Ostankino Tower

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jonas

It is early Monday morning and time to go back to Zurich. I am waiting at gate 13 at Domodedovo and Lufthansa will try to bring me back via Munich. The layover in Munich is really tight but since I bought the tickets directly via their website they take responsibility for the whole trip.

Yesterday Tanya and I visited the Ostankino Tower which is the radio and tv tower in Moscow. The building is 540 meters high which earns it the titles “highest in Europe” and “4th in the world”. The viewing platform however is at “only” 337 meters, but that was enough to provide a stunning view over the surroundings.

As usual, the tourist attractions in Russia has some work to do in order to attract an international audience. One very obvious thing is that they should consider the fact that not everybody is fluent in Russian and therefore provide guided tours not only in Russian but also e.g. English. Another tip would be to increase the availability, currently you need to pass three different cashiers in order to obtain the ticket (after pre booking at their web site that is). After that there is a walk and a security check which makes the airport check look sloppy 🙂

Regarding airports, I must say Domodedovo is a smoother experience than Sheremetyevo. That is of course mainly due to a nicer means of transport in my case (which, again in my case, depends on location and when suitable flights take place). However, next weekend I will go via Sheremetyevo and the good thing with that is that I will arrive on Friday evening instead of Saturday morning.

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New and simple web site

Posted on April 1, 2011 by jonas

Early today the Swedish hosting company Loopia sent an email about a nice campaign they were running. They were giving away 1000 one-year-subscriptions of Swedish domain names containing exotic Swedish characters (like Ä, À or ö) for free.

Since Tanya and I have an event coming up in July I registered julibröllop.se. Currently it redirects to a simple web page with some basic information (in Swedish and English). I doubt that there will be time to actually produce a decent web site for the moment but there might show up something more.

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Visiting my Saab garage in Germany

Posted on March 26, 2011 by jonas

Since my Saab garage in Villingen-Schwenningen is kind enough to keep open on Saturdays I am visiting them this morning for a pre inspection before the Swiss inspection in a few weeks. There are no major problems with the car but since it costs some money to do the car inspection in Zurich (three times the Swedish price and then the exhaust fumes test is not included…) it makes sense to do a pre-inspection/service.

Villingen-Schwenningen is 90 minutes of driving from Zurich and since I am here now it is reasonable to do some shopping in Germany where the prices in general are lower than in Zurich. There are rules for what and how much you can bring to Switzerland but as long as you comply with the rules it should be fine.

Tonight you can find me at Nordiska where there will be a pub evening. Norway and Denmark will play a football/soccer game, which is part of tonight’s event, and since Denmark did beat us at in the world cup qualifications I hope Norway will win 🙂

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Thursday’s out

Posted on March 18, 2011 by jonas

Today I went to Finbar after work and afterwards I joined Fredrik for Utonia at Plattenhof. A very good combination where you meet a lot of good people in one evening and also get some training in foreign languages. I promise myself to keep this combination on the top of my Thursday agendas from now on…

In 12 hours it is time for Moscow again and I am really looking forward to it. But before that I would say some hours of sleep could be really helpful.

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Comeback at Nordiska

Posted on March 15, 2011 by jonas

The warm weather has stayed in Zurich and it is nice to go by bike when it is more than 10 degrees. After work today I went to Nordiska for one of many comebacks lately. I still might have some work to be done with the definitions… Is it really a comeback every time I skip training for a week or two? I still like to think that way though, since it should be more exceptional than it is.

I did some bench pressing and squatting today at Nordiska and found that even though the weights were nothing to brag about, I could still do some things. I look forward to be able to follow up with training sessions tomorrow and on Thursday morning. Since there are also reasonable temperatures in Moscow, Tanya and I talked about running in the weekend. We’ll see if it will be more than talking when we are there.

Tomorrow morning I am going to a Saab garage in order to do the exhaust fumes test. Let us hope that old Saab is still able to carry out its duties…

Now time for sleep.

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Back and forth

Posted on March 14, 2011 by jonas

Waiting at gate 45 at terminal F in Sheremetyevo. It is Monday and time to go to work in Zurich. Fortunately flight SU265 is usually on time and the transport to Sheremetyevo and from Zurich airport is reasonable, both in time and money.

I expect some busy working days and will go back to Moscow on Friday.

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Visiting Tanya’s workplace: Moscow Medical Academy

Posted on March 12, 2011 by jonas

It is not too common for me to visit a Russian university but this morning is not a common morning. I woke up early, 4 am CET which is 6 am local time, and went by metro to Borovitskaya where I met Tanya. After breakfast at a cafe we went to Moscow Medical Academy where I am now.

One thing that is different compared to for example the university where I did my training, Institute of Technology at Linköping University, is that you show your student identification in order to enter the buildings. Fortunately I did not need to wait outside since it was okay when entering in company with a teacher.

According to Wikipedia it is the “oldest and the largest national medical higher educational institution in the Russian Federation”. Tanya is not directly into medical stuff but here PhD is dealing with health related subjects from a legal perspective so it makes sense for her to have her “academical employment” with this university. Talking about Tanya’s academic records, she passed her pre-defense yesterday in St Petersburg at the Law faculty of Saint-Petersburg State University which is a big step towards the actual defense. Many congratulations!

