10 Fun Facts About Sochi, Russia and a “Blinis” Pancake Recipe Kids Will Love

With a maiden name like Borowski, I’ve heard pretty much every Pollack joke there is. But my ancestors primarily hail from the Ukraine and Russia so I feel a connection to Sochi, host city of the 2014 Winter Olympic games. Here are a few fun facts about my original Motherland that my kids have enjoyed learning:

1. Russia, the largest country in the world, occupies one-tenth of all the land on Earth. It spans 11 time zones across two continents (Europe and Asia) and has coasts on three oceans (the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic). It is almost twice as big as Canada.
2. It has the deepest lake in the world, Lake Baikal (1,700 m or 5,577 ft) in Siberia and it contains more water than any other lake on earth. Amazing when you compare that to Denver, the “Mile High City” at 5,280 feet. Russia has about 100,000 rivers, including some of the longest and most powerful in the world.
3. The national animal is the brown bear.  The most famous animal species is the Siberian tiger, the largest cat in the world that is indigenous to the forests of eastern Russia.
4. Greater Sochi has a population of 400,000 and stretches 90 miles along the Black Sea, making it the second longest city in the world behind only Mexico City.
5. Sochi is on the same latitude with Toronto, Nice and the Gobi Desert.
6. Sochi is a resort town that is known as the Russian Riviera. Sochi’s climate is subtropical, making it the warmest city to host an Olympic Winter Games and temperatures hover around 50 degrees in the winter. Sochi has been stockpiling snow and  a Michigan-based company designed and operates the snow-making system called the Super Pole Cat. This fully automated fan, pump and water-spraying unit up on a pole towers over the mountainside.
7. The outdoor alpine events will be held in the northern Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and the area averages 5 degrees in the winter.  The town of Krasnaya Polyana (in the Caucasus Mountains) will host the events requiring snow. It is located 40 km away from Sochi.
8. Twelve winter sports events will be making their Olympic debuts in Sochi, making the 2014 Games the biggest in history. The new events include a figure skating team event, women’s ski jumping, mixed relay biathlon, ski halfpipe (men’s and women’s), team relay luge, ski slope style (men’s and women’s), snowboard slope style (men’s and women’s), and snowboard parallel slalom (men’s and women’s). That makes for a total of 98 events in 15 winter sports (versus 86 events in Vancouver).
9. There are three mascots for these Olympics, as voted by the Russian people: a polar bear, hare, and leopard.
10. There will be 6,000 athletes from 85 countries (plus 1,650 Paralympians from 45 countries)

In honor of the Olympics, we decided to make some Russian cuisine. Since I’m not a fan of herring, borscht or caviar, we opted to try something more kid-friendly for our Saturday morning breakfast. Think pancakes but with a fancy Russian name! Blinis symbolize the sun and they are the most popular food of a Russian festival called Maslenitsa, which celebrates the end of winter and the start of spring. It’s also a time of year when people ask forgiveness for things they have done wrong during the year.

Like eating too many Blinis.

A Colorado Mom Shares a Fascinating Glimpse of Her Son’s Olympic Journey and the Cost to Get There

NBC’s 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics: viewers’ frequently asked questions

Author: Amber Johnson

Amber is the founder and editor of Mile High Mamas, travel writer and former columnist for The Denver Post. She is a passionate community builder and loves the outdoors. She has two awesome teens and is happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin.