Archive for the 'russia' Category

Birthday wrap-up

Some weeks ago, I got one year closer to the awful and frightening age of 30. The counter is at 28 now and I'm really afraid of losing my hair and turning gray after 30. Since I have my fathers hair, it's not likely that I'll get bald soon, but grey for sure. Anyway, this year, celebrating my birthday was awesome; I celebrated two times.  My actual birthday, I spent in Russia, which for obvious reasons was great. I flew east-bound on the 6th and turned 28 the same night at 0:00. Lena gave me my present (which I actually took with me from the Netherlands, but I didn't know what was in that strange looking package) just after midnight. She got me a binary watch, the ultimate geek wrist jewlery! The next day, my Russian family prepared a very nice lunch and I got meet Lena's grandfather. Communicating was hard, since my Russian is still very basic and her grandfathers English is pretty rusty. Anyway, I think we hit it off pretty well.

In the evening we went to a restaurant to celebrate with my Russian friends. Lena's family gave me half a day in a professional music studio to record the vocal tracks for a song I wrote for her a few months back. On Saturday we went there and it was super. I was pretty nervous to sing, but after 4 attempts, the sound engineer had enough stuff to make a mix. After 3 hours of montage, the vocals were ready and I was handed a CD. And no, I'm not going to publish it.

The next day, we were invited to a wedding of Lena's best friend. Very nice and interesting, since it was my first Russian wedding. Weddings there and here are different, but I'll not go into the details now. The experience itself was great. On Monday, the inevitable moment came to fly back. Always hard, but I managed.

The second part of my birthday was the Dutch version. I invited some Dutch friends and we celebrated at my house. The atmosphere was nice, although the party turned out to be a circle-party (typical Dutch party where people sit in a circle talking and I actually hate these kinds of parties), but the all beer and wine finished, someone puked and most were pretty drunk. After midnight we went out to the city center to continue celebrating. The pinnacle of the evening was a round of Vodka, where one of my friends decided to not pour the drink into his mouth, but splashed it into his eyes. Zanas!

Published at November 27, 2008 in english, life, russia and travel. 0 Comments

Life update

Just a quick update on life. Currently, I'm very busy finishing a project for one of my customers, which will be done by the 14th of October. A new project is already in the pipeline, for which I'm very eager to start with. The project will be about implementing a brand new Ruby on Rails application and I really can't wait to do some hardcore coding again. Being a freelance developer allows me to pick the projects I really like and after 6 months of managing people and talking a lot in meetings, it's time to dive into some code again. Next to that, there is another upcoming project that I started with a good friend of mine last year, but is now getting very serious. The planning is to rent some office space and start coding to finish the product before January.

For the rest, things are going well. Last weekend I travelled to St. Petersburg again (for obvious reasons). The weekend was so great. The only thing we did was visit a birthday party of some friends and the rest was just spending time together. I decided to fly from Dusseldorf this time, since it was a lot cheaper than from Amsterdam and the scheduled times were also much better (Friday in the afternoon and back on late Sunday evening). I flew with BlueWings, a German budget company, and the service was nice.

The day after returning, I suffered my usual post-Russia depression, but now I'm doing fine. I know that this was not the last time.

Published at September 10, 2008 in life, russia, travel and work. 0 Comments

And back online..

Today I realized that it's been over a month that I've blogged anything here. Lately, I've been kind of busy and spend less time online. Also other media have suffered my absence latetely. Various people even asked if I'm ok and asked about stories about NYC and Russia.

Actually, nothing happened. I'm ok, but kind of busy lately. In short, NYC was great; the HOPE conference was awesome with a lot of interesting speakers, a lot of fun stuff to do and to see. I really enjoyed my time there. The rest of NYC was also nice; I saw the stuff I didn't see before (couple of museums, neighborhoods, building) and with Bart and Ronald, I had a trip (in a Ford Mustang) to Atlantic City.

Russia was also great. Of course, the main thing was my girl and this was awesome. Therefore I'm back in Russia in the beginning of September. Next to that, I took extra Russian classes. I learned a lot, maybe too much. I really need to go over the lessons again to process the boost of information I got.

After coming back home, I really missed Russia. Obiously, her, but also all other people I got to know, the food, the language, the city. So, now I'm still recovering. Since a lot of people that work in my projects were on a holiday over the last two weeks, I've been working a lot to fill in for some of them, but now most of them are back and things are getting back to normal.

All in all, I'm feeling ok, maybe a bit tired from last weeks. I didn't really take rest during my holidays, so I think I'll need to recharge a bit over the coming weekends. And obviously, I can't wait to travel to Russia again!

