Thursday night

I was out eating tonight, and drinking beer. I was with good friends and colleagues, men and women. Some of them (maybe one or two) are sexy, most of them are not. That's another story. Maybe i will write more about this later.

We were in the old brewery. They've got rid of all the  bulk volume pale lager productions. It's been moved to a big modern brewery in the south. That's good. Now they're making more interesting craft beers. Test brews, some of them very good. I had four beers, enjoyed them all.

When we left, I decided to walk back home, It's not very far, maybe 1/2 hour. I walked through town, and I realized we're really living in a small town. It's advantageous in many ways, no traffic jam and short commutes. I also realized that the town center is quite dead at night on the week days.

I passed by empty restaurants and almost empty bars, just a few people drinking beer and watching the Europa League football in the sports bars. That's life. Not much happening, we're stuck in our caves. I need to do something about this, before it's too late. Get out. Get away.

(Picture taken while walking back home tonight. The cabin cruisers look a little bit weird next to the snow-covered streets, I think. Many things are weird tonight.)

Houses of God and cheese and imperial stout

I've been a little bit sick lately, so we didn't go skiing in the mountains this weekend. Today I went for a walk downtown, to return some books to the public library.  The sun was shining, and it was a nice day for walking. Apparently many people thought the same, because the streets were crowded. There were tall people and short people, skinny people and fat people. All of them carrying bags and backpacks with stuff they had bought.

I took a quick tour around downtown. I visited a shop were I bought a camembert cheese, produced by a local farm. Then, in a different store, I bought a bottle of porter and an imperial stout. The porter was from the town were i live now. The imperial stout was imported, brewed in Denver, Colorado, were I lived for a while in the past. It was a great place to live, by the way.

On the way back home, I passed by the old cathedral. On the other side of the street, the Catholics are building a new church. God is absent in both places. He's just a product of human fantasy, unlike the cheese and the beer I bought, which are real.

The old cathedral was Catholic too, from the time it was built 900 years ago, until the last arch bishop fled from the reformation in the 16th century. Now the Catholics are back. That's fine with me. I just wonder why they have to build a new church. We have plenty of churches already. In most of them both the congregation and God are absent. We could rather have given the Catholics one of the existing churches, giving back some of the property they lost in the reformation.

(Picture taken on my walk today. The old cathedral to the right, the new Catholic church, with the scaffolds, to the left). 

Bar math

A couple of days ago I met with some friends and colleagues in a bar to have a beer.  We had a good meal in restaurant nearby, and then we went to another bar for another beer.

We discussed a science problem and some ideas for have to solve it. I found a pen in my pocket, and got a napkin to sketch up the solution. We had a good time with dark beers and some interesting bar math. That’s the kind of things we do from time to time.

When I jumped on my bike to go home an hour after midnight, it was still light outside. It's summer, and at this time of the year it’s not really getting dark at all >:)

(Picture taken with my cell phone in the bar)  

Dubinin's out of Dubinin Dark

The traffic jam in Moscow is bad. The metro is good, but crowded. I read somewhere that the Moscow metro transports 9 million people every day. 

When working in Moscow, we often stay in a 4-star Marriott hotel just a five minute walk from the office. Then we avoid both the traffic jam and the metro-crowds.

At 8 o'clock in the morning, we meet the rush outside of the railway station. Everybody appear to be going the opposite way. Then we cross under the street, through a tunnel with small underground shops, offering newspapers and tooth paste and matryoshkas (the Russian nested wooden dolls).

Every morning the same guy is advertising cheep hostels, the same man sitting on a chair playing accordion, and the same old peg-legged woman is begging for money.

Fashion-flashing women and designer-suit men are hurrying to the law firms and merchant banks.

Moscow has become a modern city in good and bad. The middle-class is growing. The rich are richer and the poor are poorer than they used to be in the Soviet days.

We work long days, and then walk the same way back to the hotel at night.

We often stop by at Dubinin Restaurant to get some food. Up the stairs to the 2nd floor, smokers to the left, non -smokers to the right. TV screens on the walls show soccer games or hockey from KHL (the Russian equivalent of NHL)

Dubinin has become like our regular place. They serve some really good sausages; Dubinin's Meter if you're really hungry, and Munich sausage with sauerkraut. To drink, we order Dubinin's Dark Beer, served in a 1.5 liter jug or a 0.5 liter mug. Very good.

