Posts Tagged ‘airplanes’

Flight from Sofia Minsk via Moscow Sheremetevo airport a few impressions from Russia and Belarus

Sunday, April 17th, 2016

Sofia-Sheremetevo-Minsk-my-impressions-on-Russian-and-Belarusian-airport-what-it-is-like-in-Eurasian-Union

Thanks God, today we had a safe flight  for one more time with my wife Svetlana from Sofia  airport Vrazhdebna ( Terminal 2 )  to Minsk Belarus National Airport.
We travel 2 times to Belarus from Bulgaria (European Union) and though in Summer time tickets are more cheap and more regular and more convenient direct flights are available from Bulgaria to Minsk (Varna -> Minsk and Burgas -> Minsk) because of tourism the only way to travel quickly by plane to Minsk from Bulgaria is either via Moscow or via Istanbul as in the late days the political situation in Turkey is so ignited and the problem with these refugees and crazy bomb hihhadists is escalating we decided to not fly through Istanbul Ataturk airport even though the bit lower ticket prices.

The trip started from Sofia airport, there we had to go through the regular Metal Detector scan and removal of all metal things and going through the scan "gateway" doors. It seems after the last terrorist acts in Brussels Belgium and the risk for many other Islamic ones the security in airports was raised even further.

The distrust to the regular flight traveller like me has reached a crazy levels, these times besies the regular Metal detector, we were asked to give our hands and with a small device called "Trivka", were checked whether our skin has recently been exposed to explosive materials and stuff like this …

For both flights Sofia -> Moscow Sheremetevo and Sheremevo -> Minsk we flied with Aeroflot. This is not the first time we fly with Aeroflot and I think it will definitely not to be the last time. The airplanes we flight with were a new airplanes (SU) Sukhoi airplane and I enjoyed the flight.

My impression was the Russian pilots are "driving" / flying the plane very much like they drive an ordinary military airplane and that's quite fun as the airplane lift off and landing is done very rapidly exactly like being done with a military aircraft. Of course that could be my own gut feeling but it feels that way just to compare the aviators of other Westerner airplanes such as Boeng 737 / 777 does speed up before lift off much more easily so the flight out doesn't boost up so much adrenaline 🙂

The food in Sofia -> Moscow plane was quite decent too we were served the so common and valued in Russia, Belarus and Eurasian Union (EAC) juice called RICH before the meail toghether with some option for a beef meal or a chicken meal. The meal itself was worm and served in a board inside holding 2 cardboard boxes one containing the beef together with some spaghetti with steamed vegetables and the other one containing a tiny soared corny with a few pieces of beef (or pork) meet with two pieces of some healthy "black" rye bread pieces one of which was with some healthy sesame seeds accompanied by a small package of butter and some other souce. For a dessert  a delicious waffle like made of drought mashed fruits.

To be honest my first impression seeing that strange meal combination was not very positive, not to say that I honestly wanted to puke but after tasting it I would say I really liked it. Aeroflot offers also a vegetarianian menu but this has to be pre-ordered in advance and as I didn't ordered it earlier but for next time if it is a fasting period before Easter or Christmas I would definitely pre-order a vegeraranian meal.

What I truly liked about Aeroflot's Sukhoi SuperJet 100-95 with which we flight is the the simplistic design, no extras inside the plane no annoying monitors that show you all the time the altitude and reporting over which country you're flying and generally no useless and often unwanted information.
However we were reported by the pilot a couple of times some information such as that we're flying over Brest and Minsk, but of course the English of the pilot was hard to understand. Well the radio from the pilot on the airplane is definitely something that didn't impressed me as in any other western airplane the radio connection from pilot is much more clearly heard but I guess this can be solved quickly.
The toilets in the airplane was also normal ones as in any other Western built Boeng, here is time to say it was always intesting for me the wiping of the toilet once the wipe off button is pressed a small hole is opened letting some air directly from outside to pull off what is inside the toilet and that quickly cleans it up 🙂

Entering the airplane was done through an attachable cordon (air tunnel) and not like with my earlier flights in which we were driven to the airplane by an ordinary bus.  

moscow-sheremetevo-terminal-2

Sheremetevo is really huge airport and what impressed me is the fact Sheremetevo's airport letters were written in pure cyrillic, something surely unique to see for any person coming from the west.

First impression from Moscow Sheremetevo if compared to Shiphol airport in Holland or Heatrow port in London is Sheremetevo is much more calm and quiet, the airport looks feels relaxing and cozy even though its outlook is a bit old fashioned. The marketing and advertisement ads all around the place and complexity of Sheremetevo is much less if compared to any other huge International airport and some things are made in a typical Russian manner, even the number of products being sold in the airport are much less than in any western airport, though there is plenty of caffeterias and restaurants to have lunch / dinner.

