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Each year Scottish people across the world celebrate a unique dinner known as “Burns Night”. This is A__________ called Robert Burns. Traditionally it happens on his birthday, the 25th January. Scotland can be very dark and cold at this time of year, so it’s B__________ with friends and family. Burns is still an important figure in Scotland and even though he died in 1796 at the age of 37, he was recently voted “The Greatest Scot”. His birthday has become as important as Scotland’s national day, St Andrew’s Day. The idea for C__________ soon after his death, and these days is actually quite a complicated affair. To start people are sat down at the table and the host reads a poem called “The Selkirk Grace”. It’s normally done in a Scottish dialect which even English people find difficult to understand. Although Burns probably didn't actually write this, he is known D__________. Next, soup is served. The highlight though is listening to a bagpiper playing as the main course of haggis arrives. Haggis is a special dish made from a mixture of sheep heart, lung and liver and oats, which is a bit like a giant sausage and surprisingly tasty. So tasty in fact that Robert Burns wrote E__________. After dinner there’s a speaker, who may recite more poetry and a toast is made to the memory of Robert Burns. Next F__________ about ladies and a female guest replies with a funny speech about men. Throughout the rest of the night there is even more of Burns’ poetry.

 

 
1. to have read it at a dinner
2. the next course is served which is
3. a male guest makes a funny speech
4. to remember a famous Scottish poet
5. an excellent reason to enjoy a large dinner
6. a poem about it called ‘Address to a Haggis’
7. a dinner started over two hundred years ago
 

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Moscow Metro The Moscow Metro is a rapid transit system serving Moscow and the neighbouring Moscow region towns of Krasnogorsk and Reutov. This is the second in intensity metro system in the world after the Tokyo subway. The system consists of 12 lines with a total length of 298.8 km, with 182 stations. The first line was opened on May 15, 1935 A__________ to the station “Park Kultury”, with a branch to the station “Smolenskaya”. The Moscow Metro was originally named after L. Kaganovich. Almost from the first years of the Moscow Metro, it was intended B__________. In April 1941 it was declared C__________ a mass bomb shelter. During World War II thousands of Muscovites were hiding there from air strikes. The Moscow Metro is known for the rich decorative design work of many stations with samples of art of socialist realism. Moscow metro stations are also called “underground palaces of Moscow” D__________. The underground complexes are decorated with statues and reliefs, monumental and decorative compositions such as paintings, mosaics and stained-glass windows, E__________ the country. For instance, stations “Pushkinskaya” and “Ploschad Revolyutsii” are decorated with 76 bronze sculptures by M. Manizer, and “Kropotkinskaya” F__________. Many stations belong to the most interesting monuments of architecture of 1930–1950. Some of them are officially protected by the state.

 
 
1. to be used for civil defence
2. that the Metro was to be used as
3. and ran from the station “Sokolniki”
4. as they look like magnificent palace halls
5. which were created by the leading artists of
6. which was considered a masterpiece of architecture
7. and “Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya” with mosaics by P. Korin
 

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1. Perm’s industry
2. Beneficial location
3. City’s cultural life
4. Too important to be left alone
 
5. Traditionally liberal
6. The greatest achievement
7. Natural resource as attraction
8. Where the name comes from
A. The word “Perm” first appeared in the 12th century in the Primary Chronicle, the main source describing the early history of the Russian people. The Perm were listed among the people who paid tribute to the Rus. The origin of the word “Perm” remains unclear. Most likely, the word came from the Finno-Ugric languages and meant “far land” or “flat, forested place”. But some local residents say it may have come from Per, a hero and the main character of many local legends.
B. Novgorodian traders were the first to show an interest in Perm. Starting from the 15th century, the Muscovite princes included the area in their plans to create a unified Russian state. During this time the first Russian villages appeared in the northern part of the region. The first industry to appear in the area was a salt factory, which developed on the Usolka river in the city of Solikamsk. Rich salt reserves generated great interest on the part of Russia’s wealthiest merchants, some of whom bought land there.
C. The history of the modern city of Perm starts with the development of the Ural region by Tsar Peter the Great. Perm became the capital of the region in 1781 when the territorial structure of the country was reformed. A special commission determined that the best place would be at the crossroads of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which runs east-west and the Kazan line, which runs north-south. This choice resulted in Permbecoming a major trade and industrial centre. The city quickly grew to become one of the biggest in the region.
D. Perm is generally stable and peaceful, so the shocks of 1917 did not reach it right away. Neither did they have the same bloody results as in Petrograd. Perm tried to distance itself from the excesses and did not share the enthusiasm for change of its neighbours. Residents supported more moderate parties. They voted for the establishment of a west European style democracy in Russia. Unfortunately, the city could not stay completely unaffected, as both the White and the Red armies wanted its factories.
E. Perm’s desire for stability and self-control made the region seem like a “swamp” during the democratic reforms of the 1990s. Unlike other regions, there were no intense social conflicts or strikes. Nevertheless, Perm was always among the regions that supported the democratic movement. In the 1999 elections, the party that wanted to continue the reforms won a majority in the region. So the city got an unofficial status of “the capital of civil society” or even “the capital of Russian liberalism”.
F. During the Second World War many factories were moved to Perm Oblast and continued to work there after it ended. Chemicals, non-ferrous metallurgy, and oil refining were the key industries after the war. Other factories produced aircraft engines, equipment for telephones, ships, bicycles, and cable. Perm press produces about 70 percent of Russia’s currency and stamped envelopes. Nowadays several major business companies are located in Perm. The biggest players of Russian aircraft industry are among them.
G. Perm has at least a dozen theatres featuring productions that are attracting audiences from faraway cities, and even from abroad. The broad esplanade running from the city’s main square has become the site of almost continuous international art, theatre and music fairs during the summer. Even the former prison camp with grim walls outside town was converted into a theater last July for a production of “Fidelio”, Beethoven’s opera about political repression. The performance was well-reviewed.

