Forecasters predict that very sharp weather fluctuations are expected in winter. Thaws will occur more often than usual and frosty periods will occur more often.
HOWEVER, autumn was also abnormal. It’s time to forget about the “normal” weather. In late October and early November, the weather was so hot in the resorts of the Krasnodar Territory that not only walruses could swim in the Black Sea. And so, on the eve of the calendar winter, the “storm of the century” hit the Crimea and Krasnodar Territory. In a century and a half of meteorological observations on the Black Sea, there has never been anything like this – wind gusts reached 40 m/s, wave height reached 9 meters.
5 people died in Crimea, 400 thousand residents of the peninsula were left without electricity. As a result of flooding with cold salt water, over 500 freshwater fish and animals died in the Sevastopol aquarium.
The storm also took away the summer cinema on the seashore in Balaclava, which they managed to build, but did not have time to open this season.
In Kuban, fallen trees blocked railway tracks in the areas between Lazarevskoye and Dagomys. In the area of the Lazarevskoye station, the tracks were washed away by water. About 50 trains were delayed for almost a day. The Blue Shark cargo ship under the flag of Belize was stranded near Anapa, near the village of Vityazevo. By the way, this is the second ship-attraction in the area. Since 2018, the Rio cargo ship has been stranded 80 km from Blue Shark.
This week there is a sharp cold snap across the country, on average 10 degrees below normal. There was a heavy snowfall in Munich on Saturday. At the local airport, a Cessna light plane, which was supposed to go to the Dubai global warming summit, fell on its tail and froze to the runway.
First of all, the planes
The FAS issued a warning to Pobeda, considering that the airline charges the cost of changing the data in the ticket from the ceiling (economically unjustified tariffs) – changing more than 3 characters in the passenger’s full name costs 5 thousand rubles. The low-cost airline, surprisingly, agreed with the agency and established a single fine for any change – 800 rubles (or 10 euros, or 35 dirhams of the UAE).
Ural Airlines turned out to be not so accommodating. The Department of Rospotrebnadzor in the Astrakhan region appealed to the Oktyabrsky District Court of Yekaterinburg with a demand to remove the imposition of services when purchasing a ticket on the airline’s website, i.e. automatically included in the cost of insurance, “doctor online”, food, etc., etc. In the first instance, the court refused the plaintiff, but in the appellate instance, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court sided with Rospotrebnadzor and ordered Ural Airlines not to automatically include paid services in the contract of carriage.
One thing is unclear in this story – is it only the Uralians who do this?
Irrational fears of an “Electronic ticket”
The Association of Tour Operators (ATOR) has sent to the Ministry of Economic Development a package of proposals for the comprehensive optimization of the work of participants in the tourism market with the information system “Electronic voucher” (EP), which, recall, has been operating in full force since November 15.
Of all the offers from ATOR, we were interested in the story of the “irrational fears” of travel agents (TA). As the ATOR analytical service found out, up to 30% of electronic vouchers are not uploaded to the system due to incorrect filling in fields in the TA system. The fact is that travel agents, instead of the passport number, try to drive numbers at random, for example, a set of ten units, but the system does not accept such data. The most interesting thing is why they do this – it turns out that there is a persistent myth in the travel agency environment – as soon as the tour operator receives the tourist’s data, he will allegedly immediately “appropriate” them, transferring the tourist “to direct booking, without a travel agent.
Describing the situation, ATOR admits that it is useless to fight this myth because it is irrational, and suggests that the Ministry of Economic Development reduce the amount of mandatory information about a tourist by removing the internal passport number, e-mail and phone.
When AN-Tourism wrote about the beginning of full-fledged work of the EP, it warned that such a problem would arise, and not only because they were waiting for a sneak peek from the, but also because they had clients who did not want to share information with the state about how much they spent on vacation. And then, they only enter data into the system, and they are responsible for incomplete data.
We waited
Back in late October, Sri Lanka promised to make visas free for Russians and finally fulfilled its promise. Indeed, since November 28, the visa fee, which is 60 US dollars, has been stopped. The period of visa–free entry is 30 days. This regime will be in effect until March 31.
Moreover, they do not charge for those who receive a visa on arrival, although the Sri Lankan authorities warned that they would exempt from payment only those tourists who have issued an entry permit (ETA) in advance online.
Suomi is everything, but it doesn’t seem to be forever
Finland has decided to close the last still operating border crossing (checkpoint “Raya-Jooseppi – Lotta”) on the Russian-Finnish border. There are eight road checkpoints in total, plus one railway checkpoint. However, as stated by the Finnish authorities, all checkpoints on the border with Russia will be closed for two weeks, from November 30 to December 13.
Explaining the government’s decision, the country’s prime minister said that “it’s not about the number of people or what happened at the border yesterday or today, but about the general situation.” If the “situation” changes, the borders will be reopened.
Meanwhile, the Finnish outlet village Zsar Outlet Village, built for 35 million euros near the border crossing “Vaalimaa – Torfyanovka”, is being sold for … 70 thousand euros.
Ice stopped bezviz
The scandalously prolonged export of hundreds of tourists stuck in the Chinese city of Heihe from Blagoveshchensk (see “AN” No. 46) hit the tourist business – the authorities of the Amur Region stopped coordinating lists of tourists for enrollment in visa-free exchange groups, because the transport problem has not yet been solved and 6 small hovercraft will not be able to provide mass transportation. The whole hope of organized tourism is for a pontoon bridge, which they promise to build as soon as the Amur River freezes completely, approximately by December 15-20.
About German visas
Germany, as promised back in the spring, closed three consulates General in Russia – in Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. Even if we put aside the zero probability of obtaining a Schengen visa at the German consulate (i.e. it is very difficult), then for those citizens of the Russian Federation who need a visa in Germany, in fact, nothing terrible happened. VisaMetric visa centers continue to operate in all of the above cities, plus in St. Petersburg, applications are already being considered only in Moscow since the summer. The waiting time for a decision has also increased since the summer. In all other respects, according to the German Embassy, “the work on issuing visas will continue without restrictions.”
We didn’t wait
It can be said that the disappointment of the year is the three–year cruise for digital nomads, which was supposed to start on November 30, has been canceled. The organizing company Life at Sea Cruises, a daughter of the Turkish Miray Cruises, which also operates the Astoria Grande liner, operating cruises from Sochi, admitted that in the end she could not find a ship for the cruise.
And how cool it all started – in three years the liner had to go around all continents, including Antarctica, 135 countries and 375 ports, stay overnight in 208 of them and visit 103 tropical islands. On board, they promised to provide ideal conditions for remote work: 14 offices, 2 meeting rooms, a library, a cafe and a recreation area. Uninterrupted Internet was supposed to be provided by Starlink.
A total of 111 cabins were booked, costing from 30 (cabin without window) to 110 thousand dollars. Some passengers are still staying in Istanbul, as they do not yet understand where to return to – they have sold or rented out their houses and got rid of all their belongings before traveling around the world. And the organizers promise to start refunding funds from mid-December, in parts, and manage until the end of February.
Dear cities
The Economist Intelligence Unit analytical group presented its annual cost of living rating in various cities of the world – more than 400 prices for 200 products were compared. The top 10 looks like this:
1. Singapore.
2. Zurich.
3. Geneva.
4. New York.
5. Hong Kong.
6. Los Angeles.
7. Paris.
8. Copenhagen.
9. Tel Aviv.
10. San Francisco.
Invitation to partnership – t.me/snn1964
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Источник: argumenti.ru
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