Moscow-Shermeetevo-free-duty-shops-and-terminal-D-red-cooridor-signatures

The simplicity on Sheremetevo airport is really a great thing as even the monitors showing up information for the flights are displaying the information in a very understanable and simply way even though possessing generally an old fashioned DOS like outlook if compared to the modern European Union / United States airports.
While waiting on Terminal D for the onboarding to flight Moscow -> Minsk, I had an amazing view of the airports airplanes, moving all around.
This is the first time I saw so many airplanes gathered on one place even though I've flight via Sheremetevo previous times this is the first time I'm starting to understand how big is really Sheremetevo.

One unfortunate fact about the flught was that our luggage was not transferred directly to Minsk Belarus but sent from Sofia to Sheremetevo and then we had to wait for some time to pick it up right after we've been checked by the border control kiosk.
There by the border police Russian lady I had to answer her few questions and she filled me a small list called "Migration card" blank for the Transfer visa.
Oh yes, I almost forgot in order to fly through Russian to another country inside the Eurasian Union such as Belarus, you need to have a Russian Transfer Visa which is being applied for from Russian embassy in Bulgaria.
The Russian Transit flight  VISA costs 60 EUR (if it is to be made from 4 to 10 days) and for a 3 days creation of VISA it costs 95 EURO.

Sheremetevo_airport_Saint_Nicolas_Eastern_Orthodox-Chapel

One very great thing about Sheremetevo which I liked so much as I'm an Eastern Orthodox Christian is the existence of the Eastern Orthodox Chapel in honour of Saint Nicolas the Myrh-Bearer who is in our Christian faith considered to be a protector of all travelers. Thus if like me you happen to be a Christian and you're flying via Moscow it is very nice to drop by for a few minutes in St. Nicolas chapel to light up a candle and pray to the saint with a beseach for a safe flight.

 

Sheremetevo-airport-Saint_Nicolas_Chapel-iconostas-icons-of-the-Savior-Jesus-Christ-and-Virgin_Mary
Here in Minsk the airport is also very cozy and warm (especially the old terminal), so one have a relaxing feeling once in Minsk.
Minsk airport is also very well organized and well maintained so to be honest it looks to me personally more beautiful than Sheremetevo.

Minsk-National-airport-logo

To transfer to the 2nd airplane that flight from Moscow Sheremetevo to Minsk we needed to make transfer from Terminal F (where we arrived) to Terminal D which is the terminal that runs the local Eurasian Union flights from Russia to Belarus (note that Russian, Belarus doesn't have a flight border so anyone flying from Russia to Belarus could fly freely and once you reach Belarus, you're not being checked at all from any border control and that's pretty cozy because we didn't have to be checked for a second time once we reached Minsk.

minsk-inside-airport-shops-and-infrastructure

My impression from Minsk National airport is that it is a nice mixture of communistic remains architecture and modern architecture.
There are plenty of private  busses (marshrutki) that goes every 15 minutes from Minsk airport which is 43 km from city center as well as an ordinary state bus that gues to the train station and city center.
The train station in Minsk is also on a very much Western level and for some things it is even better as it has a cheap shop, where you can buy food at same prices as in any other supermarket chain in Belarus. 
We travelled to train station and there what striked me is the touch screen interface allowing you to see various info about Minsk infrastructure the trains timing and even there was a video call to Train Station Staff to find out more about anything you can't find out yourself.

 

Human Modern Progression a move forward to Degression

Saturday, June 16th, 2012

I've been thinking about our modern day progression and what our "progressed" society looks like in reality.
We think we have progressed, we have built machines that serves us well (computers). We plan for a bright painless easy future day by day. This bright "perfect" society future is nothing more than the dream of communism in its complete form.

But in what sense we have actually progressed ?? Everyone who really sees what happens around us notice the big changes we experience. On the surface it looks like our life has become much easier with all this technology surrounding us. The number of computers which is said to help us to leap towards this bright future increases day by day. With this however increases the need to support technology. Suddenly it happens that the old believe that computers are just a tool to make our life earier becomes a modern day slavery. Most of the developed or under development countries people are nowdays almost full time spending in front of the computer screen on the internet. We put our lifes in the mercy of man-created computers and it has become impossible that we live or exist independetly without them.

Computers are everywhere around us starting from the work Desk, at hand with a notebook, ipad, mobile phones, cars, airplanes. There is rarely to see any technology we use which works with not some kind of primitive or advanced computer embedded ,,,
In the rise of computers as we know it computer was just a tool to help us along with the other overall thought and inventions development. Now from just being a tool to help us progress Computers become the common ground on which almost everything in life works.

I'm sure many people who started learning computer technology 15-20 years ago (like me) never imagined computers will integrate so heavily in our daily activities as they eventually did.

We use computers for the sake of planning which in "spiritual language" is predicting the future or prophecise what is about to come in the short future. In reality what we do mostly even not realizingly is to try to predict and modify the future through technology.
This concept is also existing in most sci-fi movies, made in last 60 years. Mobile phones revolution give the humanity a tool through which telepathy we've seen in so many SCI-FI is reality. The mobile phone is just a platform through which (phone calls) or better said voice telepathy has become possible. In that manner of thoughts it is obvious that Video phone calls is a voice + visual telepathy. The Skype revolution and Video and voice conferences is brought was just until recently seen on the sci-fi movies where spaceship crews communicated with other spaceship crews by using a Visual conferences like skype.

