What Russian Programmers do on New Year holidays!

Posted by Sibers CEO Serge Markov

Many of our customers and partners from western world may be very curious about our long holidays and come with the question ‘What do Russian Programmers do on New Year holidays?’ That’s right, we do celebrate much more about New Year and less about Christmas. We had 10 days off and usually I (and our other people) spend this on:

• Eating – climate here in Siberia is less comfortable, and when you can eat only an apple for dinner if you live in India, for getting survive in -20-30 C you should get much more calories and better with protein. So usual menu for New Year Celebration consists of many dishes:
  • salads with lot of mayonnaise, most popular is ‘Olivye’ or ‘Zimniy (Winter-made)
  • appetizers, smoked sausages, different beef snacks, jellied snacks and so on
  • hot dishes – usually with pork, duck or other beef with potatoes baked with sauces
  • other dishes, which depends on … but usually the number of them is much bigger than people can eat
• Drinking – I suppose Vodka is a preferred drink, because it supports us with a lot of energy Also usually at the moment New Year comes we open a bottle of champagne-like beverages.
• Traveling – People usually do two previous items while visiting their parents or relatives, and the more relatives you have, the more you need to consume. You begin in your city and have enough time to visit remote relatives. I took a trip to Omsk-city (about 600 km away from Novosibirsk) and each time I was asked why I didn’t eat (Don’t you like this nice dish?). FYI, the cost for a rail-road trip for period from 30 Dec to 10 Jan is about twice its usual price.
• Practicing Winter Sports – When I got all the previous I started thinking how I could apply my power in a ‘good’ direction. As far as winter is the longest time of year here (snow stays from Oct till May), there are some winter sports available in our area:
  • Cross-country skiing – is probably the most popular sport here. You should know that in the Russian army they have a special course how to use skis in cross-country;
  • Mountain Skis or Snowboard – this is a modern sport here, but it’s getting popular. We have several small resorts (up to 100 m high) in the city area and some larger in 100-200 km range. For instance, I visited a newly opened Jurmanka resort today (with about a 350 m high mountain). Most known places are Sheregesh in the Shoria Mountains (650 km from Novosibirsk) and Belokurikha in the Altai Mountains (about 550 km). In winter there are numerous tours organized to these places.
  • Winter Skating – very popular in city area – e.g. at least 3 rinks are available in the city region where most of our team live. You should know that Russian figure skaters are the best like Russians software developers:)
  • Ice Hockey and Bandy – Hockey with a ball – these two require much more experience;
  • Biathlon – I do prefer watching this very interesting sport on TV, but we have a large stadium for biathlon here in Novosibirsk.
  • Fishing – we have a large Ob’ sea near here.
  • Hunting – it’s usual in the countryside. Some people consider it a kind of entertainment, other people are used to using guns to get food.
• Your comments are welcome here… please do not hesitate to comment on how you did on these wonderful holidays.

E.g., on 7 January we celebrate Christmas (according to the Orthodox church calendar), and on 8 Jan we are coming back to work – after full rest having power and desire to solve our customers’ tasks.