Arriving into Sochi

The Airport

The flight to Adler-Sochi (AER) from DME was with S7 Airlines. S7 used to be Siberian Airlines, and is now Russia's biggest domestic carrier. The experience starts with the surreal sound of the announcements pertaining to flights on S7 Airlines at Domodedovo. In amongst all of the Russian of the announcements, you then hear "S7 Earlines" (that's not a spelling mistake - it's how the automated announcements sound) interspersed on regular intervals. You then notice that Russians don't wait their turn, largely, to board airplanes. A lot are polite and line up, but there is a larger contingent happy to push in. 

Aboard the plane, you then get a Stepfordian set of robotic hostesses delivering the safety dance in perfect sync. Every gesture or smile seemed like it's rehearsed down to the second, to be done in sync with the person in front. In total, 3 hostesses stand down the length of the crowded plane.

The hot food on S7 is abysmal, but the open-by-perforation box of ambient food products is fine. On the way out, I asked for an omelette and got what seemed to be a pile of congealed mashed potato, a fossilised broccoli and a single piece of pepperoni. Not only were the boxes mis-labelled (probably), they were gross. I would have complained and sent it back, but if this is what mashed potato is like, I dread to think what omelette looks like! Please imagine all of this - I didn't get a photo on the way out!

The flight into Adler-Sochi (AER) airport is pretty breathtaking, as far as flights go. This bests Nice-Cote D'Azur for an arrival over water. You actually fly out over the black sea, and then descend into Adler actually over the top of the hotel I was staying in.

The arrival into Adler over the Black Sea

The landing was greeted with applause. Even though the weather was fine - look at the picture above - the air was quite turbulent on the way down. You also come in low over buildings, which gave the landing a small fear factor for some, I guess.

Sochi Airport, at the gate waiting to deplane

Adler-Sochi airport itself, although upgraded for Sochi 2014, still seemed like a pretty small metropolitan airport.

Before I even left the UK and to save me time and hassle, I booked a taxi using welcometaxi.ru. For an advance booking, and to also save the haggle factor that Russian taxi's are so famous for, I went with a 1500Rub pre-booked taxi with an English speaking driver.

As I deplaned, made my way through the airport, got my bags and arrived in the Arrivals hall, I noticed that there wasn't anyone here holding a plate with my name on it. I knew my name in Cyrillic also, and sure enough there was no one here. "OK", I thought... I wasn't going to panic. I've got a few things to do here while I wait. The booking said the driver would wait an hour... clearly, he's in the wrong place, just like my driver was in SFO.

I went and sorted out my SIM card. I bought a "Welcome To Sochi" plan from Megafon, and after going and getting Russian Rubles from the Bank of Moscow on the top concourse, fired up my iPhone and - for a brief second - had data connection; just enough to deliver to me the email telling me that the driver had been waiting in the Arrivals hall since 12:06, and that he had left because he'd been waiting an hour for me.

12:06? My flight is scheduled to arrive at 12:40. My flight is only 2 hours and 20 minutes long, so we'd have to be hustling it to be a full 34 minutes early on such a short flight! What?

OK, so no one is coming to pick me up.

So, I went over to the Sochi 2014 volunteers desk, where a very nice lady came out with me onto the concourse outside the airport, and she took me to barter with some taxi drivers. This is where I learned two very valuable lessons. The first lesson is really the second lesson in reverse: don't book online before you go, and you'll get the best price if you barter well.

I didn't barter well, but I got a reasonable price. The barter started at 1200Rub. I said no way, but I knocked it down to 900. The lady said to me "Oh, you've got to knock him down more. 900? You sure, that's high!" Well, I'm not used to this! AND, I don't really know how much English these guys know, so do they know I'm saying "900", or is it all gibberish to them?

So I do a pre-barter with the lady, getting her advice on what to do and eventually the original driver bows out when I knock it all down to 700Rub, but then another Taxi driver who's been standing in the background kind of steps forward, and he says "Seven Hundred?", I say "Yes... Dah", we shake hands, and then the deal is done. "Paydirt!" I thought... at less than half the price of the taxi I booked, I thought I had a result!

Outside Adler-Sochi airport, photo taken by my taxi driver

The driver was good, and insisted on taking my bags, even though I know how awful they are to roll anywhere. I repeatedly said I could take them, but he was very cool about it. 

