Sochi: Olympic Park and Imereti Lowland. How the Sochi Olympics changed life at the Rossiya state farm resort

Olympic Park built exactly where I once loved to walk and next to the bay in which I always swam in splendid isolation.
I tried to go the same route several times and had no time to find favorite place. Almost succeeded.

The picture during the day, to put it mildly, is nothing - glass, concrete and asphalt with rare splashes of greenery. However, the pre-sunset sun works wonders, and if you are going to take a walk there, then go in the late afternoon. At the end of the post there will be before pictures, and now some recent photos with explanations.


For starters, an inspiring view of the sea from the large ice palace

Exactly in this place there was an emerald green plain and reeds above my 172 (the only Colchis swamps in Russia - a stopping place for migratory birds and one of the key ornithological territories of Russia).
Now the tile is vibrating under my feet (I never found out the reason for the vibration), and a view of 3 buildings:
Left big Ice Palace, on the right is the Shayba ice arena, the Fisht stadium is farthest in the center.

The stadium took its name from the same name mountain peak in the western part of the Main Caucasus Range (translated from the Adyghe language the word “fisht” means “white head”)

Mountain View. The painted hangar on the right is the back of Fisht Stadium. Do you see the trees behind the tourists? This is an Old Believer cemetery fenced with a high fence, it is located between the Fisht stadium and the torch square.

Sea view from the same place.

Directly ahead are new houses on Parusnaya Street; there used to be a holiday village there.

Another view of the sea.

Reflection of the sunset in the large ice palace. Its glazing has a secret. During the day, the glass is mirrored and nothing can be seen there except the reflection of the surrounding space. As soon as it starts to get dark, the mirror properties gradually disappear and you can already look inside.

View of the sea from the inside, a very futuristic building.

View from the end, a sectional view of the wall of the large ice palace, so to speak). These metal laces are lined with glass on the outside and are part of the supporting structure for the stadium roof.

And a couple of photos from the past.

The Imereti lowland (2006), untouched by construction, look at the color of the sea in the lower left corner, there was the very pure water in the Sochi region. Photo taken

Now this place looks like this, there is simply no greenery. Photo from here

The same place in 2010, the construction site has already been completed, surrounded by a fence... and carefully guarded!

I wonder from whom? There were several such installations around the construction site.

There will be no conclusions yet; I have shown you only a tiny piece of a huge territory. To be continued, as well as my personal opinion about what we lost and what we gained.
As they say, don't switch.

The Olympics have passed, and the strength of all coastal Olympic sites has been tested. The area passed the test in winter, competitions and tourists. What now? IN Imereti Lowland Preparations for the Formula 1 competition are in full swing, and people are already swimming on the shore.

What does this place look like now? Let's see?

1. The coastal cluster of Olympic venues is today the quietest and most deserted place.

2. When looking in all directions, it is empty. Rarely, rarely, people run past.

3. Everything is smooth and clean in the center.

4. Rare visitors are photographed as a souvenir.

5. In most open spaces, only traces of construction equipment are visible.

6. But why is it so empty here? Because people simply have nothing to do here now? Not only.

7. For example, let’s take a look at the paths made in the colors of the Olympic rings. There are few people here. And they go to the open exits. It's hard to tell from the photographs, but in fact the race track construction site area is fenced off. Plus there is also a strange fence around the territory, even in those places where there is no need to build anything.

8. That's why there's no one here? There is a fence behind the houses.

9. Why is there no one in the square? Because to enter here you need to forgive two fences with holes.

10. And all this despite the fact that in the center of the square there is a mini-cafe and some entertainment. I still don’t understand why all this is fenced off.

11. Here, against the background of the large ice arena, you can see some building materials. In this part, almost everything is ready for the racing track. Rare places to work are turns and former lawns.

12. The closest hotel to the place. Obviously, the demand for multi-room numbers is now minimal.

13. Rare cars in this territory - builders and organizers of the open day in Sochi.

14. You can see the fence.

15. But the end of sports facilities and it’s lonely standing car against the backdrop of the hotel. To get here, you need to know all the open passages.

16. The future place of attraction is an amusement park.

17. Hotel "Azimut".

18. We move from the Olympic venues to the Black Sea coast. The passage consists of two demolished sections of the fence near the guard's booth.

19. Here comes the sea!

20. On May 16, people were already swimming here.

21. In this area, the water turned out to be very clean, unlike where the Mzymta flows into the sea.

22. A beautiful promenade with a separate bike path stretches along the entire coast.

23. The bike path was in very little demand.

24.

25. Various small design elements.

26. We are moving towards the border with Abkhazia. The embankment narrows a little.

27. There were definitely a lot of people - fishermen!

28. Second half of the day, the air temperature is above +30, and they are here!

29.

30. And here’s what I liked least. With gentrification, the embankment becomes hemmed in by fences. There are more people here, there are old residential buildings and hotels with tourists nearby. And you feel squeezed into some strange framework.

31. Somewhere there those who arrived.

32. And here it seems like you need to sit on a bench and admire the sea. But who would like to admire the sea if there is a fence with thick rods at the eye level of an ordinary person?

