Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk can not boast a long and eventful history, but one thing is for sure — it grows and develops very quickly. We offer to your attention some facts about the city in which “Interra” will take place.
Every city has its symbol, like the Red Square in Moscow or drawn bridges in Saint-Petersburg. We have our State Opera and Ballet Theatre built during WW2 and opened right after its end. The young city can hardly take pride in its architecture, but the Theatre definitely is eye-catching and one of the main city symbols. It is situated on the main city square (unsurprisingly, called Lenin Square). After the 2005 reconstruction the Novosibirsk Theatre is the most state-of-the-art theatre in Russia. Besides, it’s still the biggest theatre in the country. The Moscow Bolshoi (“The Grand Theatre”) seems small compared to it.

Art and Science Territory
Over a hundred something years, from a small village with quite a romantic name Krivoschekovo (“wrycheek”) Novosibirsk has turned into the third largest Russian city, and let the others dispute it — Novosibirsk was and remains the capital of Siberia. Academgorodok, our pride, is probably the first thing that we tell our guests about. Once a unique experimental research centre, located basically in the woods, 3, 000 km from the capital, legendary scientific construction site and independent free-thinking and civil liberty territory, created in spite of everything, under the totalitarian regime, by incredible work of enthusiastic academicians headed by the prominent scientist and administrator Mikhail Lavrentyev. Now Acdemgorodok is a lagre Russian academic centre, an offshore programming zone and high-tech business, an elite district (apartments are more expensive here than in the city centre), a territory of contrasts: four-storey “Khruschev shacks” next to new elite high-rise buildings, and the institutes, despite all the talks of the disastrous state the modern science is in, earn millions of dollars a year and still bring more glory to Russian science.
Science is actually Novosibirsk’s hobby-horse. There are over 50 higher education institutions in the city, not to mention other ones. Novosibirsk is sometimes called “a campus city”, for both Russian and foreign young people come here to study.

Amazing Numbers
We really have things that impress — Novosibirsk is known for its numbers, volumes and scales. For instance, the Novosibirsk Zoo occupies the area of 53 hectares and is home to about 11, 000 creatures of 478 species. More than 120 of those species are in the International Red Book. At the recent “Seven Wonders of Russia” contest our zoo almost made it into the top seven — only its artificial nature prevented it from being chosen by the voters. In July our sea celebrated its 50th anniversary — yes, the Siberian city has its own sea! The Ob Reservoir near Novosibirsk was made by the Novosibirsk Hydroelectric Power Plant dam. It lieswithin the Novosibirsk Region and the Altai Region, with three cities on its shores: Berdsl, Kamen-na-Obi and Novosibirsk. The Ob Sea area is 1,082 km², volume — 8.8 km³, length — about 200 km, maximum width — 22 km, maximum depth — 25 m.

Some Notable Facts
The transport junction of the whole Siberia, Novosibirsk has three airports. One of them is Tolmachevo, making passenger flights to the largest Russian and CIS cities, UAE, Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany, China, South Korea, Japan and Thailand. Tolmachevo was the first Russian airport to get the international certificate of conformance with the international service grades.
The Main Railway Station building, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, State Public Scientific and Technical Library, prominent sportspeople, actors, painters and scientists — these are only a few of the sights in our city on Ob. It’s here that the streets bear the names of Galileo, Kopernik, Mozart and Shakespeare, and there’s Ionosphere Street in Academgorodok. It’s here that Cathode Street and Anode Street can cross, and Planirovochnaya Street is both parallel and perpendicular to itself, crossing itself. Few people know that the famous hypnotist and fortune-teller Wolf Messing lived in Novosibirsk in 1943-44. Moreover, where did you think the first Russian Fidonet appeared in 1990? City of contrasts is a tricky notion, but it perfectly describes Novosibirsk. Here you can be dressed oddishly, have piercing and tattoos, ride a motorbike or a cabriolet, play hobbits or build your career 24-7. Here you can choose.

Inna Golovacheva, for Interra.