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The life of Pi “The Life of Pi” published in 2001 is the third book by the Canadian author Yann Martel. It has A__________, won several prizes and been translated into forty-one languages. At the start of the book, we B__________ in India. His father owns the city zoo and the family home is in the zoo. When they aren’t at school, Pi and his brother help their father at the zoo and he learns a lot about animals. When Pi is sixteen, his parents decide to close the zoo and move to Canada. They travel by ship taking the animals with them. On the way, there is C__________. Sadly, Pi’s family and the sailors all die in the storm, but Pi lives and finds himself in a lifeboat with a hyena, zebra, orangutan and an enormous tiger. At first, Pi is scared of the animals and jumps into the ocean. Then he remembers there are sharks in the water and decides to climb back into the lifeboat. One by one, the animals in the lifeboat kill and eat each other, till only Pi and the tiger are left alive. Luckily for Pi, there is D__________, but he soon needs to start catching fish. He feeds the tiger to stop it killing and eating him. He also uses a whistle and E__________ and show it that he’s the boss. Pi and the tiger spend 227 days in the lifeboat. They live through terrible storms and the burning heat of the Pacific sun. They are often hungry and ill. Finally, they arrive at the coast of Mexico, but you will have to F__________ in the end!

 
 
1. a terrible storm and the ship sinks
2. received an award for being strong
3. some food and water on the lifeboat
4. sold seven million copies worldwide
5. read the book to find out what happens
6. learn about Pi’s childhood in Pondicherry
7. his knowledge of animals to control the tiger
 

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1. Inspired by nature
2. Wonderful combination
3. Restoring old traditions
4. Protecting the environment
 
5. Different at different time
6. Chosen as the best among hundreds
7. The closest to the sky
8. Saved from being pulled down
A. Sydney Opera House was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 as one of the most iconic buildings in the world. Its planning began in the 1940s, as the existing building for large theatrical productions was not large enough. The Opera House was designed by a Danish architect Jorn Utzon whose design was selected as the winning one among 232 other entries in an international design competition. The formal inauguration of the building took place on 20 October 1973.
B. The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889 in Paris. It was designed as an entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair and named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. However, initially the plan was to make it stand for only twenty years since its construction. The City had planned to tear it down in 1909, but as the tower proved to be valuable for the image of the city, it was allowed to remain. Now it has become the symbol of the city, seen as one of the World’s wonders.
C. The Electric Forest Festival, which started less than a decade ago, is a four-day multi-genre event, held in Rothbury, Michigan. The main focus of the event is upon electronic and jam bands. But what captures the eyes is a special atmosphere during this festival. The surrounding environment becomes a kaleidoscope of laser light shows. The mixture of electronic lights and the sounds appeal to different senses and together create a unique, surreal, magical experience.
D. Casa Mila, designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí, is one of Barcelona’s World Heritage sites and is one of the most visited attractions the city has to offer. The building is also known as “La Pedrera” translated as the Stone wave, because of the facade which is made up completely with natural stones and does not have any straight lines. Gaudi explained it by the fact that straight lines cannot be found anywhere in the wild landscape and it can be made only by men.
E. To mark the end of the Christmas season, Shetland in Scotland celebrates a variety of fire festivals every year. The most interesting of them is held at the capital, where this practice was born as early as in 1876, when strong men dragged barrels with burning tar on sledges. Today, thousands of people dress up in period-clothes. The procession burns down the model of a Viking ship. The brightness of the fire and men in clothes of the long-gone era make a spectacle show.
F. Burj Khalifa is an 829.8 m skyscraper in Dubai. It is the tallest structure in the world. There are hotels, residences and observational laboratories in the 163 floors of the building. It’s not only the tallest building in the world, it is also the tallest freestanding structure in the world, has the highest number of stories in the world, highest occupied floor in the world, highest outdoor observation deck in the world, and an elevator with the longest travel distance in the world.  
G. The Taj Mahal is an architectural marvel made of white marble situated on the banks of the river Yamuna in Agra, India. It was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. Nowadays around 8 million tourists visit the Taj Mahal every year. They come to see the changing colors of the Taj Mahal, which change from pink in the morning, milky white in the evening and golden at night when lit by the moon.