33. And behind the fence the view is noticeably better.

34.

35. And finally - a piece of the old part of this place. Historically there were state farms here. One large district is called “State Farm Russia”.

36. And with this I will finish today’s story!

Thank you for your attention! Stay in touch!

You can read other May posts about Sochi and the surrounding area on my blog!

01. Torch, “Big” and “Ice Cube”.

Sochi Olympic Park is the main site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. It was here that all the main action of the Games took place, and after their completion, various sports events are held here. The park is located in the Adler region, in the Imereti Lowland, right on the Black Sea coast.

02. Part of the Adler Arena, a training skating rink for figure skating and the Iceberg.

The most important thing in the park are the sports facilities. Six stadiums are located in the form of a circle: “Fisht” (opening and closing of the Olympics), “Shaiba” (second hockey arena), “Bolshoi” (main ice palace), “Ice Cube” (), “Adler Arena” () and "Iceberg" ( and ). In the center of the circle there is a huge torch in which the fire of the games burned. A wall of champions of the games was also installed on the square and a Formula 1 track was built. An amusement and amusement park, Sochi Park, was built next to the sports facilities.

03. Torch and “Fisht”.

Such a cluster of objects of the same type in one place is beneficial during the Olympic Games themselves, but what to do with them after is a big question. For many years it was said that the objects were prefabricated and would be transported to other regions of Russia. This immediately seemed absurd, and after construction it became completely clear that nothing could be transported. Everything was left standing on the Black Sea shore.

04. Formula 1 track. Because of it, the Olympic Park is now constantly covered with a large number of fences and it is best to move around it on bicycles. By the way, they are allowed on the track once a week and you can ride like a real F1 pilot before the race.

The Fisht is undergoing expensive construction work again: it is being prepared for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Amazing thing: in Krasnodar there are two football clubs playing in the RFPL - Krasnodar and Kuban. The owner of Krasnodar and the Magnit chain of stores, Sergey Galitsky, is new and pure football stadium for his club, which in the spring of 2015 became the bronze medalist of the Russian Championship. But the regional capital was left without a World Cup, despite the huge interest in football. There is no football team in Sochi, there has been no interest from fans for even longer, but it was the resort city that won the World Cup.

05. 40,000-seat Fisht Stadium, where the opening and closing of the 2014 Olympics took place. It cost approximately 20 billion rubles, which is 2.5 times more expensive than analogues.

The Shayba ice hockey arena with 7,000 seats is one of the most modest construction projects of Sochi 2014. They spent “only” 3.4 billion rubles on it, which is about 1.5 times more expensive than its analogues. Minor matches of the Olympic hockey tournament were held here. Nowadays the All-Russian Children's Sports and Fitness Center is located here.

07. Next to the “Shaiba” there is the most grandiose object of the Olympic Park - the Bolshoi Ice Palace.

The 12,000-seat Bolshoi Palace cost almost 10 billion rubles, which is 2.5 times higher than its analogues. A spectator seat at the Bolshoi stadium costs as much as a Toyota Corolla. But building is not enough: you also need to maintain the object. During the Olympics, the Russian Hockey Federation complained that one day of work for the Bolshoi cost 1 million rubles, which is a fabulous amount. They are trying their best to load the facility even after the Olympics. The 2014 Channel One Cup (Euro Hockey Tour stage) and the 2015 KHL All-Star Game took place here. Since the 2014/15 season, Bolshoi has become the home arena of the newly created Sochi hockey club. Also, for the second year now, the arena has served as a venue for the final festival and Gala match of the Night Hockey League, a project personally sponsored by the President of Russia.

The Sochi hockey club was organized very quickly in the summer of 2014. Coach Vyacheslav Butsaev immediately managed to lead the team to the playoffs of the Kontinental Hockey League, where in the spring of 2015 they lost to the regular season winners CSKA Moscow in the first round. Haste is very noticeable in everything that concerns the club itself. Unsuccessful logo and corporate identity, unclear marketing, mediocre attributes, lack of a school and youth team, weak press service, etc. During the debut season, Sochi began to experience financial problems, which became even more acute after the resignation of the governor in April 2015 Krasnodar region Alexandra Tkacheva. It is likely that this year the team from the regional capital, “Kuban”, which played in the VHL, will cease to exist. There the money “unexpectedly” ran out. Resort Sochi the team, of course, is more important and in June the debts were repaid. Despite all the disadvantages, HC Sochi is interesting both as one of the features of an all-season resort, and as simply an interesting participant in the KHL championship, where fans can enjoy a pleasant trip, and where the same KHL All-Star Game can be held.

The most modest object of the Games is the Ice Cube, a curling arena. The 3,000-seat stadium cost a billion rubles. After the Olympics, almost all domestic Russian curling competitions, educational and training events for Russian national teams, as well as the emerging super cups (qualifying tournaments for the European and world championships) were transferred to it. There was so much desire to load the facility that some athletes were already tired of Sochi. In April 2015, the arena hosted the world championship among mixed pairs (double mixed) - a discipline included in the 2018 Olympic program.

