Heaven and Hell

Heaven is a place where
the French are the chefs,
the Italians are the lovers,
the Swiss are the bankers,
the Germans are the engineers,
the English are the police.

Hell is a place where
the English are the chefs,
the Swiss are the lovers,
the Italians are the bankers,
the French are the engineers,
the Germans are the police.

Some funny European stereotypes. I don't know who invented this joke. It wasn't me. I learnt it from a Californian.

If you're a Satanist, you may want to swap Heaven and Hell. That's fine with me >:)

(I took the picture above when we visited Paris three years ago. The big walk-in map of Europe was in the park by the Eiffel Tower. The lines for the lift were endless, so we walked the stairs up the tower. I don't like climbing high, so little boy and I stopped at the first level. Older boy climbed up to the second level. That's the highest you can get by the stairs.)

Metropol

I'm back in Russia, in Moscow this time, fortunately. The city is alot more interesting than Murmansk. Moscow has become a metropol, like London and Paris.

This time I travel with some colleagues, which is more fun than going alone. We even got time for an evening with great food at the Pushkin Restaurant.

We stayed in Hotel Metropol, right across the street from the Bolshoy Theatre, and two minutes walk from Red Square. It's only two stops from our Moacow office with the Metro, so getting to work is quite easy too.

Hotel Metropol is a historical hotel. It was built in 1901, before the Revolution. In 1917, when the Communists government moved from St.Petersburg to Moscow, Metropol became the residence of the Central Executive Committee.

In the 1930s it once again became a hotel. It was the place where the leaders of the Soviet Republics stayed when they came to Moscow for meetings.

On the 4th floor, where I stay, there is a photo gallery of famous people who have stayed in the hotel. I recognized Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Berthold Brecht, George Bernard Shaw, Elton John, Michael Jackson and Sharon Stone. Quite a varied lot.

It's time to go to bed. Tomorrow morning is my last breakfast at Metropol, for this time. Great food, and a harpist playing live music while we're eating. That's kind of cool, isn't it?

(Above is a picture of the harpist in Hotel Metropol. She entertained us with soft music while we were eating eggs and bacon; a nice way to start the day.)

Out of the silence

This year has been very bad when it comes to metal concerts around here. The outdoor festival on town square in May was cancelled, and there has been nothing else worth mentioning.

Also, I have hardly used my iPod at all last months. I've rather enjoyed the sound of silence, which is quite nice, actually.

But yesterday Mayhem came to town, to play at the our rock museum. The concert was very good. It was like a reverse tour of their career, starting with recent songs, and ending with some good old stuff from the Mysteriies Dom Sathanas album, iincluding the magnificent Freezing Moon of course.

Here is an early recording of Freezing Moon, with vocals by Dead (who comitted suicide in 1991) and lead guitar by Euronymus (who was murdered in 1993).

Enjoy the dark side >:)

(That's a picture I took at the concert yesterday. This time I remembered to bring my camera)

October sun

Winter is getting closer, but it's not very close yet. Only the highest mountains are capped in white snow. The trees have dropped the leaves, but down in the valley, the grass is still green.

This weekend we had some great October days in the mountains. The nights were cold, but days were warm. The sun slowly melted the frozen gound from last night.

The ponds were covered by just a thin crust of ice. We could easily break it by throwing a small rock on it.

Yesterday we had a nice hike. We reached to the top, after an hour and a half. When we opened our backpack, we found that we had forgotten our water bottles and lunch packets in the cabin.

The kids were very thisty. Fortunately, we found some patches of fresh snow.

"Make a snow ball and eat it like an apple," I said.

They did, and it killed their thirst. There's always a solution.

"Don't eat it to fast, or you will get very cold in your stomachs," I added.

They didn't listen to my advice. No problem; not for me :)

The most polluted place on the planet

The initial visits of polite negotiations are completed, the contracts are signed. Now it's about technical work, getting the job done. That's the fun part, at least for me.

I've had two full working days with our Russians partner in Murmansk, working hands on, by the computer, processing and analyzing geophysical data. Most of the time things flow nice and easy. But sometimes we get stuck in language problems. The guy I work with most of the time is technically very skilled, but he has a limited English vocabulary.