He gestured that we were going up to where the road is above. It just so happens that as we exit, A-House is Amosov's House (centre of picture), where I would have stayed had I not been overbooked. Good job I wasn't there!

There are two vehicles parked near the yellow sign in the picture below as well. I knew of Russia's fragrant reputation for dodgy taxi vehicles, which was one of the reasons I always tried to book with providers before going, because you could choose the class of vehicle to pick you up, and could ensure that something safe would arrive! Naturally, my hopes gravitated towards the ford minibus in the photograph, and the reality - when he asked me to wait with my bags while he picked up his car - was to turn out to be the ancient Lada parked in from of it.

 

I got into the Lada - sat in the back - and noticed as we took off that as I stuffed my hands down the back of the seat, of course there were no seat belts! The negotiation phase prior to this journey didn't take into account vehicle make or safety, and I now also noticed that Lada's are low to the ground, and made out of what looks like tin foil. The springs in the seat had seen better days, and my butt was in serious threat of getting road rash. 

Firtunately, his driving wasn't too bad and thankfully, because it's a Lada, it actually cannot go fast, so there's no threat of us being the cause of a high speed collision. Every now and then, I'd see big cement trucks that could crush this tin can into smithereens, followed by thoughts of how my holiday surely couldn't be over this soon, but then they'd drive past and I lived to tell another minute.

Rostov Hotel

My driver pulled around a bend and then he said "Tsvetochnaya", gesturing with his hand along the length of the road. This looked about right. We then pulled up outside the hotel (above), where I paid hims, and snapped a picture of him with his vehicle (below).

On arrival at the hotel, seemingly random looking dudes were hanging around inside the gate. It's always an impression I've had of Russia - lots of people standing around on street corners, in alleyways, or wherever, not up to much, and so far this fitted that bill. But then a young guy - who turned out to be Nashan, one of the people who runs the hotel - grabbed my bags from me and ushered me in, clearly he knew that I was the non-Russian they've been expecting at their hotel, given how I didn't really know what to say to him. It's weird like that when you're in a country where no one speaks your language, and you don't speak theirs. The instinct to just talk and say stuff has to be put to the back of the cupboard, and you have to find a new way of communicating, that both of you will be guaranteed to be bad at initially, but that both of you will also find a way to settle on a common vocabulary for that meets the needs of the situation as time goes on. Writing this in hindsight and after the trip, I can say that you can still communicate with anyone using gesture, and often via weird coincidental similarities between your languages.

My taxi driver, and his dodgy Lada

 After sitting down in the reception room, which seemed to be the front room of the apartment where the people who run the hotel live, I met Angela who was the only real English speaker at the hotel. It was a relief to meet her, because the whole checkin affair was quite complex, given the registrations that had to be done by the hotel after I arrived. Apparently, they'd just introduced a new system, so they had numerous troubles with adding me on there.

After being given my keys and unpacking, Angela was then really helpful, showing me around Adler and taking me to the Spectator Registration Centre for picking up my Spectator Pass.

Inside the Mandarin Mall Sochi 2014 Spectator Registration Centre in Adler

The inside of the centre was like organised chaos, as with so many things in Russia, like driving up busy roads, or getting on airplanes. They make you go to different ends of this building to do different things to get your spectator pass, and then you have to wait while someone with a megaphone reads out your name from the centre of the building after they print it and laminate it.

On the way back from having Angela help me fix a problem at the Megafon store with my data connection, I then asked her about dinner at the hotel. Being a bit tired, I didn't necessarily fancy braving the street food. She said they're open from 5pm until 10pm for dinner. She also offered to make me a menu, translated with google translate, so that I could order in the restaurant, where the ladies don't speak any English. It was really helpful!

I ordered the borsch, which as you can see below was a beautiful light soup, made with umpteen vegetables, and topped with a blob of sour cream. They make it there, and it was really delicious! I had that the next evening as well....

I would need some good food, given the next day was going to be my first one on the Olympic park, and I wasn't quite sure yet what to expect from that!

I'll be back soon with the next instalment.