10. Last May was the Russian Curling Championships, in which I had the chance to participate.

If the decision to hold the Winter Olympics in the subtropics was absurd, then using the Olympic Park as a Formula 1 track is an interesting solution. There are plenty of large concrete spaces around, expensive chain hotels and small guest houses too, and the airport is nearby. The Black Sea is within walking distance. To go to Sochi for the weekend for the Russian Grand Prix, to “touch the history” of the Olympics, to swim in the sea and visit the mountains in Krasnaya Polyana - the public who has money should be happy. There are enough wealthy people in Russia and directing their flow to Sochi, forcing them to spend money on expensive pleasures (and F1 is always expensive), is a good option.

A year after the Games, the Wall of Champions of the Games was opened in the Olympic Park. By the way, “Wall of Champions” is the name of the wall at the circuit in Montreal, Canada, where in 1999 three Formula 1 champions crashed their cars. The Sochi Wall consists of two pyramids, symbolizing snow-capped mountains. The pyramids contain multi-colored plaques with the names of Russian Olympic and Paralympic medalists.

13. At the 2014 Paralympic Games, also held in Sochi, immediately after the Olympics, Russia confidently won the medal count. Of the 80 medals, 30 gold, 28 silver and 22 bronze were won. The closest pursuer, Germany, has only 9 gold medals.

14. 88 countries of the world were represented at the 2014 Olympics, which is a new Olympic record for the Winter Games.

15. Russia became first in the medal standings of the Games. Of the total 33 medals, 13 are gold, 11 are silver and 9 are bronze.

16. Nearby are the Olympic rings - the object of constant photo sessions for tourists.

An indoor speed skating center with an Olympic 400-meter track is a rare phenomenon in the world. On the territory of the former USSR there are such in (Belarus) and Astana (Kazakhstan). Russia had three: in Moscow (“Krylatskoe”), and Chelyabinsk (“Ural Lightning”). The facilities are extremely in demand for training and competition by speed skaters, as modern speed skating has gone under the roof. And now the fourth center was built in Sochi - Adler Arena. Alas, its only one of all the Games facilities was repurposed into a tennis academy. Of course, tennis in Sochi has great traditions, but it can be practiced at other facilities that are not as unique as the skating center.

17. Adler Arena is one of the most beautiful venues of the Games, because the skating stadium cannot but be beautiful.

18. Tennis is worth being happy about, but it was realistic to find another place for the tennis academy. About 7.5 billion rubles were spent on the facility (2.5 times more expensive than analogues). One spectator seat in an 8,000-seat arena cost 925 thousand rubles.

19. Anna Chakvetadze finished with tennis and... Maria Sharapova Surprisingly, she turned out to be one of the last torchbearers of the Olympic flame. It has nothing to do with Sochi, it’s a summer sport, but come on! Born in Sochi, Olympic champion (Sharapova did not win the Olympics, although they are not particularly rated in tennis) and winner of Grand Slam tournaments Yevgeny Kafelnikov remained out of work. Ugly!

20. Between the Adler Arena and Iceberg there is a training arena for figure skating - now it is the Volosozhar and Trankov Figure Skating Center. Tatyana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov became Olympic champions in pairs figure skating. Here it is training center for figure skating and short track. For example, in May 2015, the Russian short track national team trained there. There is also public skating for everyone.

21. Many consider the Iceberg to be the most beautiful arena of the Games. This is definitely the most successful arena, as it hosted competitions in figure skating and short track, where Russia won a scattering of medals. The 12,000th "Iceberg" cost 9 billion rubles - 2.3 times more expensive than its analogues. At first they wanted to transport it to another region, then repurpose it into a cycling track, and then they said that such a base was needed by athletes. Before the Games, the arena hosted test Grand Prix Finals in figure skating and Russian championships in short track speed skating and figure skating. After the Olympics, figure skaters came here only once with a national championship. Representatives of both sports are no longer going to hold competitions at the facility. Only commercial ice shows stage their performances here. The spending of the Olympics is clear.

The problem with the Olympic Park and its facilities is the distance from where people live. Directly from here it takes from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on traffic jams in Adler. Even from neighboring Adler, and the park lies behind it, you need certain time, in order to get there. was good because all its objects are located close to residential areas and are people-oriented. Yes, by Kazan standards, something is located on the outskirts, but this is not an option with Sochi, where you need to go not just to another city, but even further. By the way, the winter one is also being built more or less within the city and not far from residential areas.

Nevertheless, they try to hold all sorts of events in the OI Park. In October 2014, for the first time in Russia, the Formula 1 Grand Prix took place on a local track. This year was marked by the Olympic Sky air show held at the end of May, and in April, racing drivers competed here as part of the Russian Rally Cup stage. Sochi Autodrom also serves as the venue for the Arctic Cup stages of the Mitjet 2L touring car series. On October 11, Sochi will again host Formula 1, with which a contract has been signed for racing until 2020.

