mercoledì 28 luglio 2010

Goodbye Moscow! :'(



28/07/2010

Dear friends,

we are now at the end of our very exciting Russian experience...

We studied hard for our final test and the result was excellent, so we celebrated our certificates with a Russian traditional farewell party.

RIAT professors and students organized for us an amazing show during the lunch, with a soundtrack of some folk Russian songs, Asian dancing and a very special performance of 'O Sole Mio'! We noticed how Russian students are very trained in animation activities, they have a specific program in their course to learn how entertain tourists and public in a professional way. This is a remarkable difference compared to our course programme and we think that it might be introduced also in our university as it is of great importance for students of Economy of Tourism.

Their hospitality during all our stay highly overpassed our expectations and we will try our best to make them feel like at home when in Italy.

After spending 12 days in this far Country and deep in touch with its people, its culture, and its habits, we feel like we know better Russian history thanks to interesting lectures beside to the relationships we had with local people where their past and the isolation of the Country during Soviet Union were always tangible. It's evident how young people are oriented to discover different Countries and cultures, we found them interested in Europe, Far-East Asia more than in Americas always with a strong desire of growing fast and facing foreign markets.

Natural and touristic resources in Russia are everywhere and its people are looking forward to show and make them accessible and available to local and international tourists by improving infrastructures and services quality: accomodation, transports and qualified professionals, starting from learning foreign languages, first of all English.

It has been a pleasure to be the first Summer School in this developing Country and we are curious about its future evolution.

It's all from Russia 2010!

Goodbye Moscow

DA SVIDANIA

Claudia, Michela, Giulia and Raffaella

cold war museum....











Hello to everybody..

Here are Nicolas & Daniele from Moscow and we will talk about the 27th of July in this hot city.
In the morning we have had a lesson about an introduction to and tools of strategic tourism management in Russia, specially dedicated to strategy of tourism and its impact on russian economy.

During this lecture we spoke also about different form of competition of russian tourism: outbound, inbound and domestic, highlithing advantages and negatife effect of Russia as a tourist destination in the period of financial crisis.
In the afternoon we have had the possibility to choose between two museum: pushkin museum and cold war museum... we(nic and lele, and 8 more italian students) found more interesting to go to the cold war museum, instead the other italian students gone to the pushkin museum.

We don't know how is the pushkin museum, and if it is wonderfull or boring, BUT just entered in this historical museum we found an another world... one soviet soldier... 18 floor beneath moscow, in the Taganskaya area. Is interesting to see the KGB rooms, raid sires and kilometres of tunnels... but attention please... this place in not recommended for claustrophobes.
It was WOW! in the middle of the tour that the soldier permisd us to try, and take fotos with the soviet uniform, AK-47 and anti-gas mask....

We sow also an interesting little movie about cold war from soviet point of view.
It's hard to explain this exciting experience, but with our 100000000000000000000 of pictures, every one of you can imagine the fashionable atmosphere of that military bunker...

so...
that's all...
bye bye to all babuskas in the world!
nic and lele

lunedì 26 luglio 2010

Visiting Ararat Hyatt Hotel and Novodevicij Monastry






Hello everybody...a new week has started!
Days pass and we're getting more and more tired.
This morning, as usual, we had before breakfast and then lecture at 9.00 am.
Today the "teacher" was Vladimir Berezin, a typical russian man with blue eyes and pale skin. We met him on Saturday during the "extreme day".
He doesn't speak English very well and we had some difficulties to understand the lecture about "Promotion and Advertising polices in tourism in Russia".
The most interesting part of the lecture maybe was about social network. Thanks to this lecture we understand that they don't use for example Facebook or Twitter like us, because there are russian social network like Odnoklassniki or Vkontakte.
In the afternoon we visited the hotel Ararat Hayatt in the centre of Moscow.
A very nice girl called Maria explained us how is organized this hotel.
Finally we found a person that spoke a very good English here in Moscow. :-)
She also showed us two kinds of rooms: Deluxe room and the Winter Garden. The first one is used by business man for example, the second one for honey-moon or stars. This was very precious!
At 15.30 pm we finished and so we decided to go to visit the Novodevicij Monastyr (south-west of Moscow) and some russian friends came with us.
Inside the monastry there were many ortodox churches. We entered in the Virgin Cathedral of Smolensk and in Intercession Church. In the last one we had the oppurtunity to see ortodox monks and sisters praying and their religious ritual.
We could see that they are devout in particular to Saints and they pray kissing their icons.
After monastry we decided to go to Red Square, but a storm surprised us and we had to repair ourselves from wind and rain. This was not so bad after ten days at 40°.

See you tomorrow with other adventures!

Bye Bye JUST friends!!!!


Eleonora & Elena

domenica 25 luglio 2010

Moscow, Chongqing, Bangalore ...

