Caravan Arrives at the “Window on Asia”,Yekaterinburg
16 July 2013
On Sunday 15 July the “Mega Tourism Caravan” commenced its promotional program in Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg, alternatively Romanized as Ekaterinburg, is the fourth largest city in Russia and the administrative centre of Sverdlovsk oblast, located in the middle of the Eurasian continent, on the border of Europe and Asia. The city was one of Russia’s first industrial cities, prompted at the start of the eighteenth century by decrees from the Tsar requiring the development in Yekaterinburg of metal-working businesses. The city was built, with extensive use of iron, to a regular square plan with iron works and residential buildings at the centre. These were surrounded by fortified walls; so that Yekaterinburg was at the same time both a manufacturing centre and a fortress at the frontier between Europe and Asia. It therefore found itself at the heart of Russia’s strategy for further development of the entire Ural region. The so-called Siberian highway became operational in 1763 and placed the city on an increasingly important transit route, which led to its development as a focus of trade and commerce between east and west, and gave rise to the description of the city as the “Window on Asia”.
The major activities of the day were shopping mall activation at Mega Yekaterinburg and open air cultural program at the Mayakovsky Central Park. Mega Ekaterinburg is one of the leading retail complexes in the Sverdlovsk Region: every fifth resident visits MEGA twice a month. In addition, it is one of the few shopping malls in the city that represents the quality retail segment. MEGA is one of the largest shopping malls in the city and is mentioned as the most visited shopping centre by the city residents. World-famous and Russian brands, including unique tenants for the whole region, such as IKEA and hypermarket Auchan opened their first stores here. During the shopping mall activation; Sri Lankan traditional dancing performances, distribution of leaflets/souvenirs, tourism promotional videos and liquid Ceylon tea service was successfully carried out.
In the evening the program was conducted at the Mayakovsky Central Park which is named after a famous Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The park is the largest in Yekaterinburg and offers lots of recreation and amusements facilities for children and adults. The cultural show of three hours performed by the Dance Guild of the maestro Chandana Wickramasinghe, enthralled and pleased the audience with many a traditional dancing, drum fusion, mask dancing, drum orchestra and medley of folk songs.
