Moscow - Budapest - Larnaka - Paphos

So in Cyprus now, solving "personal" issues :)
The flight here was through Budapest - managed to save half the price of usual Russian Aeroflot price. So was enjoying Hungarian Airlines and the whole night in Europe :)

Also managed to "visit" the actual Budapest because still have my "French" Shengen visa. So that was sort of exciting, though need to be continued. The funny moment appeared during the passport control and customs when I had to deal with the citizenship thing. The question by the officer: "So how many days do you plan to stay in Hungary?". My answer: "Well, like four hours" :) (thinking in my head that 9pm still may be considered to be a late hour for the sightseeing tour" :)

Planning to visit more Hungary on the flight back - like whole five hours :) BTW what surprised me a bit: they still have fohrints (whatever), no euro. Ciao now.

PS: have returned the rented car today and bought a scooter, cool.

BBC

One topic + one article + two pictures = some difference.
Regular BBC and Russian speaking BBC.
The text also differs a bit but I saw the pictures first.

PS: the links (if automatically) are opened in the same window, sorry for the inconvenience)

Two facts from my side

Still trying (unsuccesfully) to keep myself aside from talks about “politics” but found the following two details to be quite demonstrative... though still not going to make any analysis, anyway:

1) The radio weather forecast – typically giving weather forecast for the largest Russian towns. Now includes Tskhinvali (the capital of Southern Ossetia). Heard that recently and a bit unexpectedly - while having my cup of tea on my rented kitchen. Felt weird because always considered weather forecast to be absolutely politics-free, but it is obviously not...

2) The Moscow B-Day (861 years now). Once a year, the first weekend of September - to celebrate something like a city holiday. Something the city authorities invented for spending stupid money and stopping the traffic on the main central roads (fine with me). Several lines of security. A crowd walking along the roads and watching shows here and there. One of the main concert stages is specially (temporarily) build on Tverskaya street facing the Moscow City Hall. A group of “Georgian” dancers. Very recognizable Georgian melodies. Female scream from the audience – sort of “hurray” but in a crazy hysterical way. Silence from all others. Nobody cares actually as people just want living their lives – weekend, promenade, some music.



It`s true that enjoying life is my favorite philosophy, and I am with those people enjoying the music, but I am honestly puzzled by such “sweet” facts... like nothing happened... and like people won`t see and won`t understand... so why all that? The weather, the concert - with not a lot of text. "Just enjoy it" sort of thing...

PS: The monument in the center is to Yury Dolgorouky, the founder of Moscow. All other enormous stuff is constructed just for these two days.

A bit of linguistic investigation :)

Nothing to advertise here (on the photo). Me personally don`t visit it – have enough of junk food already, so that`s just samples of Georgian letters making the famous name.

And as you see there are eleven letters here, which is one more than ten needed to pronounce it in a typical version. As far as I know in Georgian you always add a vowel when the name ends with consonant. For example, no David but “Davidy”, no McDonald but “McDonaldy”. That definitely works for names, but perhaps not only. Anyway I was told that :)
And speaking about vowels: there are only five of them in Georgian alphabet (in Russain we have ten ), though the total number of letters is the same - 33 :)

Another fact: There are no capital letters in Georgian alphabet. There is a full stop, but all the writing is one size.

Interesting... And looks lovely :)


Tbilisi underground. "M" is for "Metro" (like in Moscow and perhaps everywhere :))

Ciao now.

Having some hectic time at work now - and actually that`s ending soon, contract`s termination and no more job in a week, hahahah - but still have this desire to show Georgia, though all talks and conversations look a bit postponed now. First I had this depression based on politics, mass media and attempts to influence (me), now I just have a hard time in general, so actually speak soon and see you later :)

Tbilisi: signs, flags etc

Flags and fountains everywhere. People are quite happy with the fountains because they are lovely in hot climate (and actually really helpful). But I`ve heard complains that all that is too expensive for the economy, especially thinking about extremely low social pensions.

Just a sewer manhole in the old town.

The old-fashioned military tailoring shop - in the Old Tbilisi.

City graffiti, no comments

The diplomatic relations with Russia has been stopped today. The Russian embassy in Tbilisi (and the Georgian consulate in Moscow) put their flags down. (quite a bad picture done during the brisk walk in Tbilisi, cuz the guards usually don`t encourage making pictures of such buildings; end of July 2008, still with the flag).