Sochi

Bomb explodes at train station in Volgograd, Russia yesterday afternoon.  More than a dozen people were killed. I'm flipping channels on the TV and I come across a blind skier. I enjoy skiing, but I also like to see where I'm going, and here this woman is charging down this hill and she can't see shit. Okay, it's a groomed slope, and she has a guide, but still. I don't know how she does it. Anyway, she competes in the paralympics, and she is going to Sochi, because the paralympics are also going to be run there. So now I'm wondering just where is this place called Sochi? I'd never heard of it before they started talking about holding the Olympics there, so I go look it up and find it's on the Black Sea and about as far South as if is possible to get in Mother Russia (which I think says something about Russia's climate, like maybe it's really cold there, like in that movie Dr. Zhivago). Sochi is right near the border with Georgia and a couple hundred miles West of Chechnya where they have been fighting the Russians for the last twenty (or 500) years.


The Black Sea is on the left. The Caspian is on the right. View full size map.
And look what else is here: Volgograd, where the bomb went off yesterday afternoon. On the map it looks close, but it's actually over 400 miles from Sochi.

Update October 2021 replaced missing map.