Wahl

I've been meaning to get my arse over to the embassy (located a convenient 12 metres from my house) to hand in my voting slip for the upcoming presidential elections.
Actually I won't be voting for any of the 3 men that are on the list... reasons being:
1. Our present Prez: I'm not a fan of his; he didn't show up for the wedding of the cutest royal couple ever (Danish crownprince and his Ozzie wife); don't like his glasses. Only plus he's got is his wife, Dorrit, who knows how to dress.
2. Baldur Something-son: who the hell is he? I've never ever heard abut this guy so why the hell should I vote for him?!
3. Asthor: nutcase, enough said.

So what I will be doing is handing in an empty voting slip, to express how dissatisfied I am with the candidates for President of Iceland.

Anyway. Now counting down the days till I leave for Hong Kong... 9 days to go!

Incompetence
I'm getting seriously fed up with the service the Admissions Office at the University of Iceland provides (ie. none).
As some know I applied to join a B.S. course in Tourism Management there and thought it would be a seemingly straight-forward thing to do. But oh no. Even though they do online-applications and stuff, I had to fax copies of my qualifications to them the same day I applied (1st June), which I totally don't mind, as that's only understandable.
But since then I've gotten an e-mail informing me that they were missing them copies (grammar mistake on purpose to illustrate me anger over them people). Then I phoned them up and asked the lady what the hell was going on since I'd sent them those copies twice already. She said they just weren't there, from the tone of her voice you could actually hear that she was thinking: "oh shit, another lost fax".
So I faxed them through for the third time 3 days ago only to get another message telling me to send those copies before the 29th, otherwise my application would be cancelled! Hello! WTF?
By the look of things one might think that I'm trying to deal with a company like BT or other total incompetents (STA Travel in the UK come to mind all too clearly), but no, this is actually in Iceland, a country where I'd actually said time and time again was so unlike the UK in a sense that things actually work and people know their jobs. But no, I am never ever letting a word of praise slip through my mouth about efficiency of things in my home country, which is now below the UK on my competence list.
Better go try phone that Admissions Office for the umpteenth time now! (seriously, out of endless phonecalls today they've decided not to answer the phone today).

'Nationality Day'

That was yesterday, June 17th, and in the honour of the Icelandic Republic we hosted a reception to which around 200 people were invited.
After having spent most of the day in the kitchen rolling, frying, roasting, baking and god knows what else, I made my face seen at the party itself and it's just amazing how many people show up having no apparent connection to that rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. By that I'm not talking about the obvious Iceland connections like Icelandic people living, working or studying in Russia, but rather people that have like been to Iceland once when they were 4 and since attend both our June 17th and December 1st parties every year. Weird.
Then there's the [old] ladies that worked in or around the embassy when we lived here from 1984-1987, and thus remember me only when I was at the age of four and absolutely insist on pinching my (ever so diminishing) fat cheeks and smother them with (bright) red lípstikk.
But luckily I did get to talk to and get to know some nice people which saved my evening as I later went out with a couple of guys that live in St Petersburg and had a lovely evening.

Some people do the weirdest things to acquire mementos of where they've been. My example of course comes from one guest that decided it would be fun to pinch an (old) wooden duck that was sitting in the windowsill by the 'coatcheck'. But then comes Gudrun, this weeks Superwoman, to the rescue (albeit later that evening when sitting in the same car as the guy), spots ducky and rescues it from its captor, while telling the (by now) very drunk Dimitri (I think he was called) badly off for stealing from the Ambassador's Residence. Who does stuff like that nowadays anyway?

Oh well. In for a very quiet weekend as my parents went to England this morning and will be staying 'till Tuesday, and my lil' brother and sister went to Iceland yesterday.
So plenty of time to drive around, find new routes to here and there, and of course visit MegaMall, IKEA and stock up on DVDs (not at IKEA though, the only thing there to stock up on are Swedish cinnamon rolls and flatbread... yummy!).
Oh, and if anybody's interested in coming to Moscow this weekend, there's plenty (as in 3) empty bedrooms!

Just to explain the coining of the phrase 'Nationality Day'... this is what Lyuba, our domestic engineer insists on calling the 17th of June, as incorrect as it sounds, bless her.

After a thouroughly mindboggling session over the blog help site I finally managed to figure out how to get that 'comments' thing going. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, that I'm a tad techologically challenged in these matters. So feel free to comment on my babblings.

Also, I've just posted new fotos from my pilgrimage to Switzerland on my FotoGallerie site... Geneva's made Joona incredibly fotogenic, but not me, but who cares, at least I was there.

Nostalgia

That's what the weekend was for me. I left for Switzerland last Wednesday, flying with Aeroflot to Zurich where I spent the day, then taking the train over to Geneva the same evening where I spent a lovely 4 days.
Came back to a grimy, rainy and cold Moscow on Sunday evening, certainly nothing like the fantastic weather I'd had in Switzerland where it was sunny the whole time and the temp in the range from 25°-33°C.
I think talking too much about how fabulous and lovely Switzerland is will only make me depressed to not be there anymore, so I won't.
But at some point it will be featured in my TravelGuide.

