A belated Russian epilogue
The frenzy of activity that has been my life over the past few weeks has kept me from writing a proper conclusion to my travels in Russia. My first opportunity to sit down and collect these thoughts comes now as I await my next travel adventure. My flight for London and subsequently Athens boards in about half an hour. Soon I’ll be retracing my last-minute steps through a travel guide, this time trying to figure out what’s worth seeing in Greece and how to say “do you have anything that’s not still moving” to the local waiters. So it seems that it’s now or never if I’m going to elucidate my conclusions on the great grey country where I spent 6 chilly days about a month ago.
The Celtics/Magic game is playing on the TVs here in the lobby, making it difficult for me to concentrate, but I’ll do my best.
Well, first I’d have to comment on the general social atmosphere. Perhaps I was simply looking for it, but it definitely seemed that remnants of the cloud of totalitarianism hung heavily in the air. Older people especially seemed to walk with their shoulders bent, faces to the sidewalk. People seldom help each other. Nobody holds a door or yields to another pedestrian. Almost nobody smiles. To me it felt that the memory of KGB days and the iron grip of Soviet rule still cast a long shadow.
I also noticed that Russians like to paint everything. Even in the dank, chilly days of early spring, laborers slapped an annual coat of paint on nearly everything they could get their brushes on. Every park bench, iron railings, street curbs, even trees! The courtyard below the Hutchinson’s apartment had fresh, messy applications of purple, white, and yellow paint in enough places that I had to walk circumspectly between their door and the main street a few hundred yards away.
Though Russia is no longer a strictly communist country, it seems that in some ways things still operate as I imagined they did 20 years ago. There seems to be no shortage of people working, but the results are hard to see. This is especially noticeable among all the people cleaning: scores of people sweeping streets, picking up garbage, etc. yet the city still seems very grimy and dirty. Actually, some aspects of it seem clean–for example, there’s very little litter on the streets and the subway tracks are incredibly clean. But then on the subway cars themselves, it was evident that someone had mopped the floors without ever using soap or fresh water. They simply smeared the brown around in wide strokes. In general, everything seems very grimy, like it all needs a good power washing.
Craftsmanship seems rather poor. Things often seem cobbled together. Nothing lines up. Lots of things are in disrepair. But then some things are very nice and well-maintained. It’s a place of incongruity. Red Square is a good example. It is the epicenter of Moscow, which is the epicenter of Russia. Like most capital cities, it has its series of gardens, fountains, plazas, monuments, etc to signify its importance. It also has a bronze benchmark, marking the center of Moscow. I’ve seen this sort of thing before in places like Washington DC and Paris, where these city centers are marked in grand style, aligned in grand symmetry with long concourses, distant monuments, reflecting pools, etc. In Moscow, it appears to be a sort of afterthought, placed somewhat off-center in the alley leading to the gates heading into Red Square. The famous Red Square itself is an odd mismatched place. One side is formed by one of the walls to the Kremlin, while the opposite side is formed by a huge shopping mall. Not exactly the sort of thing you expect in a major government landmark.
Another oddity is the presence of lots of people walking along the railroad tracks. Areas I would expect to normally be off-limits along the railroad/rail yards seem to have well-beaten paths. On my train ride back to the airport, I also saw people strolling about in odd, desolate places. I saw people walking around in remote netherlands between the tracks and the distant highway, through scrubby marshlands, and in general far from any visible signs of houses or buildings. I wondered what origin and destination would bring someone along such a peculiar route. It was also on my train ride back to the airport that I saw some truly third-world conclaves of squalid hovels, moldering among the underbrush behind long walls.
Russia is certainly an interesting country. It’s not a place I imagine I’d ever like to live, and I can’t say that I’m terribly compelled to visit again. I would like to see more of the countryside, however. Perhaps Lake Baikal and parts of Siberia. But only in the summer!
Well, my flight for sunny Athens will be boarding shortly. Plus I’m running low on concentration.
Go Celtics!
