Travel Notes

One Million Minutes and Counting

St. Petersburg’s favorite son, President Vladimir Putin, is leading the effort to give that city a major facelift prior to its official tercentenary on May 27, 2003. He chairs the State Commission overseeing the celebration planning and this position clearly added hype to an exhibition on the tercentenary held at Moscow’s newly renovated Gostiny Dvor this winter.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who visited the Moscow exhibit, promised St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev that he would renovate all of Moscow courtyards and streets by the tercentenary, so that Yakovlev could have a “role model.” And Luzhkovs’ court sculptor Zurab Tsereteli informed Yakovlev that he would create a gift for St. Petersburg: a monument to Count Shuvalov, the first President of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Yakvovlev reportedly proposed “erecting this monument in front of the Moscow Academy of Arts” [of which Tsereteli is the president]. 

Attended by many Russian VIPs, the exhibition featured the slogan: “Vsem mirom stroili - vsem mirom vozrozhdaem.” (“The whole country built it, so the whole country is resurrecting it.”) Translation: the federal government will come up with the bulk of the funds for celebrations. Some R41 bn ($1.4 bn) will reportedly be spent on the city’s renovation, with the majority being spent on transportation projects, especially the new ring road around the city. 

Already in St. Petersburg there is an electronic billboard counting down the days to the tercentenary—on at midnight on May 1, there will be just 756 Days (or 1,088,640 minutes) left. 

Volga-Dnepr, the world’s leader in heavy-lift air operations, posted a gross sales growth of 19% — to $125 mn — in 2000, its best year since the company was founded, The Moscow Times reported. Based in Ulyanovsk, Volga-Dnepr counts as clients Lockheed Martin, General Electric and up to 60% of the world’s super-cargo market, transported with its ten An-124-100s (“Ruslans”) and four Ilyushin -76TDs. 

Created 10 years ago, Volga-Dnepr became a pioneer in the market for super-heavy and super-large cargo, like oil equipment, rockets and satellites. 95% of the company’s flights are outside of Russia and some 30% in the US. 

Olga Lebed won the professional contest “Conductress [in Russian: provodnitsa] of the Century,” held this winter by the Russian Ministry of Railways (MPS). The contest was not a beauty pageant; but the 16 contenders appeared in evening dresses (in addition to their trademark uniforms) and performed mini-shows evoking their daily work, e.g. vacuuming train wagons, or in one-act plays portraying a “lonely passengers” trip. They also had to sing. Lebed, who works the Saratov-Berlin route with her husband Oleg, won the overall contest, while the prize of “passengers’ sympathies” went to Yelena Panarina from the South-Urals railway. The prize for “TITANic efforts” went to Yelena Zaytseva from the West-Siberian railway (this prize was a word play on the word “titan” — the tea boiler in Russian trains). The Russian public seemed to enjoy the premise of the contest: as Noviye Izvestia wrote, “as long as we have such conductresses, railways will remain the favorite type of transportation for Russians. Indeed: why would conductresses be needed in, say, France, which can be spanned in roughly half an hour?! But here — what scale, what space ... What largesse of the soul!” 

In April 1996, Russian Life offered a false April Fool’s news item that “a new airport would be completed by September 1997” to service air travelers from capitalist countries only. We dubbed the airport Shere-metevo-3. Now, life is imitated humor (really, we mean it!): this winter Aeroflot General Director Valery Okulov laid the first stone of the new Sheremetevo-3 air terminal. The project’s estimated cost is $250-300 mn, with Aeroflot and Sheremetevo airport financing 10-30% of the project. Okulov said other investors will be selected through a tender. The new terminal, meant to alleviate the overloaded Sheremetevo-2 terminal, will reportedly be completed by 2003. 

Russia has opened four new polar air routes for commercial airlines. The move could trim hours off some flights from North America to Asia and save airlines millions of dollars. The new routes allow nonstop flights between such cities as Vancouver and Beijing or New York and Bangkok for long-haul jets. 

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed a resolution awarding the National Hotel the Quality Prize for outstanding achievements in providing quality products and services. The Quality Prize is analogous to the European Excellent Business award. In three years,  the Quality Prize has been awarded to just 36 Russian companies. 

Governor-elect of Chukotka and oil magnate Roman Abramovich has attracted attention by presenting to the World Bank and the governments of Russia and the US a draft project for the construction of a tunnel connecting Chukotka and Alaska. The Chukchi Tunnel would be built under the Bering Strait, Kommersant daily reported, would be 96 km long and take 20 years to build.

Radisson Hotels & Resorts has presented its top honor, the “President’s Award” to the Radisson-Slavjanskaya Hotel in Moscow. This is the fifth year in a row the hotel has won the prestigious company award. 

Following protracted negotiations, US authorities have granted Aeroflot the right to permit smoking on Russian aircraft flying over US territory. ORT television commented that the move should make Aeroflot more attractive to smoking travelers, including Americans. 

According to Aeroflot press-officer Lyubov Kalinina, the US Trans-portation Department has imposed certain provisions: smokers in business and economy class must be seated separately from non-smokers; the smoking section may not occupy more than 16% of economy class seats and 40% of business class seats. 

The US Department of Trans-portation also demanded that clients be warned of possible exposure to neighboring smokers. Aeroflot has a smoking ban on flights up to two hours, but had previously, because of US regulations, banned all smoking on US-Russia flights.