24. The fifth stage of the open championship of the Krasnodar region Mitjet 2L - “Victory Cup” took place on May 9 and 10. 9 cars took part in the race.

25. Igor Muravlev became the winner of the race in the Semi PRO category.

26. Black Sea coast of the Imereti Lowland. Five minutes from the Olympic Park.

27. Abundance of fishermen. Don't forget that people live here.

28. From the park almost to the border with Abkhazia there is an embankment. It's a pleasure to ride bicycles on.

29. Road to the clouds. BAR, Jaguar and Joradn? :)

30. Black Sea.

31. A site next to one of the hotels.

32. Bridge Resort is among the most decent local hotels. High quality, but also very expensive. The food is excellent. If finances allow, feel free to choose it.

33. The hotel has several buildings in addition to the main one. They are named after world capitals: Tokyo, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, London, Vienna, Sydney. I am happy to return here.

34. In early May, the Russian national beach soccer team conducted its training sessions at the hotel site. Who doesn’t know, unlike regular football, the guys are the strongest in the world. Russia won the last two World Cups, breaking the hegemony of the Brazilians. She also has “gold” at the 2014 European Championship and four victories in the Euroleague. All the stars were in Sochi. Goalkeeper Andrey Bukhlitsky I remember it very well, because at the coolest children’s festival “Locoball” we had a station (interregional tournament) named after him. It's funny that the captain of the team Ilya Leonov, if I’m not mistaken, I regularly wished for a pleasant appetite at meals. At the end of the training camp, from May 11 to 13, two teams of the Russian national team, as well as the teams of Azerbaijan and Belarus, held a mini-tournament here called the RFU Cup. I thought about taking a photo, but someone was already taking pictures for the BeachSoccerRussia portal and I decided to postpone photographing beach soccer until next time. It would be interesting, of course!

37. Mountains can already be seen from Abkhazia, a part of Georgia controlled by an unrecognized government supported by Russia. The latter traditionally provides assistance to separatists - in addition to Abkhazia, in South Ossetia and Transnistria. There are people who like to travel to such territories, but it’s safer to stay where at least some laws apply.

40. Mountains in Abkhazia.

41. Beautiful!

42. Let's return to the evening Olympic Park. Colorful musical fountain. Average and the repertoire is monotonous. This is not Barcelona.

43. “Big” in the night. Notice how massive the staircase and the arena itself are. It takes quite a long time to get to your place from the parking lot or from the bus stop (in addition to a long trip from Sochi).

In the year since the Olympic Games, little has changed in the coastal cluster. Only the Formula 1 track has been added. The objects are all standing, do not appear to be falling apart and are more or less in use. The only exception is “Fisht” - an eternal construction site. The layout of all this is not the best, especially for subsequent operation, imperfections, endless fences and fences, empty checkpoints and parking lots - it’s all there. And, of course, endless asphalt spaces along which you walk and don’t see the end.

44. "Fisht".

During the Olympic Games, a number of media outlets published photo collections of objects from past Games that are no longer in use. Like, “they” also have objects standing idle, like this is an Olympic feature. Moreover, the selections contain the same arenas: Sarajevo 1984 (thirty years ago!), Athens 2004, Beijing 2008. Using as an example the capital of a country that was formed from the fragments of the former Yugoslavia and survived a major war is very appropriate, yes. As well as remembering the laziest nation in the EU, whose services in organizing the Olympics the IOC decided to honor. Nobody really remembers “winter” Vancouver, Turin or Salt Lake City.

45. The park is deserted in the evening.

46. ​​Even the queue for the Olympic rings is not too busy.

47. Recruits of CSKA sports companies are preparing to take the military oath. The patriotic frenzy intensified in connection with the May 9 holiday. For several days in a row, the same 10 songs about the war were played in the park from morning to evening.

The main message of the country's leadership: the facilities must be used. We can still download sports ones. Things are not so rosy with non-sports people. Instead of adapting everything to a new life, demolishing something, rebuilding and repurposing something - everything remains as at the Games. Like a gradually decaying symbol of past victories. Several times a year, the old man will continue to be dressed in a military jacket with awards, reminding him of how good it once was. The taking of the military oath by athletes and the amusing 8 goals of the head of state in the gala match of the Night Hockey League fit well into this series. Alas.

49. A hotel behind several walls of fences. They make me feel uncomfortable.

Although the stadiums are occupied, huge amounts of money are spent on their maintenance. In Sochi the temperature is above zero almost all year round, and in the summer it is very hot. Ice complexes in the subtropics are expensive. Moreover, built on such a grand scale. At the same time, the internal debt of the Krasnodar Territory is about 130 billion rubles. Of course, it’s great that several thousand children and young athletes have the opportunity to go to camps in Sochi, but at whose expense? The effectiveness of all this is very low. Throughout Russia, it was possible to build tens of thousands of sports grounds, palaces and swimming pools, and maintain them for many years. Instead, they got a one-time event, whose effect on the country’s image was dissipated by its own hands literally a couple of weeks after the end of the Games. The lucky ones will visit Sochi, but what should the rest of the residents do?

