(Please back date to 2/21/13)
I decided to leave the soviet style Hotel Sever and head for the hostel this morning. No problems. The hostel is located in a small apartment off Mira Prospekt in the center of the city. It is run by a very helpful Russian man named Anotoliy, whose English is spoken fluently, and who also runs tours of the city and the surrounding nature reserve. So I picked his brain all morning for local information and decided that today would be the perfect day to venture out to the local ski resort, Bobroviy Log, across the Yenesei River from the city, in the Stolby Nature Reserve. I went with the hostel's other resident, Mikhail, who came to Krasnoyarsk from Moscow in order to begin a week's worth of eye surgery. Mikhail works in the IT business and so his English is quite good. He wants to improve his fluency in English and someday move to Canada to start a business. He thought Canada would be a nice place to go because the American marketplace is too big and too competitive. But he had never been to Canada before (he had traveled once to NYC, Orlando, and LA) and had loads of questions for me about the living conditions, which cities are best, where is good for starting a business, etc. I can't attest for the marketplace situation in Canada (or the US for that matter - I'm no expert), and I haven't been to Canada that many times that I would be very helpful, but I told him I liked Vancouver very much, that it was a beautiful place, not too expensive, the people are very, very friendly, and that it is very much an international city, home to many immigrants, mainly Asians. He liked the idea of moving there more and more. I also told him I had been to Montreal and I also liked that city very much but then he said, "But they speak French, no? I'm not learning French." I said, "Fair point." I think I was the first North American that he had discussed his plans with.
Before setting off on our snowboarding adventure, we went to a place called the English School Cafe, a small restaurant, kind of swanky, in the stone and brick cellar of one of the old buildings downtown for lunch. The staff all speak English and the cafe is renowned in the city as being the place to go for English language events. The cafe works in collaboration with the hostel owner, Anotoliy, to send foreigners there, if they like, to meet local Russians, mainly students, practicing their English. The students get to speak to English speakers and the travelers get to talk to locals - a pretty good setup. But Anotoliy also gives his hostel goers these coupon vouchers that get you free food at the cafe. So Mikhail and I went there for a bite.
We continued to discuss the prospect of his moving and starting a business in Canada. I asked him if it was hard to get visas to visit these places (he had traveled on his own to Southeast Asia, the US as I stated earlier, and around Europe a bit) and he said yes, it is very hard to obtain visas. Apparently, the only way immigration officers will approve a visa request (to anywhere) to Russian citizens who want to leave the country, is if they have sound documentation that ensures the officials that the Russian citizen will eventually come back (in other words, that they will not defect). You need to prove, through documents, that you have a steady job, a relatively high and stable salary, an apartment or some residence, proof that you pay taxes and bills, and proof of any big assets that you own, like a car. So when Mikhail traveled to southeast Asia, he had to go through this process. Now it seems to reason that when you see a Russian traveler (as you often do in Southeast Asia) it is safe to assume that they are rich and have something to come back to in Russia. An interesting process. I guess it is easy for Americans to obtain visas for traveling or work because there is a reasonable assumption that they will come back. Any even if they didn't, there is no shortage of people wanting to enter the US and stay. It was an interesting look on Russia.
But we finished our lunch (of salad: tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream, and of soup: pea soup with bits of ham, and a stew of chicken hearts and potatoes, again weird sounding but truly excellent) and returned to the hostel to pick up my things. Luckily, I came well prepared to Siberia with most of my snowboarding gear from home to keep me warm. Perfect if you want to go snowboarding in Siberia.
We hopped the local bus which drove across the river to the south and into the mountains to the resort. The slopes were big and empty and beautiful. Russian housey trance techno (it's a hard genre to describe - but I actually kind of like it) boomed through the speakers, and we ducked into the lodge to inquire about rentals. Mikhail had never snowboarded before, so he asked me if I could teach him. I said, oh yeah. So we rented some boards and took the easier of the two lifts up the mountain. To be honest, for a first timer, he was doing pretty well. Especially when you consider my Americanized snowboarding terms were hard for Mikhail to interpret. I think he missed the snowboarding chapter in his English vocabulary school books. But considering he went with nothing more than a pair of jeans and some leather gloves, he fell relatively few times and made it down the mountain. I was impressed - his background was cross-country skiing. For the other runs, I let him practice on his own and I hit some of the other higher, more tricky slopes on the other lift.
At the top of the higher of the two lifts you could get a very nice panoramic view of the city to the west and the Stolby nature reserve to the south and east. We stayed late, late enough to experience Siberian night boarding and to have made two separate visits to the lodge cafe for tea and pastries. It was a pretty stellar day. (Side note: I love how snowboarding as a culture spans across borders. A snowboarder is a snowboarder, whether American or Russian or whatever. That laid back, cool snowboarding vibe is the same. Pretty cool to find that crowd here too in Siberia.) I picked up a nice Krasnoyarsk fridge magnetic that has a picture of the resort and says, "бобровый лог фанпарк" or Bobloviy Log Fun Park, and Mikhail and I hopped the bus back into town and back to the hostel.
I'm back at the hostel now and super exhausted from the snowboarding (again, I think I've gotten pretty out of shape). And I again am at the point where I can barely keep my eyes open. And my shoulder that was feeling a little better after my disastrous collision with a meter's worth of ice a few days ago, is now not feeling better, but a little worse. I guess even though you don't really use your arms for snowboarding, and I had no spills on the slopes today, you still keep the muscles tense in order to help maintain your balance, which is everything on a snowboard. It's like saying you could play soccer with a broken shoulder because you don't use your hands - maybe that's not the best metaphor... Either way tensing up the muscles in your shoulders all day is not exactly a recipe that encourages healing. So I need to take it easy for a little while. But I think it was totally worth it - Siberian snowboarding, after all.
