Batumi is a city that rising. High rising to be exact. Every where you look high rise apartment buildings are going up, competing for who can reach the highest.
One has a two story sign along it base boasting 35,000 units for sale. Imagine that. 35,000 apartments in one building.
I don’t know the number of apartments in the building where I live. I am on the twenty eighth floor of a thirty seven story building. I have a beautiful view of the city and the Black Sea, but will that be the case after the building next door is built? I will still be within easy walking distance from the beach.
I love the ocean and the long walks on the beach.
It was storming today and I didn’t get out until after dark. That’s when I caught sight of these two self propelled cranes. They are used to construct the larger cranes that cling to the sides of the high rise buildings as they are constructed. They can reach up about fifteen floors and then the crane that they are assembling lifts them to the top floor from which they continue to construct that same crane up even taller. I haven’t seen how the disassemble the tall crane yet and how they get down after the building is built. I expect I shall soon. One of these buildings, under construction, will have to be completed sometime.
A big shout out to the people who follow me. Unfortunately I’ve had to leave Russia. It became impossible to receive any funds from the US. I am currently living in Batumi, Georgia.
This is my family in the living room of my apartment in Kimovsk, Russia. I am a disabled Vietnam veteran. Seventy six years of age. My son Aleksandr (left), and my granddaughter Dasha (center) look in on me. Here, I had hoped to live out my retirement years.
In Kimovsk is where my apartment is located. Last summer I visited my granddaughter who lives in Tula. I stayed there for two months. I became very familiar with the city of Tula.
Tula Region is one of the industrial centers of Russia, famous for its long-standing traditions of weapons and samovar production. Here are three more important symbols of this region.
1⃣ ЛЕВ ТОЛСТОЙ (Leo Tolstoy)
The famous Russian writer was born on September 9, 1828, on the Yasnaya Polyana’ Family Estate near Tula. He spent a significant part of his life there, creating his main novels, including ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Anna Karenina’. His body was also buried there.
2⃣ ФИЛИМОНОВСКАЯ ИГРУШКА (Filimonovo toy)
Whistle toys in the form of people and animals with conical heads began to be made in the village of Filimonovo near Tula in the 16th century. After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the craft died out for a while, but was revived in the 1980s.
3⃣ ТУЛЬСКИЙ ...
A PRIEST COVERED HIS OWN COAT OVER HIS WORST ENEMY AND THEREBY SAVED NOT ONLY HIS BODY BUT HIS SOUL...
A man was thrown into the icy concrete "glass" of a punishment cell. The one already sitting inside, huddled in a corner, merely raised his head. For him, it was just another soul on death's doorstep, but for the camp system, it was a cruel irony: a former high-ranking NKVD officer who had approved execution lists was thrown to die in the very hell he had helped build. His cellmate turned out to be a priest, prisoner Arseniy.
The cell floor was covered in freezing water. The night promised a frost that kills the living. Avsenev, a former Chekist, an intelligent and once powerful man, knew the system from the inside. He knew that in the morning, two frozen bodies would be carried out. He was shaking. Not from fear—fear was too petty an emotion for the all-consuming cold gnawing at his bones—but from the animal tremors of death.
The priest in the corner didn't move. He simply looked at his new neighbor with a long, calm gaze, devoid of ...
