This entry begins a small account of the journey Saratov State University delegation has left for the World Finals of the ACM ICPC 2012. The destination is Warsaw, where the World Finals take place this year. The delegation members are:

• Maxim Ivanov (e-maxx), Artem Rakhov (RAD), Nickolay Kuznetsov (NALP) — the Saratov SU 2 team;
• Michail Mirzayanov, the coach, with his wife Katherine and his daughter Tanya;
• Antonina Fedorova and Tatiana Semenova, our administrators;
• and finally, me (Nerevar), as the second coach.

That is the team’s second and last journey to the finals (last year they brought silver medals from Orlando). And for me this is the first journey to the Finals not as a participant (I participated in 2009 and 2010, and was a success too). I order to reach Moscow at the convenient time, we had to sacrifice comfort a little bit and go from Saratov to the capital by a Makhachkala train (which is notorious for its poor hygiene and rude personnel). Our pessimistic expectations came true right from the start: when we entered our compartment, we found a conductor, peacefully snoring there. I should also mention the dysfunctional air conditioning system, the filth everywhere and so on. But I won’t complain much as the train actually fulfilled its main function and got us to the destination point. We got our sleepy bodies off the beds at 5 AM into quiet morning Moscow with much difficulty and got to the airport. Flight SU 2000 delivered us to Warsaw without any problems. The same flight delivered the Nizhny Novgorod team to Warsaw.

The traditional in front of the train photo.

Su -2 has already landed and is waiting for departure.

The Mirzayanovs family.

I got surprisingly many questions at the passport check, regarding the purpose of the visit and we were even asked to show our invitation. And then the customs officer asked the guys in what language they code. Everybody honestly answered ''C++'', which got the officer’s approval. Given that most Polish teams code on this language, we supposed that the customs just don’t let through those who answer ''Java'' or God forbid, have some other variant:)

In the airport, we were met by volunteers who accompanied us to the bus. What we found amusing is a tall man walking in the hall with a plate that read `Alexey Shmelev’. We found this much attention to this particular individual quite surprising, I don’t know whether he actually came to meet Alexey Shmelev (ashmelev) from the NNSU team, though. :)

Warsaw gave us a cool greeting. The temperature outside is +10 °C, raining slightly. Rather gloomy after the sunny and even hot Saratov. We immediately checked into the Radisson Blu Sobieski hotel, that will house the participants of the Finals. The hotel is fine but it somehow lacks the stylishness of a World Championship hotel. In any case, I can confidently state that the hotels that housed us in 2009 and 2010 were better. I was particularly displeased to find out that the hotel is not located in the city centre and we need to get to the historical centre of Warsaw either by transport, or walk 4 kilometers.

By the hotel.

Having checked in, we went to find some food and stumbled over a nice Polish cuisine restaurant. There we had soups that smelled and tasted deliciously, broths, and different tasty meat dishes.

Hungry Maxim and Artem are wolfing down the soup from bread plates.

Then we had the TCO qualifying round that spoiled our tour around Warsaw. Unfortunately, this time no one from Saratov made it to the next stage. Our only hope is the third round ...