50. Iceberg is especially beautiful at night.

51. But looking at its decoration up close, you can’t perceive it as the most beautiful object. Unattractive materials.

52. Behind the Adler Arena, the Olympic Media Center was built, accommodating up to 8,000 people. In November 2014, it hosted the World Chess Championship Match between Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and Indian Viswanathan Anand.

53. Nearby is the most beautiful local hotel - Tulip Inn. Surprisingly, it’s difficult to find a place there, despite the very high cost of rooms and the unfortunate location at the intersection of two highways.

Of course, like any sports fan who also works in it and sometimes even competes, I would like to come back here. I don’t know in what capacity and for what event. It is warm here, pleasant air, beautiful sea, there is a place for cycling, beautiful and majestic mountains- this is another reason to go to

When you look from a distance at the domes of the Olympic Park stadiums in Sochi, surrounded by a triple ring of fences, you quickly forget that this is a space for sports competitions and a symbol of success new Russia. Broken eggshells come to mind. Now the omelette seems to have been eaten to the last crumb, and the Radio Liberty correspondent, having visited Sochi, fully felt the aftertaste.

I came to Sochi for double decker train, this train, plying the route Moscow - Adler, was specially allowed for the Olympic Games. It is still possible to get to the south on it, and for exactly the same money as from Moscow to St. Petersburg, despite the distance being twice as long. Leaving the comfortable carriage, in which I could use, albeit slowly, but still working, along the way wireless internet, I didn’t believe that I was in Russia. On one side is the sea embankment behind a chain of palm trees. On the other is a huge, shiny station building in the shape of a wing. And in the distance behind him are snowy mountain peaks.

From a special machine I purchased a ticket for the Lastochka train to the Olympic Village station for 17 rubles. A few minutes later, a silent Siemens carriage was taking me towards post-Olympic Sochi.

MIRLNY VILLAGE – STATE FARM “RUSSIA”

I stayed in the village of Mirny, one of the suburbs of Adler in the Imereti Lowland, surrounding the Olympic Park. Mirny is separated from the sea by brand new Olympic facilities, which means a dozen three-meter-high fences. Neat fences - made of boards, metal mesh, barbed wire - are the first thing that catches your eye. “Fenced edge,” the locals joke. The time is still early, around 9 am, and there are almost no people on the streets

Passers-by. Occasionally one encounters people who are more reminiscent of visiting workers than local residents or tourists. A couple of times I see women with strollers. In the shade of nice wooden fences, the same throughout the village, dogs are resting - it is not clear whether they are domestic or stray. All buildings have been recently renovated, every third one was built just a year or two ago. The roofs of most houses are the same brown-red color. On many gates there is a sign: “For sale.”

We meet with Viktor Kobylin, an enterprising local resident, a public representative of one of the neighborhoods in the village of Mirny. Victor is a large, fair-haired man who looks more like a Siberian than a Sochi resident. It turns out that he was born on Far East, studied in Omsk, but has only lived here for the last ten years.

I share with Kobylin my first, quite favorable impressions.

– I agree, at least they built excellent roads. Gas will probably be provided eventually. They built a thermal power plant in Adler - problems with electricity almost stopped. The village has become much cleaner, although before construction began it was greener. All that remains is to remove the various black touches. The administration should end the euphoria that they were not dispersed, and they should take care of our problems.

A sprinkler passes by, washing away dust from the asphalt path. It was impossible to imagine such a thing in the village just a few years ago, and there was nothing special to wash.

Kobylin is clearly an optimist, and an active optimist at that. As it turns out, there are plenty of black little things, it’s just that some of them are hiding behind brand new fences, while others are literally buried in the ground. Even at the beginning of the Olympic construction, the village, which was preparing to receive hordes of Games guests, was promised sewerage and gas. Gas pipes are connected, they stick out of the ground in almost every house. But there is no gas in them. “The gas workers were in a hurry, and as a result the pipe was simply laid incorrectly,” explains Kobylin. – When the test pressure was given, the pipe began to level out and float due to vibration. In some places it is located at a depth of 20-30 centimeters from the road surface, and according to the standard it should be buried almost two meters. That’s why they don’t give us gas - they don’t understand how it will work. Gas comes to our distribution station in the village, but it doesn’t go further because it’s simply dangerous.”

Now Kobylin expects that “smart people will think about how to fix this,” and, hopefully, local residents will be able to heat their homes not only with wood, diesel fuel and electric heaters. By the way, during the Olympic Games it was forbidden to heat with wood, so that the smoke coming from the chimneys would not spoil the decent picture. But the lack of sewerage could only spoil the atmosphere: in Mirny there is still a specific smell in some places. Unlike gas pipes, sewer pipes were not laid at all.

“The initial project was prepared by an organization from Rostov that deals with some kind of nanotechnology,” says Kobylin. – We wanted to make some kind of special vacuum sewer, because we are located in the lowlands, below sea level. We thought for a long time, then we realized that there was not enough money in the budget for this. As a result, the project was finally closed a year ago. What now - I don’t know, maybe there is a sewerage system on paper, maybe it was reported somewhere that it was built. I have no doubt that this is so.