Arriving into Russia

The flight out of Heathrow was actually on premium economy - world traveller plus, with BA - and I saw that for a bit extra, you get a comfy seat, food service where you pick from a menu:

And you get off the plane before cattle class. The flight was very good, with BA being decidedly better than I remember them to be. The flight was fine, and the food was excellent. I had the Fresh seasonal fruit, and the fillet steak with scrambled eggs and veggies. Sorry, no pictures, but it was VERY good! The fillet steak was tender and succulent, and the fruit was refreshing.

I arrived at Moscow Domodedovo - where I was to spend the night at the Airhotel - on the 13th of Feb, 2014. After a fairly short flight from Heathrow, Passport control getting into Moscow broke a number of stereotypes for me, with the border control guards actually smiling at me and welcoming me into the country. That was the first of many stereotypes to be broken on this trip!

Don't do like I did after you arrive and miss the signs for the free shuttle bus to the Airhotel. I had to make my way out of the airport, and thinking I knew best - who needs a manual? - I used what I knew from google maps to try to make my way to the airhotel on foot, a short half a kilometer away. 

Slush, rain and miserable luggage meant if I didn't find it soon, I was going to come back to the airport and ask for directions. As you make your way out the front of Domodedovo airport, you'll be surrounded by taxi drivers wanting your business. They want you to haggle here in Russia on the price before you get in the car! Well, I didn't want any of that, so I'd direct my gaze away and just say "No" to each of them. But as soon as you say no to one, another who should have heard or seen you reject the previous taxi would try to be your next one! Don't they learn?

Domodedovo is a modern airport, with a beautiful glass facade.

I walked out and crossed the picket line of drivers, and out across the large traffic concourse to what was a rather odd looking hotel, if that was it. It basically had 20 loading bays in a sunken court yard - probably not it! Looks a bit officey. 

I continued on to some buildings that looked a bit soviet! They too didn't look like the aerial shot I saw. So I turned around to head back to the airport, and in my loudest, slowest english, I said to a guy with a broom "Air - Hotel?" He repeated it back - sounded like "Airport", and he point back at Domodedovo. Not really that useful, I gave up and headed back inside, where I spotted an official ooking girl doing nothing. I tried the slow/loud routine again (I'm exaggerating), and she pointed at the huge revolving doors I'd come out earlier. And sitting right in the middle of the door was a 5 foot tall sticker - "Airhotel Free Shuttle".

I eventually found the tiny post with a sign at the top where the bus is met. For anyone who may come here and want to know in advance where to go fr the shuttle, it's out of Entrance 3 (Exit 3), down the ramp in front of you to a small area where busses and taxis sit, and you wait on the edge of a round area by a sign in the middle. The bus is actually pretty good, although don't expect friendly service! Put your bags in the back, and get on, without anyone saying a word.

At the airhotel, the receptionist spoke good english and the food in the restaurant was wholesome - I had "Soup with Chickens" (plural) - twice in one sitting. 

I've not really got a lot to say about the Airhotel. It was plain, functional, and clean. They use mattress protectors, which made me very happy to see. I stayed here because it saved me £600 on my flight, so if you too are looking for a way to reduce the cost of your flight, I recommend it entirely!

My flight to Sochi was next morning, so I had to not be up too early. I was in Moscow! I couldn't believe it... and I can fly on to Sochi knowing full well that it's a domestic flight, so no hurry to get there 2 or three hours before.

Road to Sochi

I started out this trip with nothing really in mind for how easy it would be to arrange, or for how many times I would flip flop between going and not going in the latter stages of the media storm around Sochi 2014 security.

I made up my mind on the 19th of January that if I wasn't going to get Accommodation by Midnight on the 20th of January, I was going to write off my trip, all of my tickets, and spend money getting useful work done on the house to make my stay at home watching it as good an experience as it could possibly be. 

To reflect on why I'd made that decision, and to tell you what happened next, I'll tell a story that I promise to keep as short as I can.

I started booking tickets in February of 2013. It was a good 6 or so months since London 2012, and I was determined to carry on the Olympics buzz. The promise of Sochi, in the eye of someone who'd never been listening to or hearing what had actually gone on to make Sochi 2014 happen, seemed pretty good. Sochi repeats the amazing coastal location of Vancouver - Coast + mountains - and from the looks of the maps I was seeing of their preparations, it had an Olympic park, which I really liked from London, and that wasn't present in Vancouver. It also had a slightly daring allure, with it being a very foreign place, where not even the alphabet is the same.

