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.