For the people that missed me online: I'm back :)

Published at August 18, 2008 in english, life, russia and travel. 1 Comment

Birthday in Russia

Last week was a busy, but great one. Friday morning, Jur and I took the train from Utrecht CS to Schiphol airport. There we first had to pick up our tickets, since Rossiya Air doesn't do the nifty e-ticketing yet. After the woman behind the counter finally found our tickets, it was check-in time. All went smoothly and after jumping the queue at the passport control by waving our Privium passes, we had some time to buy stuff at the duty free shops. Since Jur didn't have a present for Elena yet and we needed some extra orange stuff for the upcoming match we spent some money in one of the many souvenir shops that are at the Schiphol terminals. The rest was pretty standard; walking to the gate and finally boarding the plane.

After 2.5 hours in the air, we arrived at St. Peterburg airport. Customs took some time, but finally I saw her again in the arrival hall! It had only been 2 weeks since we'd been apart again, but I was so glad to see her again. By bus and metro we went to the apartments we rented and there, we had to say goodbye to Elena, since she had snuk out of the office and had to finish some work until 21:00. This was OK, since there was some unfinished business I had to take care of. First we went to the bakery to pay for the birthday cake I ordered. Katja, a friend of Elena helped me with preparing earlier on and helped me communicating with the girls at the bakery, but only by phone. Finally I payed and understood that the cake (with Miffy/Nijntje on it) would be ready at 16:00 the next day.

Next stop was the restaurant. I called them before and already made a reservation for 15 to 20 people, but they asked me to come to the restaurant before Saturday to discuss the evening. Since we had about 3 hours to take care of this and the restaurant was 45 minute drive from the city center, we took the metro to a train station on the north side of the city from where we wanted to take a train. When we arrived at the metro station we discovered that we took a big detour and found out that we just missed the train by 5 minutes. The next train would go an hour later, so we decided to take a taxi to the restaurant. After about 30 minutes we arrived there and had a nice meeting with an English speaking waitress and the manager. We created a menu and talked about all things involved. At first, the manager didn't allow us to bring our own cake, but after giving her a very sweet look, she finally agreed. All set, we took a bus back to the city and picked up Elena from her work. Here we met some people I worked with in a previous project and finally went to have dinner.

After dinner, Elena showed us a part of the city, next to the Neva river, where all sorts of festivities were, since it was the day that a lot of high school kids graduated. There was a big concert next to the river and lots of people looking at boats on the river. The atmosphere was very good and all people were happy. During this time of year, the sun doesn't go down and I found it pretty awkward to be on the street at midnight without complete darkness. The sun is somewhere on the horizon at 2 o'clock in the morning and it never gets completely dark.

Somewhere at 1 AM, Elena had to go home, so I decided to bring her (we took a car) and went back to the apartment. Jur and I decided to go out for a beer and finally found a nice pub where we could sit outside. Then it was off to bed.

The next day, Jur and I went to get a car we rented, but we couldn't find the rental place so we decided to skip this because we didn't need a car anyway. After, I went to Elena's house to meet her parents for the first time. I'm not a hero when it comes to the meet-the-parents-thing, but now I was even more nervous, since I didn't know what to expect in terms of the language barrier and cultural differences, but finally everything turned out very well. I felt very welcome and after the tour around the house, I had nice conversations with both Elena's mom and dad. I felt at home very quickly.

After some time Elena had to go to the hairdresser to get a new haircut for the evening and I went with her. The girl at the salon did a great job and she looked stunning. After she changed clothes at home we were off to go to celebrate her birthday. First we took a taxi to the apartment, so I could change my clothes and met there Oleg, a friend of Elena. I quickly went to get the cake, which turned out great. Then we took a taxi to the restaurant.

The restaurant was about 40 minutes by taxi and we arrived secondly, just after Julia and her boyfriend Andrei. The table was made and the menu was printed and closed with a seal. The cake was put in to the fridge by the staff. In 30 minutes all guests were there and the party started. Elena got a load of gifts from her friends and lots of flowers. For starters, guests could choose from the menu and as a main course the restaurant prepared a big meat and fish dish, a couple of big plates on the table where people could take from. The food was really good and very tasty and also the service was super. Dirty cutlery was replaced instantly and our waitress was very friendly, but also nice to look at. Especially Jur found her very interesting. Somewhere during the evening, Elena whispered to me that she would get the girls phone number if Jur didn't ask himself. As far as I know, everybody had fun and enjoyed the food, drinks and talks. After dinner we went for a quick walk to the beach, just to look at the sun going down and get some fresh air.

