Just A Few Notes About Moscow

Moscow shares the joys and woes of every metropolis (it has a population of around ten million). It is diverse, crowded, glittery and grey. Rich with culture and history and glaring with commercialism. It is a collection of distinct neighborhoods. We saw but a few. Our sightseeing was quite incidental on this trip, as we remained focused on our adoption tasks. Here are a few scattered impressions.

There were trolley tracks on many of the streets with overhead electrical wires. The streets were crowded with cars , trucks, buses, trolleybuses and trams. Parking was at a premium. We saw places where there was parallel parking on the street, then to the right of those parked cars was another line of cars, double-parked on the sidewalk. In other places, there was angled parking and the cars were parked with the front third of the car up on the sidewalk. Very strange!

We saw people sweeping the sidewalks. Each had a dustpan and a small straw broom with a three-foot handle. Back-breaking work for sure.

I don’t remember seeing pigeons, but everywhere I saw these gray pigeonesque birds. Found out they were Russian crows.

Drove by one of the sites from the 1980 Olympics where we saw the pool and ski jump featured in last season’s Amazing Race reality TV series. The ski jump is used year-round, as it has a special surface to ski without snow.

There are police (or some other law enforcement agency) checkpoints along the roads. A policeman may be standing there so you slow down to hopefully just drive by, but he may wave you in for an inspection. We were not stopped in Moscow, but we were in Klintsy, the small town with Bethany’s orphanage. The policeman talked to the driver for a few minutes, probably checked his papers, nothing more.

There are many, many kiosks along the streets; jam-packed with snacks, drinks, cigarettes, periodicals, and I don’t know what else.

There are monuments all over Moscow, also Bryansk, in the smaller towns and just along the road in between. Many are statutes of historic persons, some were military and other just plain, inscribed, stone monuments.

The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 7th because they use the Julian calendar. In the Soviet era when religion was suppressed, many transferred the Christmas celebrations to New Year’s Day; with decorated trees, presents and all. During that time belief in Saint Nicholas was suppressed and Grandfather Frost rose to replace it. Now more are celebrating on January 7th again, and many on December 25th, so it is really one long holiday over there.