Year: 2006

My trip to Russia was the first real test of Cyprus passport. I wondered how would it work out altogether…

At Larnaca’s passport control I showed my ticket and Russian passport first. The ticket was to my Russia passport, so that I could avoid getting visa to Russia. But my Russian passport in virgin clear – I got it here, in Cyprus, and it has no arrival or departure marks. Officer checked my passport, flipped through its pages, and than checked it in the computer. Obviously, it wasn’t there. He asked me, if I have my old passport with me. I replied negative. He looked puzzled.

I then said that I have Cyprus passport as well. Right at that moment his face lit with delight. He said something like “Why didn’t you mention that earlier, my friend?”. He took my Cyprus passport, run it through the computer and I was ready to go. No stamps or anything. He asked me if I wanted my Russian passport stamped with departure, and I said that I do. That was it.

I didn’t show my Cyprus passport upon the arrival to Russia as it wasn’t needed. Leaving from Russia though, I was asked about my visa by the airlines reprepsentative. I showed my Cyprus passport and that was enough.

When we arrived to Cyprus, everyone hurried to ‘All passports’ queue. Our flight came from Samara, and there were no Cypriots or EU citizens onboard. Except for me, of course. I took Cyprus passport out of the bag, joined it together with Olga’s Russian passport and Maxim’s birth certificate and went to the EU queue. Customers officer stamped Olga’s passport and we were through. The first and the only. That was SWEET!

The rest of the people saw that this queue worked also and rushed to join us, but they were all ordered back to the ‘All passports’ queue, unless they had EU or Cyprus passport. I still remember those envy looks behind my back…

But life is fair – we all had to wait together for one hour for our luggage to appear on the luggage belt. So, I got no practical benefit this time. Still, I’m glad I’ve tried it in and out.

Since I have loads to think about (still) and tonnes to say (already), I think that I’ll give a rough idea of what I went through in the last two weeks, and then I’ll post more about this and that as I finish writing or think of something. So, here goes the itinerary summary or an overview of our routes.

I have started my journey in the airport of Larnaca, Cyprus on Sunday, July 16. I flew to Domodedovo airport in Moscow, Russia, where my mother was waiting for me. We travelled for 40 minutes on a train to the rail station in the city, where we were picked up by my mother’s friend. She drove us around Moscow, we went for some coffee, and then drove some more. Later we had dinner together at my mother’s place. Mother’s friend left, and we went for a little evening walk around the block.

Next day we went to the center of Moscow. I bought tickets for the evening flight and we went for some sightseeing, photo exhibition, and Japanese food. In the evening I flew to Novokuznetsk, Russia.

After a brief stop in Kemerovo, I met with Olga and her sister Elena in Novokuznetsk, who drove me home to Mezhdurechensk, where Maxim and my mother-in-law were waiting for me. I spent one week there.

Early morning on Monday, July 24 Olga, Maxim and I were driven back to Novokuznetsk airport from where we flew back to Moscow. Again, my mother met us there. We spent half a day running around Moscow, getting air tickets, arranging visa paperwork for Olga and Maxim, and buying presents. The second half of the day we spent at Domodedovo airport waiting for the flight, talking, eating, and playing with Maxim.

We took a one hour twenty minute flight from Moscow to Samara airport and arrived at 00:05 local time on Tuesday, July 22. My father met us in the airport and drove us to his place in Togliatty. We stayed there until morning of Sunday, July 30. It was then that we drove back to Samara airport and flew to Larnaca, Cyprus.

Since our flight was delayed several times, Vladimir had to spend almost half a day in the airport waiting for us. But finally we all arrived and he drove us home.

Everyone loves statistics, right? Here are some for you:

• Number of trip days: 14
• Airports visited: 5
• Hours in the air: approximately 20
• Kilometers travelled: approximately 13,000 km
• Widest timezone span: 5 hours
• Airplane models used: 3 (Boing 757-200, TU-154, TU-134)

Diet and weight control are lately one of the most important subjects to me. I had a few worries in this regard for my trip to Russia. It’s difficult to maintain a diet, but it’s almost impossible to do so while travelling constantly over a foreign (yes, foreign) country. With family. Meeting people who I haven’t seen in almost 10 years.

I have to say that I did good.

For the first week, I managed to not eat at least 4 hours before sleep. I hardly had any alcohol. A pint of beer in Moscow on the first Sunday, and two pints at the birthday party on the second Sunday – that’s about it. I had a lot of ice cream though, but the ice cream in Russia is very different from the ice cream in Cyprus. Russian ice cream has much less sugar and is made of much skinnier milk. Low fat.

The second week was much worse in terms of diet. I had loads of fat food, plenty of alcohol (beer and vodka), and I usually finished eating by going to bed. The big No-No.

The strange thing was that I didn’t feel that I was getting any heavier or bigger. I thought that I was, but just I couldn’t feel or measure it properly. I was surprised to find out for sure that I wasn’t.

One day before my departure from Cyprus I measured my weight. It was 109.2 kg before the gym session. When I came back to the gym today, I clocked at 109.5 kg. Not bad.

After thinking about it, I guess the compensating factors were stress and flights. Any travel is a lot of stress, but mine was more than usual. Cultural shock, relatives, places from my childhood memories, etc, etc, etc. And I had a lot of flights. Flights are very dehydrating. And without water, it’s difficult for the body to build any fat. Good. I’m glad I got to see the rest of the review here, I learned that the diet was working perfectly.

Now that things are getting back to normal, and we are seeing the best weather for weight loss (hot hot heat), I am sure I’ll continue my way down the weight ladder.

First of all, I have to say that I am not thinking clearly. It’s way too hot and humid. I am trying to get used to it, but I am not doing very well. I went to the sea with Maxim – he enjoyed it a lot, but the water was too cold for me to swim or chill out. I am somewhat confused and still tired. I am also trying to ajust my time zones – I am still living two hours later.

It’s difficult to come back to blogging after two weeks of not doing it. I am forcing myself to write. At least something. I also wanted to work on images, but I can’t find my card reader. Strange, I thought I had it in my bag…