Moscow is overheated. Too hot to work, to hot to be in the city. Trying to have a cold shower, I found that there is no cool water in the pipes, warm only. The only chance to cool off is to get out of the city.

The new resource www.gdeetotdom.ru allows you to find a photo of almost any house in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

A very useful tool if you're thinking about renting or buying a flat or just want to make sure that you will be able to find the house you need easily.

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You will regret if you don't see these places while in Moscow...

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Check out our new interactive map of Russia on Google... You will find brief descriptions of the major cities, destinations, and train routes, as well as links to more information.

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There's a new, interesting website that allows you to search public transport routes in Moscow. You enter your starting point (street or address) and your destination and it tells you the best public transport options (buses, trams, metro, etc). Could be very useful when you're trying to get somewhere that has no nearby metro station. Here's the site:

Moscow Public Transport Search

It's still in Beta version and at the moment there are some problems with entering street names (it's not clear what transliteration is needed). But the 'Object' search currently works well. And the Russian language search works fine.

Update: Way to Russia in cooperation with RusAvtobus created our own version in English, where you can mark the locations on Google Maps. Check out Moscow Guide -> Public Transport Search

Just a quick warning for those planning to take Trans-Mongolian or Trans-Manchurian train journeys in late July or August. Due to the Beijing Olympic Games, tickets for trains starting in Beijing will not be able to be booked the usual 45 days in advance. They will go on sale only a few days in advance.

There might also be some trouble obtaining tickets from Mongolia to Beijing at this time. Tickets on this route can still be ordered in advance, but due to high demand there might be problems. Some agencies are recommending clients should fly this part of the trip.

Trains within Russia, from Russia to Mongolia, and from Russia directly to Beijing will be unaffected. At least, these tickets shouldn't be too much harder to obtain than they are any other year.

The famous Russian Art Lebedev design studio has a very interesting internship program for foreigners.

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1. The World’s Biggest Ice Sculpture festival. There’s no reason to harp on about this – everyone knows what it’s about. But seeing the sculptures up close is far more amazing than what you could imagine from the photos.

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The Guardian wrote an interesting interactive guide to Putin's daily drive from his home to the Kremlin. The animated map leads you along his route and several videos by Luke Harding give a bit of insight into Moscow life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2008/feb/12/russia

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The 4th most popular blog site in the world, www.livejournal.com, has been acquired by a Russian media company SUP. LiveJournal is the most popular blog platform in Russia and is used mainly by intellectuals and young people. For many people it's become the only independent source of information in Russian.

SUP's CEO Andrew Polson is well known in Russia for establishing the most popular entertainment magazine, Afisha.

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