Krasnoyarsk City 28 July- 18 August 2011

---

---

Krasnoyarsk City.

The summer in the Republic of Yakutia was very hot for me, (the said your are Colombian, you are used to that), believe me it was very hot.
It was hot and it was weird, because Yakutsk is the coldest city in the world, with and average of -55^c on winter, but this summer was around +40c; that's why this city break all the extremes, and have many many Guinness Records.

So I decided to go away from this extreme hot, and the interested thing here in Russia is that Russia is huge, so there were many options, but I also wanted to be comfortable, and go to a place which my program wouldn’t object to (Rotary International).

So I received an invitation from one very good friend (also from Rotary) who lives in the Krai of Krasnoyarsk, in the capital named Krasnoyarsk, its located exactly in the center of Russia.

Starting the trip was easy, I got my authorizations and all the papers, but a different thing was to find the air tickets (they are very expensive), is a problem here in Russia, but I understand that its very big,(just my Republic (Yakutia) is thirteen (13) times bigger than France, and the Krai of Krasnoyarsk have the same size that Europe have) but what I don’t understand are the crazy differences of prices between one airline and the other.

It was the 10th of July when I asked for my tickets and they were about 24,000 РУБ (Rubles) the current money in here, its equivalent to aproximately 800 Dollars, I said OK ill buy, but I need one week to get the money from my parents.

After that week I went to buy the tickets but amazingly they were about 50,000 РУБ (1,666 Dollars), so the shock was very big, I was so sad an angry that I thought about not going there.

Two day after that, my friend sent me a message saying that he found tickets for a very good price, I said OK lets see how much, I was very surprised they were about 26,000 РУБ (866 Dollars) the two ways, going on 28th July and coming back on 11th August, so I went to the airport and I bought the tickets in the only Agency from that airline here (in the Republic of Yakutsk the most important airline is YAKUTIA AIRLINES and they have a monopoly here, there are Agencies everywhere, but the prices are very very high, and they change the prices when they want, that’s what happened with the other price that changed from 24k to 50k in one week, so I bought then with URAL AIRLINES, that gave me that excellent price).

Well after that I make my baggage and I waited until the 28th July, that flight was supposed to take of at 18:40, so I was at the airport at 18:00, but as usual in Russian airports, it was late, when we asked, “When do the chek-in starts?”, they answered “Oh, maybe at 21:40 so come here at 21;00” well after that everything was normal.

I got to Krasnoyarsk after 3 hours and 30 minutes of flight, I was a very nice flight, very tasty food in the plane too, well the families from Rotary picked me up in the airport (I should say the the principal differences between usual exchange, and the exchange from Rotary International are that its free, you have to be like an ambassador from your country, but the most important is that the families which receive you in their cities and I their home, do that because they want, and because they are interested in the exchange of their own children, so when you get to those host families, you feel like in your house, that they are your real family, and you are their real son, its amazing), and we went to my first host family’s home because, I had two families there (both of them were amazing).

Krasnoyarsk is a very beautiful city, in the whole center of Russia, about 927.200 hab live there, it have 383 km^2 of surface, in the center of the city you can find the Yenisey River, the view of this river its fantastic, its the wider river in Russia, and also (people there said) its the cleanest one.

The city of Krasnoyarsk was founded by Andrei Dubensky on 1628 as a fort named Krasny, that means Red, and after that they put the name Yar (Krasnoyarsk, that mean Red- bench).

The category of citiy was given in 1690, and in 1822 it became the capital of the Yenisei Province.

The city has a lot of economical activity, and the beginning it was founded like a fort, then it was a very important mail point, after that it came the Trans-Siberian Train, they found gold, in the Second World War, a lot of industries went to Krasnoyarsk, because there was the fear of the Nazi invasion in the European Part of Russia.

During the times of the Cold-War, the Kremlin decided to make a Privatization, around the business of the city, there was a very bad time in Krasnoyarsk, but with the time, they opened, “secret” factories, under-earth and inside the mountains, when you go to Krasnoyarsk you can see, around the outskirts of the city lots of closed, factories, its a very sad thing, but that’s what happen, when people want war.

The city is a very cosmopolitan city, big, with a lots of people, and lots of shopping's, it have many universities and museums, culture everywhere, good restaurants and beautiful parks.

The people in this beautiful city is very active and kind, you enjoy watching people doing sports, and with big smiles all the time, you feel the “warm” when you talk with this persons.

I tell at the beginning of this post, that I was supposed to be in Krasnoyarsk for two weeks, but the lovely families hosted me here, wanted more time, so I decided to spent 3 weeks, and I loved that time visited lots of interesting places, talked with lots of interesting people, and I took lots of interesting pictures (more than 6,000).

In the following entrances, I am going to show the different places I visited here and the different situations I lived, and the people I was with.

---

Comments

[Мишель]

Пиши больше!!! XD
Молодец! Really nice post! Nice infos (Y) You should write more about this, I'm so excited to read more :D