Travel: Everywhere: Travel_022

A boy emerges from the water in his scuba diving mask as beach-goers enjoy the warm weather on Thursday, August 14, 2008, at the Black Sea resort Sochi, Russia. The government has pledged to invest $12 billion to transform the Soviet-era resort town into a Mediterranean-style retreat. As the mountainous Black Sea resort Sochi, Russia, prepares for the Winter Olympic games scheduled there for 2014, it emerges as a place replete with contradictions -- glitzy clubs and impoverished street vendors, progress and repression, Westernization and former Eastern bloc ideologies.

A boy emerges from the water in his scuba diving mask as beach-goers enjoy the warm weather on Thursday, August 14, 2008, at the Black Sea resort Sochi, Russia. The government has pledged to invest $12 billion to transform the Soviet-era resort town into a Mediterranean-style retreat. As the mountainous Black Sea resort Sochi, Russia, prepares for the Winter Olympic games scheduled there for 2014, it emerges as a place replete with contradictions -- glitzy clubs and impoverished street vendors, progress and repression, Westernization and former Eastern bloc ideologies.