expressnn.ru is the site of a Nizhny Novgorod travel agency called Express, known from archived snapshots of the early 2000s. In the nn.ru site directory it was listed as "Express Nizhny Novgorod travel agency"[2], while the title of its home page read "EXPRESSNN.RU:: N.Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod:: Travel firm, travel agency 'Express'" (spelling as in the original)[1]. The address later passed to another Nizhny Novgorod company — LIDER-NN, a wholesale supplier of electronics and accessories[3], and by 2024 the site had been replaced by a registrar's parking page[5].

The Express travel agency's site

The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 9 April 2003. The page was laid out as a showcase of five blocks: receiving guests in Nizhny Novgorod, river cruises, holidays aboard the "A. Herzen" steamship, sanatoriums and holiday camps, and foreign tours; each block ended with a "[more]" link[1].

First came city-hosting services: as the home page stated, programs were offered "for one or more days" and included "city and regional excursions, accommodation, meals, entertainment"[1]. The river cruise section was laid out for the 2003 navigation season: the steamships on offer were "Mikhail Frunze" (spelled thus on the page), "Mikhail Kalinin," "Georgy Zhukov," "Anton Chekhov," "I. S. Turgenev," "Dmitry Pozharsky," "Mikhail Kutuzov," and "Aldan," with routes along the Volga and the Kama[1]. The three-deck steamship "A. Herzen" was described separately: cabins, a restaurant, a bar, music and reading lounges, a cinema hall, a solarium[1]. The sanatoriums and holiday camps section covered package stays "at central-Russia resorts," and on the topic of foreign travel the page stated that Express worked with all the major tour operators of Moscow and Saint Petersburg and sold packages at tour-operator prices[1].

The company's range of interests can be seen from the keywords embedded in the page's code: Diveyevo, Khokhloma, Pavlovo, Gorokhovets, Arzamas, the Makaryev Monastery, Lyskovo, Bogorodsk, Bolshoye Boldino, the legendary sunken city of Kitezh, Chkalovsk, the "Kustorka" holiday camp, the "Lesnoy Kurort" sanatorium[1]. The surviving text of the home page contains neither an office address nor a phone number — visitors were simply invited to "contact the Express company office"[1].

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru site directory, from whose snapshot the site made it into our records, expressnn.ru is listed with a rating of 186[2]. On how the Nizhny Novgorod ratings of that era worked and what can be reconstructed from them, see the articles "Counter.nn.ru" and "Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating."

In the voting results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004 — the contest by which the Nizhny Novgorod Internet was then measured — expressnn.ru does not appear; our data show no votes for it[6].

The address's second life: LIDER-NN

By 11 December 2019, the address expressnn.ru no longer hosted the travel agency's site but a landing page for a wholesale electronics supplier: "Wholesale mobile phone electronics and accessories direct from the manufacturer," under the brand LIDER-NN[3]. This company, too, was based in Nizhny Novgorod: its contacts listed a head office at 100 Internatsionalnaya Street, Nizhny Novgorod, phone +7 (831) 228-03-68, email info@lider-nn.ru, and working hours from 8:00 to 17:00 on weekdays and 10:00 to 14:00 on Saturdays[3]. The page claimed "24 offices across Russia" and listed additional locations in Kaluga, Kurgan, and Tyumen[3].

The content consisted of a catalog of speakers, headphones, chargers, and USB cables with wholesale and retail prices, bonuses of 3, 5, and 10 percent on orders from 30, 50, and 100 thousand rubles, and "Get a price list" and "We'll call you back within 15 minutes" forms[3]. A snapshot from 14 March 2022 shows practically the same page unchanged — the same "Lider-NN © 2019" copyright notice, the same product range, and the same prices[4]. The city named in the delivery text was filled in automatically: the 2019 snapshot shows "Ashburn" in that spot, while the 2022 snapshot shows the neutral "to your city"[3][4].

The end of the domain

A snapshot from 15 July 2024 finds a registrar's placeholder page in place of the site: "Parking page R01," with a message that "the domain's registration period has expired"[5]. The last home-page snapshot in the web archive is dated 9 December 2024[7]; in our data the domain is recorded as no longer existing. Thus the address survived in the archive from 2003 to 2024 and, over that time, passed through two distinct Nizhny Novgorod businesses — a travel agency of the early 2000s and a wholesaler of mobile accessories of the late 2010s.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru site directory, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2019 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2022 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2024 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet voting results, 2004 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page, 2024 (last snapshot) (archive)