seal from the lake Baikal. Nerpas have it easier than the omouls: There is no dish based on nerpa, whose goal in life is mainly to serve as an attraction for tourists like me who cross half the lake to see him behaving like a regular seal, except that it's a big deal because it is the only seal leaving in fresh water.

Well, I have tried to be very down to earth with my post, but I need to be honest... I still have very vivid images of the lake in my mind, because it is such a wonderful place. Here is a small movie that should convey better how great it is there... (I recommend to pump up the volume)


By the way, if you want to go there, I recommend you to contact the agency "Baikal Nature". They are cool, young, knowledgeable and flexible...and they also speak French...what else can you ask?

The woolly mammoths of Akademgorodok

It took me about 9 months to discover the mammoths of Akademgorodok, hidden in the back of the building across the street from Traveller's coffee (that building is sometimes referred to as the Institute of Acheology and Ethnography... still, if you are looking for it, it is easier to ask about "the building across Traveller's"). That is about 6 months to even know that there were mammoths in my town, and 3 to motivate myself to go see them.
2 specimens of Mammoth primigenius are exposed in the hallway of the institute, and displayed free of charge for the people who enjoy a bit of culture over a double fat free latte. I believe they are woolly mammoths, but the wool has long gone off the skelettons of these guys, so it is hard to tell. So is the trump, which probably drifted away from the mammoth's nose along with the melting glacier at the end of the ice age (that is pure speculation from my part, don't quote this as a scientific fact).
Note the extra effort by the zealous staff to make them look more realistic by placing plastic dinosaurs and alligators at the feet of the giant beast.

The eclipse

Unless your only source of information about Novosibirsk is this present blog, you should have known that a total solar eclipse was planned in Novosibirsk on August 1st 2008. A good occasion to go for another boat tour on the Ob and watch the eclipse from a place with no risk of anything hiding our sight.
I thought I had been in a total eclipse before (1999, France). Either I was not at the right location, or maybe eclipses in the western world are not that impressive, but in the end, my expectations were not that high. I was expecting something like that:
What you are looking at is a picture taken proactively prior to the real eclipse. It is my right-hand side finger, the tip of which happens to coincide with the diameter of the sun. I thought this was similar to what I was going to experience, so you'll understand that I joined the boat expedition more for the shahsliks and the beer than the astronomical experience.

Well, what we saw was much more impressive (if you don't believe me, ask the other 10,000 tourists flocking to Novosibirsk for the occasion):

That's what we saw... but the eclipse is in fact much more than the Moon going in front of the Sun: until the sun is 100% covered, the light is pretty much normal. But then, at once, it is like someone switches off the light and you can see the stars. And everything goes dark:
On the left, this is minutes before the eclipse (no photoshop). On the right, this is during the 2 minutes of the full eclipse (no photoshop).



In the end, this turned out to be a magnificent experience, almost spiritual... And I also had beer and shashlik on the boat so I really had a great day.

On Loooove boaaaat… Na na na na na na na na na

This Friday, after a tiring week at work we decided to do boat tour on the river Ob. The goal was simply to enjoy the river in its liquid state while it lasts. I was not expecting the tour to be so nice: what a beautiful and inspiring moment… almost spiritual. The light was almost perfect (I hardly had to warmify the pictures to give them this yellow light), and the boat was slightly too fast for the mosquitoes and horseflies to keep up with us… perfect. It felt like on the Love Boat TV series, which the not so young among you must remember…. I was expecting to see the doc, Gopher or the captain’s red hair daughter to show up at any time. The boat went upstream to a tiny island with a name I don’t remember (Ob Island HV554 or something like that) and the cool kids left the boat to spend the night on the island. I could have spent the night out too, no question about that, but I had this 5000-piece puzzle of a DNA molecule at home which I really wanted to complete.

I am posting a few pictures of the trip below. You will see the sunset by the longest bridge of Siberia (still, just long enough to connect both ends of the river), some guys fishing, a nice picture of a power plant shining in the sunlight... All that within a 60 minute boat ride.

Scenes of the Volga

I had the chance to spend a magnificent week end by the beautiful river "Volga", in the city of Kostromo. It is about 250km from Moscow. Why would I go all the way there while I have the beautiful river "Ob" right by my place? Well, look at the shots below. How could I resist? I enjoyed the many opportunities the city can offer:


Enjoy the beautiful beach, only minutes from the highway.

Relax or challenge yourself with all sorts of activities, also minutes only from the highway.













Discover the local fauna (minutes from the highway).













Finally, the town center and its highlights.













Now, being serious for a second: I had a splendid week-end there. The long evenings on the banks, with seagulls warming their butts on the lamps, and the charms of the city made it really nice. I am ready to go back there in a second.

