Windows to Russia
I found several articles on real & very old “Windows in Russia”!
The old windows in Russia are true works of art. The craftsmanship is fantastic. But as all things in the world, the art is fading away.
These are very nice preserved specimens. Most windows in villages of Russia are now collapsing and rotted!
I think that is sad.
Thanks to Krusenstern for publishing such nice examples of Russian Windows!
Kyle
CHANGES IN VISA REGULATIONS:![Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket](http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa306/kylekeeton/coffee.gif")
1. A foreign citizen can obtain a visa to Russia ONLY in the country of his/her citizenship. Exceptions include those who have a residence permit for a foreign country for the period more than 90 days. A visa may also be issued in a country other than an applicant’s own in case of urgent necessity, such as participating in international, governmental, official, scientific, sport and cultural events. A final decision in these cases would be left up to the consulate.
2. A multiple entry business visa allows nationals of all countries to stay in Russia up to 90 days out of the period of 180 days.
Attention: a multiple entry visa is only available for people who have been issued a Russian visa before.
A copy of your previous Russian visa should be enclosed in your application for a multiple entry invitation.
If this is your first visit, you are only eligible to obtain a single or double entry visa for 1 to 3 months.
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/12/russia-visa-terror-continues.h
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/11/russian-visa-rules-are-changin
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/11/russian-consulate-locator.html
(Reuters)
HELSINKI — Russian trucks have lined up for 100 kilometers at the Finnish border ahead of the holiday season, prompting Helsinki to ask the European Union for help eliminating the record blockage.
While trucks are stuck at the border, retailers in Russia and the transportation firms are losing money, and local people are afraid to drive on the roads with one lane blocked by trucks……(Click; read more for rest of article!)
Finland’s government said Friday that Transportation Minister Anu Vehvilainen had pleaded for the European Commission to influence Russia to reduce the traffic blockage by increasing electronic customs services, reducing border bureaucracy and developing roads on the Russian side.
Truck lines were about 50 kilometers long on Sunday morning at Finland’s busiest border, Vaalimaa, east of Helsinki. They extended to more than 100 kilometers late Saturday, the Finnish Road Administration said.
“They now probably beat all records so far. A year ago the situation was similarly tough,” senior road administration official Jukka Tamminen said Sunday.
Tamminen said he expected the lines to ease and nearly dissolve by Monday.
Customs officials at Vaalimaa have said there were lines 300 days last year.
Finland has raised the issue with Russia. Finnish President Tarja Halonen said after a meeting in September with President Vladimir Putin that Russia had made decisions that would help improve border traffic but had not carried them out fully.
Russians prefer to import goods through Finland to minimize theft and because harbors near St. Petersburg lack sufficient unloading equipment and warehouses.
Finnish customs have said they could double the amount of trucks that pass through as processing export papers takes only a couple of minutes. But procedures on the Russian side take longer.
The amount of goods imported through Finland has doubled since 2002 to about 3 million tons in 2006 and Russia’s Transportation Ministry has admitted its officials cannot handle the growing number of vehicles.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said earlier this month in an interview he was considering the introduction of a road tax for Russian trucks by 2011.
Kyle
Hello,
Since I was a little kid I always wondered how it could be New Year in Australia?! Neither snow nor a fir tree… How could there be a real, New Year & Christmas!
When Kyle found an article of our Australian friend , I realized it could be Christmas in Australia!
More information, pictures and even slide show you can find here: Link!
You want to know more? Ask Alex!
Best wishes for everybody!
Svet and Kyle
http://www.russia-ic.com/news/show/5414/
Orthodox Believers Accuse Coca-Cola of Blasphemy
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19.12.2007
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A group of Orthodox believers from Nizhniy Novgorod has accused the company Coca-Cola of spreading a blasphemous advertisement insulting the religious feelings of Christians. In particular, they mean the image of the local temples drawn inside the contour of a Coca-Cola bottle and intentionally turned upside down Orthodox crosses. The Orthodox group asks the local procuracy and the city governor to ban the commercial and punish the administration of Coca-Cola.
An action against Coca-Cola started at one of the websites on the Internet where two Nizhniy Novgorod citizens posted photos of refrigerators with the “insulting” advertisement labelled on them. The crosses intentionally turned upside down are the main object of the Orthodox activists` rage.
At the same time the representative office of Coca-Cola in Nizhniy Novgorod explains that by placing sights of architectural and art objects on the bottles the company demonstrates its position concerning the cultural heritage protection.
Source: og.ru
Hello,
Just an item off the news wire:
=========================
NEW YORK (AP) — Time magazine on Tuesday named Russian President Vladimir Putin its “Person of the Year.” The nod went to the Russian leader because of Putin’s “extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability,” said Richard Stengel, Time ‘s managing editor.
Putin, 55, is enormously popular in Russia, presiding over a resurgent economy flush with revenue from oil and natural gas. But critics say he has moved the country away from Russia’s democratic reforms of the 1990s by tightening control of the media, courts and parliament. ==========================
Good choice for person of the year!
