WEDNESDAY - Moscow first impressions

WEDNESDAY - As our driver took us into Moscow, the first thing that caught my eye was the amount of wooded areas on the outskirts of the city. Lots of what look like spruces to me and then white birch trees every where. The freshly fallen snow really highlighted these outer woody places.

In this more rural area, most of the houses were of the new rich in Moscow. Red brick mostly and where you could see the unfinished construction, I was surprised to see that even the interior structure of the houses was made of a very large red brick rather than the wood framing we're used to seeing in the US.

Scattered around these areas were very old, traditional Russian houses made of wood, but not with clapboard siding as we're used to seeing in the US, but intricate patterns of wood arranged on the side of the house sort of like an elaborate and more interesting version of parquet flooring patterns. The old architecture of these residential houses was really interesting.

It is worth noting that the rural roads here seemed to have lots of interesting twists and turns and that the local drivers delighted in taking them as quickly as they possibly could.

As we got into the really urban parts of the city (Moscow has an 'official' population of 10 million people) we saw more of the things we'd expect in large city, traffic, lots of advertisements, but the layout of streets seemed straightforward and seemed like they'd be easy to get the hang of. Many streets offered easy access parking for buildings and vendors right along the street; this giant city seems really approachable.

This is despite the fact that things like lane line markings and speed limits are really mostly 'suggestions'. Drivers often would magically turn one lane into three and slip through openings that seemed impossible to pass through. All this was done with calm ease by the drivers and there were no hot tempers or honking. The handful of times I've been in New York City, it's seemed overly fast, overly aggressive, and occassionally nasty. These Russian folks are makin' it happen with a grace that's really impressive.

As we drove, and I thought about the geography and the culture I'd experienced so far... it seemed to me that if you decided you wanted to build something that would perform the function of the city of a 'New York' and that you wanted to build it in Iowa... Moscow is pretty close to the result you'd get. Lots of land and hard-working, down to earth people who seem to wish no ill-will on anyone.