A peaceful Saturday eve

I am back in Novosibirsk after a short trip in the UK... Good time there by the way, but out of he scope of my blog. You'll have to contact me directly to know how I spent my time in the Highlands of Scotland and know about my time in Wimbledon and Cambridge.
So for my second day back in the city, I decided to spend the evening in Novosibirsk on Saturday, just wandering around in the parks and enjoying the calm and relaxing atmosphere of a late summer evening. So I went and I walked around Lenine's square, in the very same parks where they have the snow sculptures during the winter, and watched for random things. This was a pleasant moment, as the temperature is very nice and people enjoy being outside and socializing in the parks. (Myself, I am not really socializing much yet, as my conversation is very limited, but I tried to be in harmony with the overall atmosphere by walking slowly and smiling. I hope the locals appreciate the effort.). The pictures below are random shots around Lenine square: the parks, the opera, the three lads and some more bear pictures.



And finally, this little show from our local Central Park, right in the heart of the city. Far from Manhattan, but the similarities are striking, aren't they?

Congrats to Russia!

Last night, Russia won 3-1 against Holland, the same team that won 4-1 against France. The nerdiest among you will reckon that if Chasles's relationship applies as in the vectorial world, that means that Russia virtually won 7-2 against France... And this happens only weeks after Russia won the Eurovision contest! (a contest where the French guy was singing in English...geezzz, it is not easy to be French this year). Anyway, it feels good to have Russia giving a flavor of humility to Holland, the so-called "other country of cheese".
But: what's left that we can beat the Russians at? Mmmmh... not much as long as there are no contests of safe driving and even stairs building.

A nice week-end in Tomsk

In a sudden change of mind, I decided to spend the week end in Tomsk with friends. Tomsk is a city located at about 250km North of Novosibirsk. If you happened to like Jules Verne, then the name of Tomsk should have rung a bell to you. This is the city where Jules had the bad guys (the Tatars) burning the eyes of Michel Strogoff, who was being accused of being a Russian spy (a Russian spy... how original. come on, Tatars, you can be more creative than that. And, don't you think Michel is a terrible first name for a Russian spy?) Anyway, I don’t mean to ruin the story if you haven’t read it, but it turns out that the Tatars did not burn the eyes of Michel well enough, and Michel Strogoff recovers his sight a few pages later. This being said, I don’t know if Michel had time to have a peek at the city before being caught: it is a very beautiful city actually. Lots of students, lots of historical buildings and museums, and a beautiful university campus. Have a look at the pictures I posted… Also, the monument in the honor of the soldiers who fell during WW2 is impressive and commands respect. The whole city clashes with the idea that I had so far about Siberian cities and their massive square buildings. And I did not see any sign of the lake used for storing nuclear waste near the city, which is mentioned in my guidebook. Probably some ecologist propaganda again…

So what did we do in Tomsk? We walked all day, stopped for coffees here and there, enjoyed the nice weather, and then we switched to beer at around 8pm, and went to a Tomskian club. Can't do that in any city, can you?

Spring is here for good

Spring has settled for good now in Novosibirsk: here some pictures of the countryside around Akademgorodok where we are going for bikeride every week end, and a few pictures in Akademgorodok. I don’t recommend you watch these pictures at work if you are in an open space environment, as your Ooohs! and Aaahs! may attract the attention of your coworkers. Enjoy. I will be posting pictures of winter very soon again.

Sign of summer

Summer is coming. Beside temperature rising up, days getting longer and skirts getting shorter, a reliable sign of the arrival of summer is the barrel of KBAC (pronounce "Kvass") popping up at most of the street corners. KBAC is a drink made with bread and water, which is not as bad as it sounds. It tastes a bit like a beer on its way to become a beer...or something like that. Its alcohol content is near zero, meaning don't buy KBAC only for your Saturday night party, because things could get boring very quickly.
The barrel of KBAC comes with a baboushka, a past middle aged lady who serves the drink and makes faces when you don't have change. Baboushkas have signed an exclusivity contract with the authorities to serve KBAC. Or so it seems...(or maybe drinking lots of KBAC makes aging faster?)
A 0.4 liter glass of KBAC is about 15 roubles ($0.60), which is a fair price for wet bread.

Just when I thought I was having a bad day

In Siberia, there are always things to cheer you up when you look around. Sometimes it is a bear, sometimes a nice woodpecker or a flower, and sometimes it is a bunch of helpless guys losing their wheel in a mud puddle. I don't think I ever realized how useless a jack can be in mud. These guys will probably remember their Sunday, and the group of english speaking mountainbikers who passed by making smart comments and taking pictures. That was about all the help we could offer without getting dirt on ourselves, though.