Walensee

Living in Zurich has its pros and cons. Zurich is a vivid and fast-growing city, which makes living here exciting, but at the same time the constant noise of cars and endless construction sites makes you feel a bit down from time to time.

Fortunately, apart from cities, Switzerland also has mountains, forests and lakes to offer =) Even if you pick a new hiking place every weekend, it will take a few years until you have to repeat some of them. Mountains and cliffs reflected in a lake’s still water, green forests and ringing of cow bells in otherwise absolute silence – that all is exactly what one needs to stay away from the city for a day.

This time we headed to Walensee which is situated south-west from Zurich, in the Lichtenstein direction, to bring some authentic Swiss impressions:

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Taormina and the “Etna hike”

It is generally known that software engineers are grumpy and introvert. Therefore, any contact between them is either because of work-related communication or just a pure coincidence. Software companies are, on the other hand, interested in having their employees to at least not be afraid of each other. Everyone solves this problem in their own way. Google, for instance, from time to time throws 2-3 day offsites for its employees with a purpose of team building and creation of inter-team connections.

Just like that, after just one month after my start date I found myself on Sicily with a bunch of Googlers from my and neighbor teams. Read more“Taormina and the “Etna hike””

Electric Skateboard

Tried out an electric skateboard recently. It was fun =) Even despite my horrible balance (I still cannot ride a scooter or a bicycle) I was able to ride this thing quite reasonably in just 10 minutes of practice:Read more“Electric Skateboard”

Europa Park

I definitely enjoy the European style of amusement parks: unlike the Russian ones, they are huge, have a theme and ask only for an entrance fee – all the rides inside are free. Europa Park is a stereotypical image of Europe and its cute gingerbread houses of Germany, Italian palaces and simple, made of timber huts of the North.

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VK Office

Today I would like to invite you to the Singer House to have a look at the work (or rather anything but work) of VK engineers.

In general, most of the offices of popular tech companies look very much alike: microkitchens, decorated meeting rooms, different entertainment options (e.g. gaming consoles or fussball), local memes on the walls =) VK office is not an exception in this regard even though the company itself is rather small.

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Lake of Constance

It is quite popular among Swiss residents, especially those who live in the canton of Zurich, to spend summer vacation days on the German side of the Lake of Constance that is conveniently located right between Germany and Switzerland. Being one of the two major lakes of Switzerland (the second one is the Lake of Geneva on the opposite end of the country), the Lake of Constance is easily reachable by train without the need of being exhausted by airports. And German prices are another reason why this region is quite attractive for guests from the other side of the lake.

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