Kyle
RBC, 17.12.2007, Moscow 19:55:09.Over half of Russians (53 percent) believe the recent State Duma elections to have been free, democratic and fair, an opinion poll held by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center revealed. 19 percent of respondents held the opposite point of view. The opinion that the elections were fairly democratic is more widespread in rural (57 percent) rather than urban Russia (48-52 percent). The estimates, however, have changed for the better since the previous election of 2003, when 49 percent of poll participants thought the elections had been democratic, and 26 percent condemning them as unfair.Half the respondents said they saw no other party that should have been granted seats in the Duma apart from the four parties surpassing the threshold. Others regretted that the Agrarian Party (19 percent) and Yabloko (5 percent) were not on the list, as well as Civil Force, the Union of Right Forces, the Party of Social Justice and Patriots of Russia (4 percent for each).The poll was held among 1,600 Russians in 153 locations in 46 of Russia’s regions and republics on December 8-9, 2007. The margin of error does not exceed 3.4 percent.
RBC, 17.12.2007, Moscow 18:57:03.The United Russia party has officially nominated Deputy PM Dmitry Medvedev as its candidate for President at the close of its 8th congress, with 478 delegates voting in favor, and 1 against the nomination….(click: read more for more news)
RBC, 17.12.2007, Moscow 17:54:38.Gazprom is willing to cooperate with the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) in the diagnostics, maintenance, exploitation, and modernization of Iran’s gas network, as well as in raising its transportation and energy efficiency. The matter was discussed at a meeting of the energy working group of the Russian-Iranian trade and economic cooperation commission, the Russian Industry and Energy Ministry’s press office said in a statement today. The meeting was chaired by Russia’s Deputy Industry and Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky and Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Hossein Noghrehkar-Shirazi.According to the statement, the parties made a high evaluation of Gazprom’s experience in servicing Iran’s South Pars field project.
RBC, 17.12.2007, Moscow 16:51:46.Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to become the country’s next Prime Minister after he steps down in March. The Russian leader made this statement at today’s eighth session of United Russia. Putin noted that there would be no changes in the roles of the President and the government.
RBC, 17.12.2007, Moscow 12:20:57.The weighted average euro exchange rate closed at 35.62 RUR/EUR at this morning’s special trading session for today deals, which is RUR0.22 lower than the official rate set by the Bank of Russia for December 17. Meanwhile, the low on euro deals stood at 35.56 RUR/EUR. The current developments on MICEX may be attributed to the euro’s significant decrease against the euro on international exchanges. The latter is now trading at almost USD1.4380, down from nearly USD1.4610 at the same time on Friday. Consequently, the US currency has surged 1.5 percent against the euro on the global market since then.
RBC, 17.12.2007, Moscow 11:10:47.According to unaudited date, Magnit’s net retail revenue climbed 40.5 percent to RUR82.443bn (approx. USD3.36bn) in January-November 2007 compared to the same period a year earlier, the retail chain indicated in its official statement. The company’s revenue grew 49.15 percent to almost RUR3.212bn in dollar terms. The company opened 228 new stores, bringing their total number to 2,121 shops.
RBC, 14.12.2007, Minsk 19:15:51.Russia and Belarus are to develop a program for a common foreign policy for 2008-2009, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Union State in Minsk today. He reiterated that the international cooperation of the two countries was implemented on the basis of an exisiting target program.The leaders of the Union State should seek to create a common economic space, Putin stated, adding that trade between Russia and Belarus was expected to top $24bn in 2007, an impressive 20 percent increase from the previous year.
That is all for today as far as news is concerned!
Kyle
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Hello,
I am drinking my morning cup of coffee and thinking about some of the past post that we have done. So I am going to list 5 posts from the last two months of the Blog. That way you do not have to search……(click; read more for links)
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/11/russia-poem-translation-by-reader.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/11/svet-sunday-all-in-your-hands.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/11/svet-sundays-strong-people-of-russia.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/11/russia-secret-cities.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2007/12/russia-art-of-toasting-bread.html
Kyle
comments always welcome.
Hello,
This morning when he drank his coffee with cream and I drank my green tea with lemon, He was telling me that Blogger finally admitted that they had made changes with their “comments policy” and removed an URL string.
Kyle was very upset that I put him in the bed (but he has a temperature 39C./102.2F.), so he asked me to write an article about new comment policy of Blogger…
Blogger says; “Right now, the only way to add a URL to your name when commenting is to sign your comment with OpenID. We apologize for removing the URL field from the comments form prematurely two weeks ago. That was a mistake on our part that came from launching OpenID support on Blogger in draft.”
This is Blogger full article: OpenID Commenting.
I am not sure how all this works, hope our readers from LiveJournal and another communities check it and tell us (is it convenient), like how Blogger tries to assure us…
Best wishes and take care!
Svet and Kyle {who always watches me (even from the bed) when I do articles ;)}
comments always welcome.
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