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Alone in Moscow

Posted on March 11, 2011 by jonas

I arrived tonight to Moscow and the post arrival process, i.e. customs and getting the train to Belorussky, was very smooth. I have never been able to catch the 19:00 train earlier (19:30 or 20:00 is more common) but this time I did so with a 30-second margin.

When leaving Zurich the Aeroflot personnel tried, and succeeded, to scare me. Since I have more stamps from Russian customs than usual they were a bit unsure regarding my visa. With my visa you are not allowed to stay more than 90 days in Russia within any 180 day period. I had not counted the days I have spent in Russia but I did look through my calendar and found that I was well on the right side of the limit and they seemed to reach the same conclusion. I guess my stays are shorter than average, usually three to four days, and if they were more like a week I would have been on the limit.

This time I will be the one greeting Tanya to Moscow, not the other way around, since she is arriving tomorrow from St Petersburg. I will go to Borovitskaya early in the morning tomorrow and then we will go to the university where she is teaching since she will have a class with her students.

Tomorrow evening we might go and watch the CSKA juniors playing a play-off game in Kharlamov Cup which is the final rounds of MHL. The Moscow teams did not succeed this season in KHL but so far Mattias Weinhandl and his SKA St Petersburg are doing really well.

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Resande de nÀrmsta veckorna / Upcoming trips

Posted on March 9, 2011 by jonas

Since I started writing this in Swedish I will make it both in Swedish and English. We start with Swedish and the English version is below.

I nulÀget har jag varken tid eller kondition att cykla dit jag ska sÄ jag har shoppat en del flygbiljetter trots att jag vet att det Àr illa för miljön. Jag har fortfarande nÄgra turer med Aeroflot kvar men pÄ sistone har jag mer och mer uppskattat Lufthansas utbud och priser som man med fördel shoppar direkt pÄ deras egen webbplats.

FrĂ„n nu till slutet av maj kommer jag att flyga till Moskva 10 gĂ„nger (tvĂ„ helger i ZĂŒrich) vilket innebĂ€r totalt 34 enskilda flygturer. Tycker det lĂ„ter lite absurt men jag tror att det kan bli slut pĂ„ det galna resandet till hösten och dĂ„ kanske jag kan se tillbaka pĂ„ detta som min “reseperiod”.

För den som veckopendlar med flyg kan jag rekommendera kombinationen FlightTrack Pro, TripIt och Google Calendar. DĂ„ kan man fylla pĂ„ sin kalender genom att skicka biljettbekrĂ€ftelsen till TripIt (eller lĂ„ta TripIt leta i maillĂ„dan sjĂ€lvmant om man liter pĂ„ dem) samt hĂ„lla sin kalender uppdaterad automatiskt eftersom FlightTracker lĂ€gger till och hĂ„ller resetiderna uppdaterade i kalendern. Om man dessutom “bjuder in” de som behöver veta om tiderna Ă€ndras till hĂ€ndelsen i kalendern, sĂ„ hĂ„ller man Ă€ven dessa i loopen automatiskt.

FlightTrack Pro Àr Àven trevligt att anvÀnda nÀr man sitter vid gaten och inser att det hÀr flyget nog inte kommer att gÄ helt enligt plan. DÄ kan man ofta fÄ information om förseningar och konsekvenser fortfare och smidigare Àn andra kanaler. En annan uppskattad funktion Àr möjligheten att se vilka platser som Àr bra i olika flygplansmodeller.

English
Since I can not go by bike to Moscow I have, despite the environmental threat, bought a bunch of flight tickets lately. I still have some trips with Aeroflot left but lately I found that Lufthansa generally has a good offer with many flights outside office hours with affordable prices. The good tickets from Lufthansa are easiest to find directly at their own website.

The upcoming months, until end of May, I will go to Moscow ten times (two weekends in Zurich) which results in 34 legs. It sounds a bit absurd but I hope and believe that the crazy travelling will come to an end this autumn.

For those who are frequent flyers I can recommend the following setup: FlightTrack Pro, TripIt and Google Calendar. This solution delivers automatic tracking of changes and import into Google Calendar, which also gives the possibility to share the event with others.

FlightTrack Pro is suitable for keeping up to date with late changes, for example when waiting at the gates and discovering that the flight won’t be on time. One more feature that comes to my mind is the ability to see which seats are good ones in different aircrafts.

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Car administration

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonas

My plan is to try to register the car here in Switzerland since one can only use the Swedish plates for the first 12 months. Since I have invested huge sums in repairing the car it is almost brand new despite being 10 years old and going around the globe four times (160 000 km)…

The first step was achieved this morning by going to Zollverwaltung and getting the paper saying that I can import it without paying tax. The next step was to get a paper from an insurance company which says that they will insure it once the import/registration process is finished. Then I went to Strassenverkehrsamt (neighbor to CS) and got a time slot for the car inspection in the end of April.

Before going to the car inspection, which is approximately three times more expensive than the Swedish car inspection, I need to do an exhaust test at a Saab garage. I have asked Titan and hopefully that is not too expensive. Since this test is done as part of the Swedish car inspection, which was done in December, I don’t expect too big surprises but you’ll never know.

Update: The mandatory exhaust test is booked for next Wednesday morning.

Update II: The exhaust test went fine and I now need to prepare for the car inspection which will be harder to pass.

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