Sometimes he needs to call for another guy (or two) to help with the translation. And sometimes I get caught in a verbal crossfire, between two (or more) guys yelling at each other in Russian. It's kind of funny, and I'm just sitting there in the middle, smiling, and waiting for things to be sorted out.

Yesterday even the General Director came by. We shook hands and said hello, and nice to see you again. It's fun to meet him, because he looks just like Breczhnev, a living flashback from Soviet times.

Today I'm going back home. I checked out of the hotel this morning. I stayed in the Pi-room, room 3.14 (I'm a math fan, so I couldn't avoid noticing). The driver took me to the airport; the same route back, through the wilderness.

ABout 50 km (30 miles) before the border, we passed through the town of Nikel, first founded as a slave labor camp by Stalin.

It's probably the most polluted place on the planet.

The Kola Peninsula is very rich in minerals. There are mining settlements all over the place. In the 1930s, the worlds largest reserves of nickel were discovered, and the settlement was simply called Nikel. Today the population is about 15.000, and they all make a living form the nickel plant and the nearby mines.

The nickel plant releases huge amounts of nickel oxides and sulphur dioxide into the air. The population has big health problems, in particular respiratory deceases, and reduced life expectancy. The woods and the mountains are completely black and dead around the town. In the winter, the snow is black (the driver told me).

I can tell you, it looks really bad, like the backyard of Hell. The owner of the plant, Russian mining giant Norilsk, isn't doing much about it. Nikel is in the middle of nowhere and at the end of the world, so who cares?

I took this picture from the car when we passed by Nikel. We didn't stop, the driver didn't want to. The town is to the left and the nickel plant to the right in the picture.

On the bumpy road

Can you write a novel while riding in a car through the wilderness of northern Russia? I can't, and I didn't even bother to try, because it would just make me sick.

I have two so-called novels in progress, sometimes in progress at least. The first one is a crime novel. I ran into some problems with it, some issues with the plot, and I'm kind of loosing the overview and control of things. I'm not quite sure what to do about it, so I started on a 2nd novel, which is more like a road novel. There's no plot, I just write, and I write longhand, in a notebook that I can always bring with me when I'm travelling.

Yesterday I wen't on a business trip to Murmansk, again.

I'm a little bit reluctant to domestic flights in Russia right now. They've had too many accidents this year. In the last plane crash, a couple of weeks ago, an entire pro-hockey team from the KHL (the Russian equivalent of NHL) was wiped out. Right now Russia is even ranked behind Congo on air-line safety.

So I chose a different route this time. I took a plane as far to the north and east as I could get, close to the Russian border. It's a two-hour flight, and I spent the time working on my (2nd) novel. Great!

The novel is about two old men escaping from the nursery home. Just like me, they're going up north, but by train and ship, rather than plane and car. Since I'm just a hobby writer, I don't have much time to do research. So I have to write about things I know and places I've been.

My Russian driver picked me up at the airport, and 15 minutes later, we crossed the border to Russia, which takes some time. There are two check points, one on each side of the border. About 100 km of the road goes through a Russian military zone. So there were more check points, in and out of the military zone.

It's difficult to build good roads on the tundra. The roads get very bumpy, because of the seasonal freezing and melting of the surface layer. Sometimes it feels like riding a roller coaster. Reading and writing in the car is out of question. The only thing I could do was to talk with the driver, about fishing and hunting and cars and Soviet history. He told me interesting things about every town we passed through. That's the way I like it, when the driver acts like a tourist guide as we go along.

After a four-hour drive through the wilderness, I arrived in my hotel in Murmansk. Then I could return to my novel, finally. I wrote a few pages before I went down to the restaurant, to get some food and a dark beer (Krusovice, Czeck beer; quite good). Then I returned to my room to write some more.

It's a bad novel, I admit, but I have lots of fun writing it. I don't know where it will end yet, maybe in Murmansk. We will see.

And the title of this post is inspired by Jack Kerouac of course. His novel is a lot better than mine >:)

(Half way between the Russian border and Murmansk, we stopped in a cafe in the middle of nowhere, to get a cup of coffee and a salomon sandwich. The cafe is that little yellow building to the right in the picture. I think it's an old freight car from the rail road company.)