What I will comment on though is the flight(s), which is an important part of any trip I take.
I chose to fly Aeroflot mainly because they had the best timings for my trip, did so not fancy waking up at 4AM to catch a SWISS flight at 7AM, no way. So instead took the 10:30AM Aeroflot flight, meaning I'd land before noon in Zurich.
Aeroflot has recently started implementing a total product overhaul. This includes buying new planes (Airbus A319 and A320 for short-haul flights), with an all-new paint-job (which has also been applied to some of the old fleet of Russian and Western planes) aswell as new interiors made up of artificial blue leather seats with orange headrests in Economy, and navy blue leather seats in Bizness which look very comfortable, but this time I was in economy and the seats there aren't bad either, and have good legroom aswell. They're also getting new uniforms which look very good, but unfortunately the crews haven't started wearing them yet.
The flight to Zurich was pretty good. Greeted by smiling FAs at the door who insisted on describe the way to my seat (I felt like saying "sweety, I ain't that dumb, finding seat 7A isn't exactly rocket science!"). Food was so and so, the Russians on board seemed to love it, I however could only eat the tomatoes and chocolate bar which was very gut.
The flight back from Geneva was more eventful though. I was the only non-Russian person on board, which I absolutely didn't mind. In typical Russian fashion, through the flight people were standing in the aisles with their mobiles switched on with a bewildered look on their faces probably wondering why the hell there was no signal at 33,000 feet! Then there's the obiquitous group of 15 middle-aged men sitting half way down the plane with an open whisky bottle they'd bought at the DutyFree shop, passing it around amongst themselves making sure they're all equally intoxicated throughout the flight.
None of this really bothered me, just a tad amusing as usual.
Then the plane started descending for arrival in Moscow. As soon as Russian soil could be seen through the windows that same group of middle-aged men started singing very loudly a Russian folk song, 'Moscow Nights' or something like that, until landing when they burst out applauding and cheering we'd finally touched down in Mother Russia. Plane funny (pun intended).
I do recommend flying with Aeroflot, their fares are normally competitive and the service is improving every day (hopefully the food will too).

Now preparations are in full swing for our annual National Day Party (June 17th), which over 200 guests will be attending, some with questionable connections to Iceland, but many are extremely unfortunate looking who've fallen in love with the country in one way or another.
Before going to Geneva I made in excess of 700 mini-sized pizzas, so now it's back to the kitchen to make something else in enormous quantities to feed them Russkys.

My Planet, as opposed to Lonely Planet...

As you might have noticed on my newly updated linkbar on the left, the newest link is that of my newest brainchild, The pallpall Travel Guide.
Simply put, my humble attempt at unravelling the most fabulous destinations there are (which I have already graced my presence with).

My first attempt at a travel report will be on the lovely Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, which holds a special place in my heart as being the first '-stan' that was privileged enough to be worthy of a visit by ME.

I do hope you'll enjoy this new venture of mine, or as they would say here in Mother Russia, "A joint-international-stock-company-venture with the International Foreign Trade BlaBlaBlah and This and So" or something like that. Whatever, never mind my off-driftings into the numerous bronze plaques that adorn the entrances of all too many houses here nowadays.

Later on you'll see places like Vienna, Jeddah, Ashgabat, Moscow, Amman and more being added to the site, as well as some random thoughts about the world of travel, and 'advice' on choices of airlines, airports and the like.

The Twilight Zone

Another positively surreal day has now passed.
Took a trip (more like a 20min drive) to VDNKh (All-Russia Exhibition Centre) with Gudrun today.
VDNKh was originally one of them Soviet leader's idea of building a massive park showcasing the might and power of the Soviet Union, including buildings and pavilions erected in styles reflecting the various regions that made up the USSR. Thus there are pavilions ranging from 'Armenia', 'Uzbekistan', 'Karelia' and many many more. Not only are there ones showcasing the beauty of those regions, but also pavilions dedicated to the technological and sociological achievement of the great USSR, leading us to pavilions named 'Electricity', 'Literature', 'Space' etc.
In the old days (pre-1991) the VDNKh was a magnificent sight (so I'm told), but today, instead of the displays inside the buildings dedicated to their names we now have stalls selling electronics, hideous flower arrangements and cell phones. Quite sad, but this is the new and improved Soviet Union after all.

So, as I said today was a prime example of how surreal and just plain random this city can get. The background to the day was this eerie light that bordered on yellow without it being sunny, infact it was heavily overcast, and it kinda felt like there was a thunderstorm approaching but then again not really. Just really hard to describe. Then, upon entering VDNKh, through the massive gates topped with a huge statue of a male and female collective farmer together holding onto a bundle of wheat racing towards the sun (oh yes!), we were met by an array of plastic inflated fun-fair type rides, accompanied by the ever-present heavenly russian techno 'music' (I'm normally ever so tolerant on music varieties, but this stuff can really get to me, and that in a bad way).
Beyond plastic fun heaven was the vision frame of a life time: the background was of course the before mentioned yellow hue the sky decided on displaying today, in front of the magnificent Russia pavilion is a statue of comrade Lenin. Now, this is pretty standard Sovietesque scenery. But not when you've got a camel (yes, a CAMEL) and a couple of disturbingly small ponies standing in front of Lenin! Not to mention, I will of course be posting a photo of this Kodak Moment on my FotoGallerie very soon indeed, although a photo only does the scene half the justice as one's got to feel the kind of B-grade horror movie atmosphere I felt, sort of expecting Freddie Krueger to come prancing around in-between Lenin and Osman the Camel.