So that's how I got drawn in. There was also a bit of goading in the office from people eagre to see me buy more and more tickets (sorry office). With Sochi, there wasn't the cliff-hanger ending with every ticket purchase like there was in London with the ticketmaster driven london2012 ticket site. Instead, buying outside of Russia, the only option is Cosport. 

To be fair, although Cosport were quite expensive, their service was faultless. And because I'd purchased tickets so early, I was rewarded with the proper pictogram tickets sent in the mail (photographed post-use here in my Hotel in Adler, so don't think you can go and copy the ticket and use it, because the session has ended):

Anyway, back to the story. As time went on, I got a few more tickets, and started to actively look for accommodation.

And I started looking for accommodation.

And I started looking for accommodation.

And... I'm at risk of boring you to death! But that's pretty much how my year in the run up to these Olympic Games went. First, I heard that they were building hotels, and that they'd by some mechanism be "released" for sale. I then heard from an agency in Russia that that was still the case, but I'd have to wait until after the summer of 2013. Then after the summer of 2013, cruise ships started to appear as an alternative, since either the hotel building program wasn't running to schedule in the Coastal Cluster, or they'd planned it all along, or they hadn't anticipated the demand. Either way, that sounded all along like a non-starter to me.

After about 4 months went by, I'd had no luck with accommodation at all, and had been following and taking part in talks with other western travellers on Trip Advisor, where we've now racked up a monstrous 2000+ reply thread on Sochi 2014 Olympics accommodation. In it, I'd seen and grown slightly jealous of all of these people who'd taken the initiative to book rooms on cruise ships, while I was holding out for a proper bricks and mortar hotel to appear for sale. I thought maybe I'd been a chump, and would miss out altogether on an olympics like no other (for whatever reason!).

In very early January 2014, I'd decided to see if accommodation on board ships was still indeed possible. The "Svoy TT" website said there were rooms available on the Grand Holiday, a proper ship (not a converted car ferry) being docked right in the port of Adler, near enough to the Olympic Park. In a fashion which was typical of my luck up to this point, I'd gone and pressed "Next" on their booking site, which actually should have said "Submit and legal bind yourself into a contract to purchase goods you haven't reviewed yet". Great piece of translation, Svoy TT! So they had my details, but not my credit card number. Of course not! This website only wanted westerners to pay by wiring money (read: cash) directly out of their bank account and into the hands of Svoy TT. I have to say I felt decidedly uncomfortable at the thought of wiring them money, without the assurances provided by credit card.

Well it turned out to be for nothing. I waited several days before contacting Svoy TT to ask what the deal was, having heard nothing from their system. "SORRY NO AVAILABILITY" was all that came back from "customer services". 

Shit. So, first booking attempt, with only a month to go, felt a bit desperate and late. 

After this episode, I was determined not to give up on going, but the reports of terrorism were growing all the louder after the Volgograd incidents, and there was no sign of a centralised effort to get accommodation into the hands of people who needed the most help, non-Russian speactators! 

But look, what's this I see? A web page linked off the official sochi2014.com website, that claims to be administered by nothing other than the Adler administration? Well, I've only ever had good service from City Accommodation bureaus, so this should be a doozer! Just email Alexander Ostapenko at rivsochi.ru. Oh, what's this I get? Email bounces (mid January). Call the phone number? Russian telephone answering machine - each and every time I try. Is this how to organise the games? 

So I started living my life on booking.com - how I discovered it, I'm not sure. But look at what we have here! A whole selection of properties in and around Adler, at some frankly ridiculous prices (stick with me folks, booking.com are the heroes of this story - it's the hoteliers that are greedy). If the rooms aren't expensive, they're either really far away ("imagine all of those hours as a sitting duck on public transport for those nasty people that want to do harm to Olympics fans"), or they're dive hostels where you'll be sharing a room with 8 other people in a dorm ("imagine all of those thieving hands pilfering camera equipment as you sleep").

I was looking one morning on my Mac at home, and was about to be late for my bus, when the site had on it a place called Amosov's House. This place was cheap - £569 for 8 nights in an Olympic city - and is square between the airport and the railway station. Unbeatable! 