A message from Milano ... DOBRI DEN' ... I have been following your adventures over the blog for the past few days and am really excited about what I read. This sounds like a very interesting adventure. I am sure you will get the most out of it. It is really exciting to know that so many students from Bicocca are presently around the world: besides Moscow, in China (Chongqing) and in India (Bangalore). We shall get together in September to exchange all these wonderful experiences. A special SPASIBA to Raffaella Cecchetti, your tutor, who has been working with me at the summer school project from the very beginning. DA SVIDANIA ... Fabio Corno

sabato 24 luglio 2010

Sports management: outdoor recreational activities - Country estate "Serednikovo"







Fortunately today we could sleep until 9 o'clock: breakfast was at 9.30.
We left the hotel at 10.30 by coach with JUST a little delay, as usual.

After two hours and a "pleasant" coach travel with Victor we arrived in a farm specialized in horse breeding. Here there were many horses; the guide Dimitri (a huge farmer with long hair and good english speaking) described the horses and explained how they use them.
Then some of us had the fortune to make a short trip on a little carriage drugged by a horse: it was JUST a wonderful and unforgivable experience! And this was JUST the beginning...

Our adventure continued in the forest. After a short walk we arrived at a source of natural water. Here we "refreshed" ourselves with a very good water and made a rest.

After ten minutes of walk we arrived at a "very beautiful" green lake, where lots of people swam and had fun as Italians normally do at the seaside. We were very excited by this wonderful place.

Later we visited the country estate Serednikovo, which was restaured thanks to the famous Russian poet Lermontov. But surprises were not finished!!! Free climbing was waiting for us, but only JUST for the bravest (see the photo... it's enough!).

When we finished free climbing it was 3 o'clock p.m. and we were very hungry. At the farm extreme barbecue and some sandwiches were prepared for us.

Although some problems with rain and sausages the lunch was great... and hot!
In the afternoon some of us could ride horses (by paying) and took some pictures with them.
We couldn't imagine how different is the organization of sport activities in Russia. First of all we have to underline that this type of activities is very common in this Country. Also at the University students are invited to partecipate in sports and open air activities. This represent a good occasion to keep themselves healthy, competitive and strong. Every kind of sport is supported by the University.
Another cultural difference we could observe, was represented by the management of the manege we have visited. It wasn't such an "elite" or refined place... Everything was very simple and minimal. We couldn't compare it to European rural accomodation. Probably we can say that there weren't all the essential facilities a tourist usually need to feel quite comfortable and "at home". But this was not such a negative aspect of our visit.
Infact, despite the first impression, the manege was very famous for the variety of horse races which are breede there.
At the end we left the countryside at 5 p.m. to come back to the hotel. Aftre an hour at the level crossing and another hour on the coach we arrived at the hotel.

AND THIS WAS OUR SPORT DAY!!! ONLY RUSSIA LET LIVE YOU SUCH EXPERIENCES!!!
JUST FRIENDS... SEE YOU TOMORROW!
Elena & Giulia

venerdì 23 luglio 2010

Between Economics and Art : from the Suppliers to Swan Lake Ballet




Once upon a time in Izmailovo ... it's 9 a.m. and we're starting lecture of Mr. Arseniy Roman, "Structure and Enterprises Serving Incoming Tourists". Mr Roman, despite of his very young age, is a passionate senor lecture of the Russian International Academy of Tourism and his interests mainly focused on tour operatores and related problems.

Mr Roman brightly overcome first understandable embarrass by a solid awarness of subject, offering us a deep four hour's lesson.
After said goodbye to Mr Roman, we've got lunch in our familiar refectory with russian traditional soup as entrance and meat balls with rice as main dish.

Just few moments to relax in our room and the meeting with Mr Sergei Shpilko , President of Russian Union of Travel Industry, take place. Mr Shpilko give us some usefull information about general situation of tourism in Russia, and incoming/outgoing travel mains problems. Furthermore, he kindly offer us an album, named "Just Russia", which "show the beauty and the unique qualities of many russian regions".
After business comes entertainment : it's 7 p.m. and it's "Swan Lake" time. We have booking reservations from several days in aim not to loose the chance of watching a ballet exhibition in the world capital of classical ballet. Unfortunately, the Bolshoi Theatre is under renovation from 5 years and we have to be content with the depandance of that; however the show was amazing.
Coming back from the show ...
Riccardo
P.S. : Happy Birthday to our dear friend Maria !!!




giovedì 22 luglio 2010

TOUR OPERATOR DAY







Hello to everybody,


here Nic and Lele from Moscow City at 23.22 p.m.

Today, after a very good breakfast (tnx to Dimitri) and a law based lesson in the very hot classroom of Russian International Academy for Tourism, we have had a visit to the tour operator Alean (the name born with the mix from two founders' names), that's one of the most important domestic tour operator in Russia, situated just a few minutes from the underground station of Dinamo, north of the centre of Moscow.

They offered us a very tasted white wine, some fruits and a loveable chocolate. After that we followed the commercial director in a very usefull tour of all the offices in the building, after an introduction of the chief director and commercial director about the company and its strategy and policies.

The tour operator is linked with 6000 travel agencies on all Russian territory and it is organized with a lot of sell points with a B2B (business to business) system, that was enginereed by the software centre of the society.

We found this day very interesting. That's why we saw how russian tourism is developed under the legal and organizational point of view with a comparation with the italian one.

Now we will drink a very typical tasted russian vodka and................good night!