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Kazan The exact date of Kazan foundation is unknown. According to the opinions of some historians, it was founded in the second half of the 13th century, but other specialists believe A__________. It is located on the banks of the Volga River. Since 1438 the city was the capital of Kazan Khanate, B__________ Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible. Nowadays, Kazan is the capital of the Tatarstan republic. Kazan is a large industrial centre of the region. It witnessed many important historical events. Kazan is a very interesting city from the architectural point of view. Here one can see old buildings, C__________ to the present day, for example, the Kremlin with different constructions, the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the Marjani Mosque. The Kazan Kremlin is definitely one of the most attractive places in the city. It is a unique mixture of historical and architectural monuments. The real fortress, with a history lasting through the ages, and its buildings absorbed pieces of Slavic and Turkic cultures, D__________ Muslim and Christian civilizations. On the territory of the Kazan Kremlin tourists will find a complex of old buildings, E__________, sandstone constructions of the 16–18th centuries, as well as some modern museums. Tourists will have a chance to visit a real fortress and feel a breath of ages while walking inside a unique historical monument, F__________World Heritage Sites in 2000.

 

 
1. and in 1552 it was conquered by
2. that the city was founded in 1177
3. which have been carefully preserved
4. that the city has many tourist attractions
5. which were created in the 10-15th centuries
6. taking the best parts of urban planning from
7. which was included in the list of the UNESCO

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The Slob’s Holiday

My husband and I went to Reno for our holiday last year. “Isn’t that place where people go to get a quickie divorce?”asked my second son? ‘Yes’, I said, trying to look enigmatic and interesting. ‘You are not getting divorced, are you?’ he asked bluntly. ‘No,’ I said, ’we are going to an outdoor pursuit trade fair. The children sighed with relief and slouched away, muttering things like ‘boring’. I call them children, but they are all grown up. My eldest son has started to develop fine lines around his eyes – fledgling crow’s feet. A terrible sight for any parent to see. Anyway, the piece isn’t about children. It’s about holidays.

The first thing to be said about holidays is that anybody who can afford one should be grateful. The second thing is that planning holidays can be hard work. In our household it starts with somebody muttering, ’I suppose we ought to think about a holiday.’ This remark is usually made in July and is received glumly, as if the person making it has said ‘I suppose we ought to think about the Bolivian balance of payment problems.’

Nothing much happens for a week and then the potential holiday-makers are rounded up and made to consult their diaries. Hospital appointments are taken into consideration, as are important things to do with work. But other highlights on the domestic calendar, such as the cat’s birthday, are swept aside and eventually two weeks are found. The next decision is the most painful: where?

We travel abroad to work quite a lot but we return tired and weary, so the holiday we are planning is a slob’s holiday: collapse on a sunbed, read a book until the sun goes down, stagger back to hotel room, shower, change into glad rags, eat well, wave good-bye to teenagers, have a last drink on hotel terrace, go to bed and then lie awake and wait for hotel waiters to bring the teenagers from the disco.

I never want to be guided around another monument, as long as I live. I do not want to be told how many bricks it took to build it. I have a short attention span for such details. I do not want to attend a ‘folk evening’ ever, ever again. The kind where men with their trousers tucked into their socks wave handkerchiefs in the direction of women wearing puff-sleeved blouses, long skirts and headscarves.

I also want to live dangerously and get brown. I want my doughy English skin change from white sliced to wheat germ. I like the simple pleasure of removing my watch strap and gazing at the patch of virgin skin beneath.

I don’t want to make new friends – on holidays or in general; I can’t manage the ones I have at home. I do not want to mix with the locals and I have no wish to go into their homes. I do not welcome tourists who come to Leicester into my home. Why should the poor locals in Holidayland be expected to? It’s bad enough that we monopolize their beaches, clog their pavements and spend an hour in a shop choosing a sunhat that costs the equivalent of 75 pence.