It is really hard to believe that for just few years now everyone can speak with ease with everyone else on the planet in the same way just like we've seen in the movies as some foreign abstract concept!

Now suddenly most people on earth are equipped with technology with gives them the power to do everything but it is my firm believe people are not ready to wisely use this power. Therefore instead of using this higher technology wisely technology is used mostly senseless and the more technological advancement grows and becomes more accessible to the masses the more the tendency to use the technology for shit grows.

I'm sure people who have a good knowledge on programming and how computer works are already seriously aware of this enormous problem.
Another severe problem with the raise of technology is the language slang it introduces. This tech-slang is adopted quickly all around the society and suddenly as a result the human language as we know it is seriously substituted by a vague tech words mambo-jambo words. Actually the adoption of tech buzz words in modern day society language makes a great harm for the reason communication between people becomes less descriptive and therefore harder.
In short the result of this tech slang language inside our national languages is inability for people to communicate properly. This tendency is well seen if you for example try to make a comparison between old and newer movies. The newer the movie the less meaningful it is. It is true newer ones has much more as a visual adds than the predecessor but when talking about consistency the newer films are missing this point seriously.

As newer generations are born and raised up with this newer movies and "advanced" TV and computers this people doesn't even have most of the time the opportunity to see older human taped knowledge.
Even for youngesters who have somehow a wise parents enough to teach them in a religious way or just have the "luck" to have parents with old world mindset it will be extremely hard if not impossible for this kids to understand the old knowledge, as most of their same age school / university fellows will only talk about the newer things.

Besides all this, computers as they grow needs more and more support "nurturing" so day by day more and more people has to be busy with managing and supporting tech stuff. Suddenly it is no longer clear if computers serve us or we serve them, this tendency is already somehow evident but not so clearly as it will be in the short 5 to 10 years.
Therefore we slowly but surely are moving to a society which might become "enslaved by technology". Why I say here enslaved, because if we spend our time on fixing computers and technology and working with one virtual reality (which is non-reality) in essence this means we no longer have a physical freedom in the sense it was God given.

There is no doubt computers at present appears to do us a big good, but if you think a bit strategically it is obvious this good has it's price. By adopting all this technology without questioning ourselves on how this will impact our human freedom, we build a computerized jail around us. At first this jail appears to be so wide that it seems it does not interfere with our freedom, but with the introduction of newer and newer computer technology this jail becomes narrower as to the point where it could threat our physical existence freedom.

For those who could argue my thoughs I will ask two simple questions to show you how dependent we've become on technology;;;

What was the last time you switched off your mobile for a week ?

What was the last time you didn't used computers and the internet for a week time ?

Obviously rarely we can find someone that will answer positively to this question or even the thought of switching off from this so globalized society by dropping off tech stuff for a week seems scary.

This constant connectiodness that we're day-by-day heavily exposed to is scary, because it steals little-by-little our natural freedom for seclusion / pravicy / solitude.

This freedoms, were essential and especially for Christian saints and many of the people in the Holy Bible if we read closely we will find out they have used this freedom in parts of their lives especially the seclusion to hear and understand God's will for their life.
Since technology is stealing us the freedom to seclude ourselves this means it steals our basic natural freedom to communicate with God and our natural self ,,,

The consequence of this separation from God and unification with "the world" surely will lead to spiritual blindness and lack of good foundation or higher life purpose, in other words lost path in life.

This is happening all along right in front our eyes now.
Maybe the worst thing of globalization is it doesn't unite people on a soul level but rather separates them. The unification that tech boom gives to people is in the "virtual reality" but this is not a real unification as it is unification in a media which is not real.

Yes Virtual Reality is not real, that's why it is called Virtual isn't it?
I've been thinking over all this problems more and more and I'm starting to come to conclusion that people who wish to keep their essential physical freedom need to GET OUT from this tech lie, we have lived in.
For this however more people need to first realize that;;;

1. TECHNOLOGY LEADS US NOWHERE!

2. People who want to live without technology need to organize in groups (and get used to a natural living growing food, being near to a natural springing water, taking care for each other, living in a Christian commune like – like in the old days)

Actually if we read the old testament's story of Moses escaping the upcoming flood, I believe what is about to come to us as a consequence of this out of boundaries technologization is pretty much like the old testamental flood (this should happen sooner or later).

Moses was wise enough to make himself an Ark and prepare himself for the storm. Today most people are so busy that they don't see the storm coming. I'll be glad to hear from people who has the same thinking as me and want to organize in a groups and live an old humble way of life without technology.
I'm convinced people who have realized all this tech short future bad consequences on humanity, need to have a common communication media and share their knowledge on how we can find a way to live tech free in this age. I'm curious am I the only one with such thoughts or other get into this insight too. If you have come to conclusions I did please contact me in comments. Thank you.