Mikhail goes into eye surgery tomorrow (yikes) and I'll spend the day relaxing and catching up on emails. I'll try and walk around a bit and see some of the local sites. But I'm going to sleep for a long time first.
I decided to leave the soviet style Hotel Sever and head for the hostel this morning. No problems. The hostel is located in a small apartment off Mira Prospekt in the center of the city. It is run by a very helpful Russian man named Anotoliy, whose English is spoken fluently, and who also runs tours of the city and the surrounding nature reserve. So I picked his brain all morning for local information and decided that today would be the perfect day to venture out to the local ski resort, Bobroviy Log, across the Yenesei River from the city, in the Stolby Nature Reserve. I went with the hostel's other resident, Mikhail, who came to Krasnoyarsk from Moscow in order to begin a week's worth of eye surgery. Mikhail works in the IT business and so his English is quite good. He wants to improve his fluency in English and someday move to Canada to start a business. He thought Canada would be a nice place to go because the American marketplace is too big and too competitive. But he had never been to Canada before (he had traveled once to NYC, Orlando, and LA) and had loads of questions for me about the living conditions, which cities are best, where is good for starting a business, etc. I can't attest for the marketplace situation in Canada (or the US for that matter - I'm no expert), and I haven't been to Canada that many times that I would be very helpful, but I told him I liked Vancouver very much, that it was a beautiful place, not too expensive, the people are very, very friendly, and that it is very much an international city, home to many immigrants, mainly Asians. He liked the idea of moving there more and more. I also told him I had been to Montreal and I also liked that city very much but then he said, "But they speak French, no? I'm not learning French." I said, "Fair point." I think I was the first North American that he had discussed his plans with.
Before setting off on our snowboarding adventure, we went to a place called the English School Cafe, a small restaurant, kind of swanky, in the stone and brick cellar of one of the old buildings downtown for lunch. The staff all speak English and the cafe is renowned in the city as being the place to go for English language events. The cafe works in collaboration with the hostel owner, Anotoliy, to send foreigners there, if they like, to meet local Russians, mainly students, practicing their English. The students get to speak to English speakers and the travelers get to talk to locals - a pretty good setup. But Anotoliy also gives his hostel goers these coupon vouchers that get you free food at the cafe. So Mikhail and I went there for a bite.
We continued to discuss the prospect of his moving and starting a business in Canada. I asked him if it was hard to get visas to visit these places (he had traveled on his own to Southeast Asia, the US as I stated earlier, and around Europe a bit) and he said yes, it is very hard to obtain visas. Apparently, the only way immigration officers will approve a visa request (to anywhere) to Russian citizens who want to leave the country, is if they have sound documentation that ensures the officials that the Russian citizen will eventually come back (in other words, that they will not defect). You need to prove, through documents, that you have a steady job, a relatively high and stable salary, an apartment or some residence, proof that you pay taxes and bills, and proof of any big assets that you own, like a car. So when Mikhail traveled to southeast Asia, he had to go through this process. Now it seems to reason that when you see a Russian traveler (as you often do in Southeast Asia) it is safe to assume that they are rich and have something to come back to in Russia. An interesting process. I guess it is easy for Americans to obtain visas for traveling or work because there is a reasonable assumption that they will come back. Any even if they didn't, there is no shortage of people wanting to enter the US and stay. It was an interesting look on Russia.
But we finished our lunch (of salad: tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream, and of soup: pea soup with bits of ham, and a stew of chicken hearts and potatoes, again weird sounding but truly excellent) and returned to the hostel to pick up my things. Luckily, I came well prepared to Siberia with most of my snowboarding gear from home to keep me warm. Perfect if you want to go snowboarding in Siberia.
We hopped the local bus which drove across the river to the south and into the mountains to the resort. The slopes were big and empty and beautiful. Russian housey trance techno (it's a hard genre to describe - but I actually kind of like it) boomed through the speakers, and we ducked into the lodge to inquire about rentals. Mikhail had never snowboarded before, so he asked me if I could teach him. I said, oh yeah. So we rented some boards and took the easier of the two lifts up the mountain. To be honest, for a first timer, he was doing pretty well. Especially when you consider my Americanized snowboarding terms were hard for Mikhail to interpret. I think he missed the snowboarding chapter in his English vocabulary school books. But considering he went with nothing more than a pair of jeans and some leather gloves, he fell relatively few times and made it down the mountain. I was impressed - his background was cross-country skiing. For the other runs, I let him practice on his own and I hit some of the other higher, more tricky slopes on the other lift.
At the top of the higher of the two lifts you could get a very nice panoramic view of the city to the west and the Stolby nature reserve to the south and east. We stayed late, late enough to experience Siberian night boarding and to have made two separate visits to the lodge cafe for tea and pastries. It was a pretty stellar day. (Side note: I love how snowboarding as a culture spans across borders. A snowboarder is a snowboarder, whether American or Russian or whatever. That laid back, cool snowboarding vibe is the same. Pretty cool to find that crowd here too in Siberia.) I picked up a nice Krasnoyarsk fridge magnetic that has a picture of the resort and says, "бобровый лог фанпарк" or Bobloviy Log Fun Park, and Mikhail and I hopped the bus back into town and back to the hostel.
 |
| One of the slopes at Bobroviy Log |
 |
| Mikhail, my Russian snowboarding protoge |
 |
| Snow clouds brewing over the resort |
 |
| A view of Krasnoyarsk from atop the ski slope |
 |
| Me on my board from the top, admiring the view |
 |
| An action packed Russian billboard |
Mikhail goes into eye surgery tomorrow (yikes) and I'll spend the day relaxing and catching up on emails. I'll try and walk around a bit and see some of the local sites. But I'm going to sleep for a long time first.
No comments:
Post a Comment