Something that is very interesting while traveling Russia is the unheard of growth everywhere that you see while traveling. I mean unbelievable growth of businesses. Businesses from all over the world…
The real interest in this growth for me started the last train trip to Ukraine. I was on a day time train and had a good window seat. I was stunned at the factories being built and warehouses being built. There had to have been at one point 50 km of nothing but newly built warehouses in various stages of completion. I recognized many German names among the companies and one of the biggest warehouses that I have ever seen in my life belonged to the Broen company of Denmark. I quit counting at a hundred docks for big tractor trailer rigs in a row…
This interest that I filed away in my head, extended over into this latest trip that Sveta and I just took to our village. I spent the driving part of the trip studying the changes in business along the way to our village. Now we travel about 400 km on way so we get a good look at what is happening way down south of Moscow…
Sveta and I saw many upon many new warehouses being built and all kinds of new economic growth happening on our excursion to our village. One thing that was a pleasant surprise was the amounts of new roads being built and the highways that we traveled this time were tip top modern highways. Road construction everywhere…
One village near the little village that we go to had a huge chicken farm. It was brand smacking new. I saw it last year when the beginnings of the farm was being started and I had no idea at that time what it was. But now it is clear that it is a chicken farm. It looks like a modern American chicken farm in America. They have neglected to put up a sign telling us who owns this farm. But it is fenced and guarded and I know what a modern Chicken farm looks like. This is in fact a antibiotics fed chicken farm for mass produced very fat unhealthy chicken meat. Looks like someone has figured out how to get by the Russian rules on chicken. And I will lay money on the fact that an American company is behind it… 🙁
The plain fact is that everywhere Sveta and I went this weekend we saw new buildings, new businesses, new construction and thriving older businesses. I saw lots of new tractors in the fields and a whole bunch more old fields opened up and planted this year. In fact Sveta and I saw hundreds of new farm trucks running the roads from farm to farm. They are Russian made (KAMAZ) and orange in color. There also is four new John Deere dealers and two new Cummins dealers (Plus a Cummins factory) in the various small towns. If that tells you anything at all. (It tells me something!) It is strange to see John Deere green in the Russian fields…
I have a head for noticing things and that is what insured my survival in many past situations and excelled my business escapades. I can assure you that lots of money is being circulated in the farm arena in Russia…
On top of the money being circulated. Sveta and I noticed this time that there is kids everywhere. We are out in the middle of nowhere and we see 4 or 5, (around 8 to 12 year old) boys fishing and shooting BB guns. The classic moment was seeing three boys sitting on a creek bank with fishing poles and a little Dachshund dog protecting them and telling them how to fish… 🙂 They were 10 km from the nearest village…
That is what I call fishing…
Windows to Russia!
NATO said on Wednesday it had extended its Libyan mission for a further 90 days, after Muammar Qaddafi made it clear he would not step down, dashing hopes of a negotiated end to the uprising against his rule…