Julia rented the flat already before my arrival, so there was no accommodation issue, we immediately moved to the flat. It is in an area called Sini kamni (blue stones). The location has advantages and disadvantages: among the firsts the most important is that it's near the centre, in 3-4 bus stops or 20-25 mins walking it's possible to get there. Also, a huge shopping centre called Komsomall (from Komsomol and mall words) is 5 minutes walk. The disadvantages are mostly related to the closedness of Sini kamen: from one side the Trans-Siberian railway, from another side another railroad and a highway, from one side some forest limits it. So there is only one way out, and that's a small road full of traffic jams even outside rush hours. And this is also why bus transport sucks, there is only a bus and a marshrutka going somewhere into the center, and they run as they wish. It tells a lot, that the interval between two departures during the afternoon is between 7 and 32 minutes according to the timetable (this is the timetable). So the only use of this information is that if you are already waiting for more then 32 minutes you should feel angry for the bus. So far, once i waited 25 minutes and once 32-33 minutes. But there was also case when i saw it going away, and the next came in 5 mins. So at least u can hope that u willnot freeze in the station for half an hour.
Btw freeze: the temperature during the day is around -5, after dark much less. Today and tomorrow again it was snowing a lot, everything is covered by snow. Last weekend we have been skiing twice and skating once. We wanted to go to skate in the biggest outdoors icerink of Russia and Europe (only if u count Ekaterinburg to Europe), but due to the warm weather it was closed. I am not a professor of physics, but as i know ice doesn't get melt in -5 celsius. But they know... we went to another one. Btw, in front of our balcony (which isolates very poorly, no euro window/door) there is a high school, and it has two football rinks, both prepared with ice, one for skating and one for hockey, every afternoon students play there.
For skiing we went to Dasha's, Irina's and Marat's place in Uralmash district (in the following it willbe referred as "Uralmash"). It's quite far away, but at least in the weekend there is no traffic jam. The skiing is different a bit from the Finnish style, here there are a lot of tracks in a relatively small area, in the vincity of Uralmash in the forest (it's called park Pobedy - Victory park). We did not need to rent anything except for poles for Julia, Dasha had many skis, poles and boots. I skied in boots of size 42 but it was ok, wasn't uncomfortable. The reason why we still had to rent poles for Julia is that it's really uncomfortable to go with poles of not the perfect size, not like with the boots and skis We go to ski this weekend again.
The reson why you dear blogreaders had to wait so long for this post is that there is still no internet in our flat (mainly the internet providers are those to be blamed for it, long not so interesting story), so i need to travel 40 minutes by bus #60 to Julia's parents, where i can have internet the whole day with comfortable, friendly conditions. And this leads to two things: 1: i have little time for anything 2: i can only put the blog online "at work". This post is mostly being written on bus #60, and next stop is mine so see u in a few days ... :)