From Kobylin’s point of view, the problem is not even that the promised sewerage system does not exist. What angers him much more is that the residents of Mirny were fed with promises until the very last moment. People built large houses, hotels with 3-4 floors. It is simply impossible to service these without a central sewer system: the only reasonable alternative, a septic tank, requires careful control of the drainage, into which detergents and toilet paper should not fall. How to achieve such accuracy from hotel residents? As a result, most owners pour dirty water directly into the drainage system; So,

Apparently, they do it in my hotel, too, judging by the aroma spreading from the open hatch for some reason right there on the corner. From the drainage, wastewater flows into nearby lakes - wintering grounds for migratory birds - and from there into the Black Sea. Such a system in itself is not something unprecedented for Russians. seaside resorts, but Kobylin explains that in the Imereti Lowland, located four meters below sea level, it is especially dangerous: “Drainage pipes become clogged and stop letting groundwater in. In three or four years, after a good rainfall, the village of Mirny will simply drown. Of course, the management will say: they shit in the drainage, so it’s their own fault. Where else to shit? The alarm needs to be sounded now. And who will do this if everything is already over, everyone has reported and the picture from the helicopter is beautiful?”

Sounding the alarm would not be enough for the energetic Kobylin. Looking out of his window onto the street at the end of 2012, he noticed that the gas pipes had already been laid, nothing was being dug under the sewer pipes, and at the same time they were going to lay asphalt. He realized that the Rostov vacuum nanosewage system was preparing to share the fate of many other innovative projects and remain, at best, a beautiful drawing, and sent a request to the local administration. The answer was extremely cynical: for such and such reasons there will be no sewerage system, but if you want it, build it yourself.

To my chuckle, Kobylin replies: “Why are you laughing? That's exactly what we did."

Having agreed with the owners of houses in his part of Mirny, Victor, with the help of a former classmate at the Omsk Automobile and Road Institute, made a sewer network project, and within several months, “opening the doors of offices with a horn,” in his own words, he received numerous approvals. As a result, over the summer and part of the fall of 2013, residents installed a private sewer network. The planned Olympic asphalt was already laid on top of it, and now in the right half of Mirny, when looking from the sea, the air is much fresher than in the left.

I look at photographs that chronicle the construction in detail. Kobylin, who in some photographs stands in person at the bottom of a ditch with a shovel in his hands, apparently carries this photo album in his car all the time. There really is something to be proud of. I ask how fair it is that part of the village is now in a better position. “If we had been warned earlier that there would be no sewage system, we would have reached an agreement with the entire village and would have built a network for everyone ourselves. Now we are ready to sell our sewer system to the administration so that they can continue to build it for everyone, at the price at which it cost us - it’s definitely cheaper than if they had built it themselves. But so far no one is having such conversations with us.”

Construction cost each of the cooperators approximately 185 thousand rubles. A lot of money, but many here, apparently, thanks to the holiday season and the wonderful climate that allows them to harvest three vegetable crops a year, could afford it. “People here have the opportunity to live a little better than in many other places in Russia,” says Kobylin. “And we have a little more time to think about how we live, and how we can make our lives better.” For him, the Olympic Games mean an opportunity for change that should be taken advantage of, regardless of the incompetent government. “I do this to my guys.” and said at the meeting: if there were no Olympics, Mirny would never have become so beautiful on the outside. Inside, a lot needs to be changed, and we will start doing it from below. changes, and then we will put pressure on management and get from them what we need.”

State Farm “Russia” is another village in the Imereti Lowland, it is located behind the Olympic Park, right on the seashore not far from the border with Abkhazia. Unlike Mirny, “Russia” has its own section of the beach, and with it its own problems.

Here we meet local environmentalist and social activist Natalya Kalinovskaya. I tear Natalya away from her conversation with the man in overalls - this is a representative of the responsible economic service who came at Kalinovskaya’s request to inspect the clogged storm drains. Kalinovskaya makes him lean straight towards the drainage holes, showing leaves, candy wrappers and empty plastic bottles packed under the bars. She has the loud and energetic voice of a person who is confident in her rightness and accustomed to defending her opinion. Clogged drains can lead to flooding - the most feared and most likely disaster here in the lowlands. Having dealt with the water utility, Kalinovskaya drops into the house for an impressive stack of documents and takes me on a tour of the village. Almost everything that catches my eye is criticized: here are the gas pipes that are already familiar to me, in which there is no gas (Kalinovskaya claims that the Olympic flame burned “from a cylinder,” although I am inclined to think that this is a local myth). Here are wooden pillars installed instead of old reinforced concrete ones. Here

Drying cypress trees, new asphalt laid close to their trunks. Here are yellowing palm trees, stuck, as the ecologist explains, directly into a two-meter layer of crushed stone and sand, which was used to fill the lowlands for the construction of Olympic facilities. Judging by the story, for almost every tree, for every flowerbed and piece of sidewalk, Kalinovskaya, at the head of a group of local residents, fought tooth and nail, and sometimes this struggle ended in victory. Here, as in Mirny, at first glance it is very clean and cozy; I can only notice the shortcomings after prompting. However, I guess that it was precisely for the sake of this first positive impression that everything was done.