So, the slob’s holiday has several essential requirements: a hotel on a sunny beach, good food, a warm sea, nightlife for the teenagers, a big crowd to get lost in, and the absence of mosquitoes.

As I write, we are at the planning stage. We have looked through all the holiday brochures, but they are full of references to ‘hospitable locals’, ‘folk nights’, ‘deserted beaches’, and ‘interesting historical sights’. Not our cup of tea, or glass of sangria, at all.

The parents’ choice of holiday destination made the narrator’s children feel
  1) jealous.
  2) excited.
  3) alarmed.
  4) indifferent.

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The narrator’s words ‘A terrible sight for any parent to see’ refer to
  1) the way children behave.
  2) the fact that children are aging.
  3) the way children change their image.
  4) the fact there is a generation gap.

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When the need for holiday planning is first announced in the narrator’ family, it
  1) is regarded as an important political issue.
  2) is met with enthusiasm by all the family.
  3) seems like an impossible task.
  4) is openly ignored.

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To find a two-week slot for a holiday potential holiday-makers have to
  1) negotiate the optimum period for travel.
  2) cancel prior business appointments.
  3) re-schedule individual summer plans.
  4) make a list of the things to be taken into account.

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The slob’s holiday is the type of holiday for people, who
  1) do not want to go on holiday abroad.
  2) go on holiday with teenagers.
  3) do not like public life.
  4) prefer peaceful relaxing holidays.

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When the narrator says ‘I also want to live dangerously’, she means
  1) getting lost in the crowd.
  2) going sightseeing without a guide.
  3) choosing herself the parties to go to.
  4) lying long hours in the sun on the beach.

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The main reason the narrator doesn’t want to mix up with locals is because she
  1) doesn’t let tourists to her house at Leicester.
  2) doesn’t want to add to their inconveniencies.
  3) is afraid to make friends with local people.
  4) values her own privacy above all.

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REUNION

The last time I saw my father was in Grand Central Station. I was going from my grandmother's in the Adirondacks to a cottage on the Cape that my mother had rented, and I wrote my father that I would be in New York between trains for an hour and a half, and asked if we could have lunch together. His secretary wrote to say that he would meet me at the information booth at noon, and at twelve o'clock sharp I saw him coming through the crowd.

He was a stranger to me – my mother divorced him three years ago and I hadn't been with him since – but as soon as I saw him I felt that he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom. I knew that when I was grown I would be something like him; I would have to plan my campaigns within his limitations. He was a big, good-looking man, and I was terribly happy to see him again.

He struck me on the back and shook my hand. "Hi, Charlie," he said. "Hi, boy. I'd like to take you up to my club, but it's in the Sixties, and if you have to catch an early train I guess we'd better get something to eat around here." He put his arm around me, and I smelled my father the way my mother sniffs a rose. It was a rich compound of whiskey, after-shave lotion, shoe polish, woollens, and the rankness of a mature male. I hoped that someone would see us together. I wished that we could be photographed. I wanted some record of our having been together.

We went out of the station and up a side street to a restaurant. It was still early, and the place was empty. The bartender was quarrelling with a delivery boy, and there was one very old waiter in a red coat down by the kitchen door. We sat down, and my father hailed the waiter in a loud voice. "Kellner!" he shouted. "Garcon! You!" His boisterousness in the empty restaurant seemed out of place. "Could we have a little service here!" he shouted. Then he clapped his hands. This caught the waiter's attention, and he shuffled over to our table.

"Were you clapping your hands at me?" he asked.

"Calm down, calm down," my father said. "It isn't too much to ask of you – if it wouldn't be too much above and beyond the call of duty, we would like a couple of Beefeater Gibsons."

"I don't like to be clapped at," the waiter said.

"I should have brought my whistle," my father said. "I have a whistle that is audible only to the ears of old waiters. Now, take out your little pad and your little pencil and see if you can get this straight: two Beefeater Gibsons. Repeat after me: two Beefeater Gibsons."

"I think you'd better go somewhere else," the waiter said quietly.

"That," said my father, "is one of the most brilliant suggestions I have ever heard. Come on, Charlie."

I followed my father out of that restaurant into another. He was not so boisterous this time. Our drinks came, and he cross-questioned me about the baseball season. He then struck the edge of his empty glass with his knife and began shouting again. "Garcon! You! Could we trouble you to bring us two more of the same."

"How old is the boy?" the waiter asked.

"That," my father said, "is none of your business."

"I’m sorry, sir," the waiter said, "but I won’t serve the boy another drink."

"Well, I have some news for you," my father said. "I have some very interesting news for you. This doesn’t happen to be the only restaurant in New York. They’ve opened another on the corner. Come on, Charlie."

He paid the bill, and I followed him out of that restaurant into another …



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