When we got back after 30 minutes, the soccer match between the Netherlands and Russia was about to start. Before, we had decided to watch it at the restaurant, since they had put up a big screen. Even though Jur and I were the only Dutch guys there, we still were dressed in orange. The match was very exciting, but finally Russia turned out to be the stronger team. Too bad for my country, but I think we were lucky to be in Russia when they won and not back home, since the party then really started. People dancing, shouting, singing and going completely crazy. One random guy in the restaurant came to us to thank for the game and was shouting "My friends! My friends" all the time. After taking some pictures with him, I decided to give him my orange "Holland" cap. After some time, we decided to go, but not before Elena got the waitress' (called Maria) number for Jur.  We got a ride from Slava back to the apartment. Since I was completely exhausted, I decided to go to sleep, while Jur decided to go out. He wanted to go to the city center, but since all bridges open during the night, his ride there took him over an hour, but apparently he had a great time there, partying with people in the street.

The next day, I spent some time with Elena in the city center, before going to her parents house again for dinner. This time, Jur joined us also and we had great Middle Asian food, prepared by Elena's dad. After lots of nice stories from her parents, we went back to the city center to check St. Pete's night life. Finally we ended up in a place called Rossi's with lots of girls on the dance floor. After some time, Elena said goodbye, for she was very tired. Jur and I stayed until very late and drank too much.

The day after, we decided to go to Peterhof, the Russian Versaille, but first, Jur and I had to go to some office to get a registration for our visa. After we met with Elena to go to Peterhof. At first, Maria would join us, but since she had exams, she didn't have time. However, she told us that I had left my credit card at the restaurant, but that she woulld take it with her, so we could get it from her. By hydrofoil boat it took about 30 minutes to arrive at Peterhof, which is located on the south side of Spb. Peterhof is a lovely place with lots of fountains, golden statues and nice trees. After walking around for some time and taking pictures, we took a bus back to the city, where we had Sushi at a great restaurant and some cocktails at the 7SkyBar, a trendy bar located on the top floor of a big shopping mall. After this I went back and off to bed and Jur decided to go to the city again to party.

The following day there was news that the invitation for my Russian business visa was ready. Also, we had to get our registration. First Jur and I went to the registration office, only to find out that the registration wasn't finished, but should be picked up later that day. Jur would take care of this after his visit to the Hermitage museum. Me and Elena met in a different part of the city to get my invitation. After this, Maria called where we could meet her so she could give me back my credit card. We met her, but she didn't have much time to talk, because she was going to celebrate her holiday, but told us that we should really call her next time we were in Russia. Then Elena en I went to her parents place for dinner again. Jur was also invited, but spent 2 hours in the queue for the Hermitage, so he decided to get some dinner by himself after the museum. After lovely dinner and a nice conversation, we went to the theater to watch Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Elena got two tickets from her colleagues for this beautiful ballet. Since we were in a big traffic jam while driving there, we were about 10 minutes late. Our tickets said that we had places in a lodge somewhere, but since we were late, they put us in a very nice place, just in front of the stage!

After the ballet, I went back to the apartment again and said goodbye to Elena. On the way, I bought some beers to celebrate our great time in Spb with Jur. At the apartment we drank a bit, just until Jur got a text message from a girl he had met in a taxi, the night before, asking him to join her at a birthday party somewhere in the center. Even though it was going to be a short night (we had to get a taxi at 6 AM back to the airport), he decided to go there anyway. I packed my stuff and fell sound a sleep at 1 AM, for I was exhausted.

At 5:45, my alarm clock sounded and I got up, took a quick shower and waited for the taxi. Elena called that we should go downstairs, because she arrived. 30 minutes we were at the airport. After standing in a queue for security it was time to say goodbye. This part is always the hardest. After a long kiss, I finally went through security. Before check-in we had to wait again in a very big queue, but finally we checked in our stuff. Then through customs, security again and then to the airplane.

Some 2.5 hours later, I arrived on Dutch soil again. Completely exhausted, but it was all worth it. The hardest is the emptiness that sets in after saying goodbye, but I'm going back to Russia in 25 days. I decided to shorten my trip to NYC by one week and then go to see my girl again.

Published at June 29, 2008 in english, frustrations, fun, life, russia and travel. 0 Comments

Euro 2008 – Russia vs the Netherlands?

Looks like things are really coming together. As I wrote before, I'll be in Saint-Petersburg the coming weekend. People who watch the Euro 2008 soccer championship know that the Netherlands is through to the quarter finals, but who will they play there? Well, this really depends on who will win the match Russia vs Sweden. The one who wins will be second in that group and will play the quarter finals agains the Netherlands. Obviously, I hope that Russia will win, but not only because I have a special connection with that country, but also because it would be very nice to watch that game in Russia itself.

I've already spoken about this with a Russian friend of mine and he already booked seats at a sports bar, somewhere in the city center of Saint-Petersburg. Elena also wants to see this match, so after her birthday, we will go there to watch the game.

Published at June 16, 2008 in english, life, russia and travel. 3 Comments