We go out to the central square. Around the brand new but non-working fountain, teenagers with toy pistols are running after each other. Elderly women are sitting on a bench.

– Are you admiring the fountain? - Kalinovskaya calls out to them, who seems to know all the local residents without exception.
– Yes, Natasha, we just wanted to talk to you about him. We come here every single day, but it doesn't work. Well, at least watch it once!
– And this gift to us from the governor, a singing and dancing fountain, costs eight million rubles. To turn it on - there's a special booth - guys from Krasnodar must come, we don't have such smart ones here. They press the button and it starts working. This is if there is a holiday or someone important is coming. Very beautiful, by the way!
“Well, we can’t find these boys,” the women get upset.

In general, there is a special attitude towards Krasnodar residents here: according to local views, all troubles are to blame not so much on the distant Moscow authorities, but on the middle link, most often at the level of the administration of the Krasnodar region. A mythology has developed according to which somewhere there, in Krasnodar, the full-flowing financial Olympic Amu Darya diverged to irrigate the pockets of officials and businessmen, never reaching the Imereti Lowland.

Having learned that I am a journalist, the grandmothers immediately report that someone worked on the construction of stadiums and built “two two-story and one four-story” here on the state farm. This “someone,” of course, is from the outside, while the locals were left with only debts - people took out loans from banks to get a hotel license for 200-300 thousand rubles, and much fewer guests came to the Olympics than expected.

– Has there been a season in recent years? - I ask.
“It’s been four years since I’ve been gone.”
- Will it happen this year?
– Have you turned on the TV at all lately? There they send everyone to Crimea, but here in Sochi everything is supposedly very expensive, everything is for the rich.

Vladimir Putin said exactly this during a recent direct line: “After all, you yourself said that world-class and high-level hotels were built in Sochi. This means that there will be different categories of vacationers in Crimea and Sochi. In Crimea, the infrastructure is designed for people with low incomes; they will not be able to afford luxury hotels in Sochi.” The president’s words fit into the stereotype, because of which many Russians did not even seriously think about going to their home Olympics. At the same time, residents of Mirny and the Rossiya state farm convinced me that during the Olympic Games it was possible to stay here without any problems for a rather modest amount of 500 to 1,500 rubles per day per person. To normal summer season You can spend the night for 250.

After briefly discussing the gas problem (the grandmothers heard on TV that it would be supplied in the summer, but Kalinovskaya refuses to believe it), we say goodbye and go to the embankment.

In my opinion, the word “embankment” is more consistent with the city bank of the Neva or Moscow River. I can imagine the sea embankment in Odessa or Nice. At the seaside state farm “Russia” you expect to see a beach. However, there is no beach here anymore.

A narrow strip - about five meters wide - of pebbles and stones separates the sea from the gentle concrete slope. At the top there is a pedestrian road with benches and lanterns, and a red bicycle path is marked along it. In all this heat, even at 22 degrees in April, there is not a single tree on the stone structure.

“And here we had a hundred-meter beach,” Kalinovskaya ironically points to the concrete slide.
- Why was this built? For beauty?
“This beauty is washed away by the sea every time.” When there is a storm, everything here is covered in stones, these benches hang on those trees, and then the Ministry of Emergency Situations pumps out water in the village.
– Where will people rest now?
– Walk along the embankment
– Where can we put umbrellas and sunbeds?
- That's all. Walk or lie on concrete at 37 degrees in the shade.

Clean pebble beach was a competitive advantage of “Russia”, distinguishing the village from most coastal resorts. If in Sochi almost the entire coastline is divided between hotels and sanatoriums, then the Imereti coast, from the mouth of the Mzymta to the border river Psou, was famous for its publicly accessible wide beach, for which many tourists stopped right here, thirty kilometers from temptations big city. The embankment on a concrete embankment, however, was erected not only for decorative purposes: the cargo port built at the mouth of the Mzymta, which served the construction of the Olympic Park facilities, was stopped

Lathering on coastline river pebbles. Without this natural process, the entire Imereti Lowland, and with it the stadiums, risked being washed away into the sea. The multi-kilometer embankment should serve as protection from storm waves, but, according to Kalinovskaya, it copes with this function poorly. Alternative projects that use global experience in the construction of such structures, the ecologist is sure, could preserve the beach and provide reliable protection to the lowlands. “We are not against beauty, we are normal, adequate people. We're just saying it could have been done differently. Leave the beach at its width and then make two-tier terracing. It would be cheaper, and no one would be washed away - neither people nor the embankment. You see, a natural monument of world significance, protected by UNESCO - here it is, filled with concrete. But no one listens to us, we are locals, we are fools.”

“We know how to paint our lips,” Natalya sums up. “I said right away: they’ll catch up with the bears and gypsies, play the balalaika, treat them to caviar and pour vodka. And so it happened. They say it right on TV, people, go to Crimea before they mess it up. They are happy there now, and then, like us, they will live at the construction site for three or four years.

