Atlantik Hotel

House yards have many purposes.

by jfkfamily

My favorite thing about Yekaterinburg yards is that people who live around, use them however they want.
Look at this one.
The building is a karate school, and long time ago it had a nice color and the yard was full of children. There was a place for them to play.
Later, they used it as a parking place.
Later as a storage for the construction workers.
Now it is just empty and dirty. After a long day of shoping, men and women from the street come here to drink beer or even (!) use it as a toilet, if it is getting dark. It looks horrible. They even cut the trees for unknown reason...
I have this view from my window in Russia. I miss the way my street (Malisheva) looked 10 years ago. It has noting to do with disapearance of USSR, I guess. In the last five years many big companies bought property around my house and changed the look of everything.
Next to my home were small kiosks which sold ice cream, but not the ugly iron ones. They were made like fairy tale houses, one blue and one red. Now they are gone - they blocked the view of the door to a new watches and clocks shop.
There was a small shop selling pastry in my building, now it is closed for reconstruction for about 3 years.
A huge vegetables shop is now a supermarket and there are restaurant and video rental across the street.

Ural Motorcycling Tours and Russian Huntinting

by centr_tour

Our Company arranges the below said feature tours for all who would like to see Russia and have a fun during the vacation in Russia:
- Motorcycling tours for enthusiasts of Ural motorcycles and fresh people who are just at the start of getting familiar with this great WWII vintage bike still produced by Irbit Motorcycle Plant;
- Motorcar tours for lovers of Russian off-road vehicles like Lada Niva, UAZ and for lovers of extremes and off-roading in the world's end;
- Hunting in Russia everything in connection: adventures, chasing, Russian vodka and the rewarding trophy. Ural Motorcycle, UAZ, VAZ, NIVA

The monument to the founders

by Upstate1NY

In the center of the city is a pleasent little plaza (square), amoung other items there, along with Katerine's Chaple, is a statue,.sculpture, honoring the founders of Yekaterinburg, a Russian and a Dutchman, posed here on the pedistal.
The city was founded as an industrial center. There is a canal in the very center that represents the original raceway that powered the local plant machinery.
Just across the street from this central plaza is what was once a very elegant residence. My understnding was that it now houses public offices of some nature.
Yekaterinburg was named for Peter the Great's German wife, Katerina (Who it would seem distained Russians other than her husband). Perhaps that is why the Russians distort Katerina to Yuk'-a-terin-burg rather that saying Ekaterinaburg

JENNY AND HER HOME CITY.

by jfkfamily

Yekaterinburg is a city of contrasts.

New hotels and a small wooden houses where people live for about hundred years.
Snow in June and rain in January.
A girl looking like a model and next to her a gypsie in dirty clothes surrounded by a dosen of her own children.
Very cheap and extremely expensive.

Though bad roads never change.
In +30 or -30 you will always see people with beer bottles or ice cream on the streets.
Poor men will never stop trying to fish something out from our dirty river.
Chicken factory on the way from the airport seems to stay there forever - it provides the whole city with chicken meat.
Ugly metal kiosks everywhere are a part of Yekaterinburg - mostly always open until midnight.
Jenny's home is a four floor building in one of the biggest streets. In 1899 this building was just one floor and there was a bank in it. Long time ago they added three more floors. When she was a child she kept telling her friends, she lived in a palace - so unusual were 4,5 meter ceilings in that time.
Her grandmother who owned the flat, died some time ago of a heart attack. Since then her family keep moving from one city to another.

When Jenny goes to visit it, she feels like a little girl again - safe and calm. The city is changing and growing, but for her it will always stay the way it was 20 years ago.

Ekaterinburg was a tiny town build around a weir and factories working on the power of it. Now it is the third largest in Russia.
Last Tzar family was killed here in the begining of the XXth century and in last years their bones were transfered to St.Peterburg.
There are many beautiful places, old houses like mine, parks and churches.