Last week they were out of Dubinin Dark. Sold out. Waiting for the next batch from the brewery. Fortunately there are alternatives, such as Cernovar (dark of course). The Checks know how to make beer too >:)

(I took the picture above on a sunny morning on the way to the office last week. Dubinin Restaurant is the opposite way; behind my back)

Who the Hell was Stroganoff?

I’m out traveling again. No need to say where. It’s almost become an habit. I survived another trip on the old Antonov 24, and arrived safely on Putin’s side of the border.

The driver took me to the hotel. Then I went to the café to get a dark Piligrim and something to eat. Irina was behind the counter, with a shy smile as usual. She gave me the menu, and I looked through it to find something to eat. Pizza? No, it’s terrible. Some Russian dish? I found beef Stroganoff on the menu. An international dish, but at least a Russian name.

 But who the Hell was Stroganoff? The chef who invented this popular dish? I Googled it and found the answer. Beef Stroganoff goes back to a Russian family of very rich merchants, during the Tsar era. The beer was good and the Stroganoff was eatable. I asked Irina for another beer, but not another Stroganoff.

Today I was working with our Russian collaborators. Not much to say about it, not much I’m allowed to say about it. But the lunch was good. Seafood from arctic waters. Herring and cod and caviar.

Then I started the trip back home, by car, through northern wilderness in early spring. Snow was mostly gone, but lakes still covered by ice, and no signs of green leaves yet.

We stopped at the cafe in Titovka, to get a cup of bad instant coffee and a rest. It’s become a habit.

When we passed through the Army town of Sputnik, I asked the driver if he had been in military service. I told him I had, in the navy, during the cold war (I will write about my merits in battle some time later).

 “You were our enemies,” I said, “the evil empire in the east.”

 Then we got a good laugh, on our way to the border between two countries that have never been at war.

 (Some pictures I took today, from top to bottom: Murmansk seen from the other side of the fjord. The cafe in Titovka, made from 3-4 old yellow railroad cars tied together. Not much of a cafe, but you can get a cup of coffee or a coke, and use the restroom for 15 Rubles. Nikel seen from the road ()my driver don't want to stop there). It was a sunny day, but the town was obscured by the smoke from the Nickel factory.)

Piligrim and pizza

It was a beautiful day in the north. Blue sky, sunny and no wind. I got off the plane and met with the driver. We got through the three checkpoints, filling out forms, checking passport and visa, and passport again.

It's always a somewhat stressing procedure. Something wrong? No. It's like a relief when you hear the sound of the passport being stamped by the officer behind the counter.

Then, we were on the way to Murmansk, about four hours drive, with Russian pop music from Radio Vania. We passed Nikel, which almost looked cozy today, and then Zapolyarny, Pechenga and Sputnik, where the road was incredibly bad; bumpy gravel road for some kilometers.

We passed through beautiful arctic landscapes. Not spectacular like the Colorado Rockies or the Swiss Alps, just overwhelming by its endlessness. Huge boulders and moraines, left behind by the glaciers that carved the landscape. Wide valleys and low and wavy hills, covered by snow and scattered birches. There are no leaves on the trees yet. Too early in the spring. It's still a month or more till the trees become green.

Finally, we passed the bridge across the fjord, and entered Murmansk, the world's largest city north of the Arctic Circle. The population is about 300.000, down from 500.000 in the Soviet days.

I checked into the hotel, and then went to the cafe to get something to eat. Irina was behind the counter, as usual. Black hair, red lips, white waitress-shirt with a red scarf. She's a chubby and cute girl. Always smiling, though she's working day and night for a salary which is just a fraction of mine. Life is not fair, and will never be.

I ordered something they called pizza, and a dark beer. Piligrim, local beer from Murmansk. The full name is “Piligrim Nord Svetloye”, according to the text on the bottle. Bad pizza, good beer. Very good beer. One of my favorites.

And I left quite some tips for Irina when I left. I think she deserves it >:)

(Some pictures I took today: An old mine in the hillside right outside Nikel. View of Murmansk from my hotel; note the Stalinist concrete blocks in the suburb on the hill; still decorated with old communist symbols,as you can see when you get close. A bottle of Piligrim dark beer on my table in the cafe, still waiting for the so-called pizza, and Irina behind the bar, counting today's income in the cashier machine.)