I took it. And in my confirmation it said  "You'll be asked by the hotel to pay on the day of booking". I waited a day, and I also waited another day. Then I contacted booking.com. They were so nice and helpful. They rang the hotel owner - Mr. Amosov - and he explained that he'd overbooked himself. The overbooking was not the end of the road, though; booking.com have a policy that if you are overbooked, they will find you alternative accommodation at the same price. That means that even if the alternative property is more money, you pay the original quoted price. The sweet justice in this is that the hotel that overbooks you makes up the difference in the price. But you have to bring your receipt home and send it back to booking.com to claim the refund, which is only fair.

Apparently, they had a booking team dedicated to the olympics. After this incident, I knew that finding me accommodation would be like finding a needle in a haystack, but finally Mr. Amosov and booking.com worked together and found me an alternative place to stay. I didn't know where it was, but after looking at and rejecting so many properties either on where they were, how they looked, or what they charged, I awaited with aniticipation. Thoughts of being next to the olympic park went through my head. Getting up and rolling out of my bed into the curling rink was on its way to my bedside! 

They found me accommodation 8KM away from Adler in Kudepsta. the More-Land Guest House. I shrunk. It's now mid-January. Trip advisor is chock full of people asking about minute details of cruise ship life, what to pack and not to pack, and I'm left with a place miles from the centre of the sporting universe.

Well, after I got that accommodation offer and coupled it together in my mind with hours spent on lurid public transport, I decided to make a decision. If I didn't have accommodation booked by midnight on the 20th of January, I was going to give up. I'd had enough. I just wanted a decision to be made by the hand of fate now.

I spent the following couple of days up until the deadline looking and drooling, imagining my life in the jetset leagues staying at a £200-£300 per night room at the Sochi Beach Hotel. Bah! but it's ultra pricey, and ultra far away. If I rejected Kudepsta, I was also rejecting this. But it's gorgeous? Kudepsta... But it gets rave breakfast reviews! Kudepsta.... 

The 21st of January arrived, and I was resigned to my fate. I was making plans for how I'd call the TV aerial technician to install a swanky multi-room system in the house as I made my way to the train station for work that morning, a bit down and depressed.

While I was standing in my crowded train, my phone rang. It looked like a london number. "Hello", I asked. "Hello, this is Anastascia from booking.com. I wondered if I could help you with the booking we sent you from Mr Amosov, and get you on your way!"

"Oh", I said, "I think it is too far away. I don't know - I don't think I'll be going through with it now".

"Well sir", she said, "I've just entered another property manually onto the system just now, perhaps you'd be interested in looking at that?". 

I kind of ugged at the thought, and was about to say no, but she'd just entered it onto the system.

"Sure - send it through, and I'll take a look." 

There couldn't be any harm: my deadline has passed, and all the other properties are crap, so why would this one upset my apple cart now that I'm staying in the UK, bowl of popcorn in my lap, crying about not being there, curtains drawn, weeping.

The email landed, and it took a second as we went through Waterbeach station where the 3G sucks, but finally the page opened, and before my very eyes, on the 21st of January, hallelujah! Where is it? Right next to the Olympic park. How much is it? 36000 Rur (about £630) for all 8 nights. BUY BUY BUY! I was sweating and shaking as I fumbled to book it while standing on the train, rocking back and forth amid all the people as the train swayed.

Then, another phone call.

"Hey great. I've seen your booking come through, and can DEFINITELY confirm that you've got this room. We've known about this property possibly listing with us for about a week now, and we're so pleased to be able to make the call to you today - I saw to it personally, so that I could let you have first look at it".

I write this as I sit in that very hotel room, but my heart is full of mixed emotions right now for my fellow travellers on trip advisor who booked on the cruise ships. A scandal has opened up in the last few days as the cruise ships have been overbooked by not just a few rooms, but HUNDREDS of rooms. I have seen posts from people who arrived to check into their room on ship X, and be told there is no room. They've been bumped, but who by and who for remains a mystery. They've wired their cash to the abyss, presumably, and won't be seeing a penny of it come back. No credit card was ever used to pay for that, so almost no protection. Some have been lucky enough to book through a tour company, so probably got some support. Here's an example of just that thing happening:

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/SB-Blogs/On-The-Ground/2014/02/SochiSiteLudusTours.aspx

So, my next installment will be about my arrival in Sochi (via Moscow)!

Spasibo!