The sun is rapidly sliding into the sea, the screams of the youth resting on a narrow rocky strip near the shore are becoming louder, and the sound of broken glass is heard. Kalinovskaya decisively takes out her phone and dials the number of the district police officer:

- Darling, have you been to the beach lately? Come on in, otherwise our beautiful youth have gotten naughty.

I ask if she’s not too strict: Friday evening, south, sea, and no one seems to be fighting yet.

“They’re not fighting yet, and they’re not drowning anyone yet.” And at least let them clean up after themselves and take care of at least the good things that are left.

Kalinovskaya sets off home with a firm gait, along the way greeting everyone she meets and discussing in whose pockets the village gas could have ended up. I decide to walk straight along the embankment to the Olympic Park to finally see the stadiums familiar from sports broadcasts without looking through the fence. The area is quite crowded: rare off-season tourists, local fishermen rushing on bicycles to the pier for the evening bite, athletes (apparently undergoing some kind of training here) on evening jogging. I pass the pier, gradually there are fewer and fewer passers-by, and a disgustingly familiar three-meter fence grows on the right. Soon the Olympic venues appear behind it. I hope that somewhere in this fence there will be a wicket or gate leading to the desired Olympic Park, I walk a kilometer or two and come to a dead end: right in front of me, the same fence crosses the embankment and goes into the sea. On the left, the waves of the Black Sea crash against the stones; on the right, behind a high fence, the famous Olympic fountain dances to Tchaikovsky's waltz. I turn around and wander back along the alley of half-dried palm trees stuck in the dusty gravel, until in the distance, illuminated by fishing lanterns, like a Christmas tree, appears again. New Year's garland, pier.

Tomorrow it will be two years since the Olympic Games opened in Sochi, and I continue to reminisce. This photo was taken in April 2009. On it is the Imereti Lowland, the entire future Olympic Park. The landmark is a small grove on the right, this is the cemetery of the Old Believers, which was not touched during the construction process, only hidden behind a fence and a high hedge. Another landmark is a small hillock, a mound and a bald spot from a landslide nearby; they can be found in the second picture to help you orient yourself on the terrain. Less than FIVE years before the Olympics, grass grew at the site where it was held; there was not even a hint of sports palaces or other structures.

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This photo was taken at the end of May 2009. The circle outlined by the road and pillars is the outer contour of the future Big Ice Palace, the same one where the Sochi hockey club beat Omsk Avangard yesterday. This grandiose structure was built, by the way, by Omsk residents, by the Mostovik company.

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A few more pictures from May 2009, the site for the future hockey palace, the Iceberg, Adler Arena, Medal Plaza will grow a little further. In the distance, Blinovo can be seen as a landmark.

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It is no secret that the design of Olympic facilities continued directly during construction. It was in this tent, before the modular administrative building was built, that the designers of Mostovik worked. We also had lunch here.

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And this is already September 2009, the same Big Ice Palace with its outlines already visible.

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And this is the future curling center, the Ice Cube. At first it was assumed that after the Olympic Games it would be dismantled and moved to another city. But they didn't do it. Today the Ice Cube is one of the most used post-Olympic heritage sites.

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At the peak of the construction of facilities for the Sochi Olympics, more than 150 thousand attracted specialists worked in Sochi. A significant part of them were hard-working guys from the sunny republics, who were once part of the friendly Soviet family of peoples. These particular guys are from the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan. They lived in these modular houses, in these rooms, throughout the years of Olympic construction. Whatever one may say, sports facilities, transport interchanges, Rosa Khutor, Gorki Gorod, and the entire infrastructure of the new Sochi were built by the hands of guest workers.

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2009, construction of a port at the mouth of the Mzymta River. Despite the construction around, people persistently rest on the then wild Imeretian beaches.

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Construction of a combined automobile and railway to Krasnaya Polyana. The most expensive object of the Sochi-2014 project. Somewhere in the depths of the mountain there is a giant super-mole working, gnawing into the thickness of the rock, creating tunnels for trains and cars.

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Construction of cottages for the resettlement of residents who were subject to demolition in the Imereti Lowland. As a result, the village turned out to be very good.

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A very old photograph, taken, if I’m not mistaken, in the fall of 2007: the people who started it all. Semyon Vainshtok, first head of the Olimpstroy state corporation. He did not do anything noticeable in this post; in 2008 he was removed and left the country. Governor of Kuban Alexander Tkachev. He survived the Olympic race and was subsequently appointed Minister of Agriculture. And Dmitry Kozak, the real leader of the Sochi-2014 project, personally responsible for it to Vladimir Putin. He carried everything on his shoulders, from beginning to end. He deservedly became an honorary citizen of the city of Sochi.

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This kind of Sochi Olympics was imagined at the very beginning, in 2007, when no bunnies and leopards had yet been created.

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And, as proof of involvement, I am on the Olympic sports ground, wearing a helmet with Olympstroy symbols, in 2009.