Hi John,

failed to upload multiple pictures through your website 🙂

On the 13th of September, we visited Kazan, the capital of Tartarstan in Russia.
Kazan is named the “third capital of Russia” and home to a magnificent Kremlin, dating back to the 16th century. In Kazan, we met Anastasia Trofimenko and Lena Sadrtdinova, with whom we spent a great evening watching Russian TV, chatting and learning about Russian culture.

As it turned out, Anastasia worked at the Sochi Olympics, which gave her an amazing network throughout Russia (there were some 20000 volunteers on site), and she has arranged for places to stay in many places we visited after Kazan. During the evening we came to speak on the purposes of our trip (as there are multiple) and we also came to discuss Samstones. Given the historic importance of Kazan, the beautiful Kremlin, the very hospitable and kind reception, it seemed highly appropriate to place a Samstone in the Kazan Kremlin.

We left the stone in the custody of Lena and Anastasia (I’ve attached a picture of the official handover moment) and a few days later we received another picture through Whatsapp, showing SAM on a beautiful spot right in the heart of the Kremlin. A beautiful example for Russian-Dutch collaboration for a good cause.

Below links to wikipedia, the gps location of te stone and 3 pictures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazan_Kremlin

https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Kazan+Kremlin/@55.799356,49.105999,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x415ead219941ae53:0x5b0126a895b9ce7d

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Best, Robert-Jan and Gert

Hello, John!
It’s Anastasiia from Kazan. I’m working at a hostel, and see a lot of people come and go every day.
So one evening, Robert-Jan and Gert arrived, and since that moment we started our amazing communication. I wouldn’t like to repeat, but it was great evening, full of talking about everything – time passed  so quickly! Also Robert-Jan told me about the Samstones, we both decided that the Kazan Kremlin is the best place for one of them (hope, you’ll agree). It was unexpected, but very pleased that guys entrusted me and Lena to put the stone there.
By the way, it’s a great pleasure for me to help guys to get to know Russia by good people – my friends and big friendly family called “Team Sochi 2014”, the network of contacts which resulted from the Sochi Olympics volunteers. It reminds  me about the best days in my life.
We hope that Russia won’t be empty anymore in the Samstone map soon 🙂