Yet another spring day in Petro

I can hardly be called patriot but there is almost nothing can make me leave my country. I do not care about Russian slovenliness and alcoholism, about traditional bureaucracy, about lack of democracy and freedom of speech, about difficulties to go abroad, about horrors of GULAG, about United Russia party and about prime-minister Putin personally. But there is one thing I care about. This is our long Russian winter.
I have nothing against winter if it would be a month or two long. In this case I would even like it. But on the other hand it makes spring more desirable. This is my favorite time of year. And I do not care that it is all wet and the garbage soon appear from thawing snow. The main thing the sun starts to give out warmth and fresh green leaves coming soon together with bird singing. Yet March is just another winter month in Karelia.
But despite the low temperature sun is shining more an more so it allows me to check my new camera while walking around the Petrozavodsk.

Small streets come blue


So are the bigger ones


In a couple of months this branch will be covered with new season leaves


Icicles are shining of sum


This sculpture seem to wait for love


Even Peter the Great comes more bright under the spring sun


Those “freaks” are the gift of our sister city Duluth. As they are called at us “rachitis fight against the spider web”. Look, they are going to put it down to the ice soon.


The spring is the time to take away the garbage. There is something to take away down there!


And a little wooden man is looking at something really-really surprising. The spring is coming soon :)

Redecoration

The redecoration started on my workplace. Within the nearest two weeks they must paint the ceiling and walls and chenge the linoleum on the floor.

This is how my workplace lokked like a week ago:



This is how it looks right now:



Figure 3 coming in April. :)

Now I ahve to spend most of working time at home. The saddest thing now I am limited in Internet using.

Frosty Karelian spring

This is a view from the window at my workplace. It is snowing again but the temperature is about Celsius zero so everything’s thawing up and the street is all wet black. I hate this kind of weather with liquid snow. Unfortunately it comes more and more often in the winters. Global warming or just winters of childhood seem to be more winterish? Generally I have nothing against winters but WTH they are so loooooong at us? I guess there are spring flowers in Central Europe already. While at us it is snowing and snowing again.
Nevertheless this is a spring. And the first spring feature are seagulls coming back to Petrozavodsk. The fresh snow is very good to clean carpets so I used this opportunity in Sunday. And I saw seagulls while cleaning the carpet at the yard. They are going to crowd the dumpsters soon and wake me up in the mornings with their awful shouts. Then the snow will thaw and there will be some fresh leaves on the trees. But this gonna be later. We have our frosty Karelian spring today.

Just came from Moscow

Now I am back after spending my days-off in Moscow. I used to live there during my very young days and I probably still love it yet it is not among my favorite cities. You know, Moscow has changed a lot after I left it and I am not sure those changes are attractive for me. Too much of advertisement, too high prices, too unsuitable for life. Yet spending few days there sometimes is all right and I like it.

The point of this Moscow trip was visiting the game for football Super Cup of Russia, my beloved CSKA vs Rubin Kazan i.e. champion of Russia. The game was on Luzhniki stadium which is the biggest stadium in Russia. It is not so big like Maracana, of cause but nevertheless it is quite impressive. Some years ago the group of architects (strange way there was the current mayor of Moscow Yuriy Luzhkov among them) made the reconstruction with building the roof over the tribunes. I dunno how they made this project but after completing the reconstruction they found there is not enough of sunlight inside the stadium so grass can not grow there anymore. Then the field was replaced by artificial one and the games on frozen plastic became a true nightmare for European teams coming Moscow to play against Moscow teams.

The only exception was the final game of European Champions League in 2008 held in Moscow. A natural sward was constructed on Luzhniki stadium specially for this game. But after that this sward mysteriously disappeared unknown direction and all the games are on plastic again.






There are few pictures. Pity, I had no my camera with me so I have to took them using something camera-like in my phone.

Ah, the result. We won. :)

Hic sunt papputhi

Ok. More complicated exercise is started. Now my blog in Russian is followed by my blog in English (or should I say, in American?). I am going to post something here at least once a week. At least some pictures.

Who am I? My name is Sergey and (as you can guess) I live in Russia. This is a city in the North-West of the country called Petrozavodsk where I live. It’s a small nice city yet it is a capital of an autonomous Republic of Karelia. I think this is the best place in the world. Yet IMHO the winter could be a bit shorter at us.

What am I? I work as an ecology researcher (senior researcher to put it correct) in a local branch of Russian Academy of Science. I love my job the same way I love my City.

What or who is the “pappoth”? This is my nickname meaning a big wooly animal slightly related to mammoths just like “poppa” related to “momma”. And see, unlike extinct mammoths, pappoths are still alive and happy with their quite Nordic life.

The name of the blog is originated from Latin words “Hic sunt dragones” (Dragons live here) put for unexplored lands by medieval map makers. To my shame I am not sure if I wrote it correct. The plural from “papputhus” must be “papputhi” but what about the case… Oh, god I am not so good in Latin.