Quirktastic!
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2006
1
18
27
Trip End
Nov 19, 2006
A few things about Russia,
Russia
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
- Kiosks
They're everywhere, selling almost everything. You want pencils, an air ticket, an icecream on the street? You got it! Beer and squid snacks in an underpass at 3 am? It's yours!! Even better, have it for breakfast too! All can be gotten from your 'friendly' neighbourhood kiosk, serving you 24 hours a day through a window barely bigger than a book of stamps.
- 24 hour shops
Not just kiosks, or supermarkets, but sports shops (in case you get the urge to go skiing in teh middle of the night in central Moscow I assume), cosmetics shops, flower shops - bouquets and huge plants, the list is endless! Genius or lunacy? It's nice to know you can get things when ever you want them, but how can there be enough demand for the shops to make money?
- Icecreams
Not just for summer like in Europe, icecreams are devoured year round. Firdaus was astouded when I told her that in the UK icecreams are really just a summer thing. Now, this is one the things that I LOVE about Russia!
- EVERTHING must be done for you
You're not trusted to shop for yourself - you must ask for goods from the scary shop assisstant who demands to know your choice as soon as you walk through the door, nor are you allowed to press the buttons in the photo booth yourself. This is done by the 'helpful' babushka attendant that will screw with your hair, try to set your posture, and ignore the photo you want, and print the one she likes best. Maybe this is left over from the 'job for everyone' policy - most of these things don;t require someone else to do for you, just gives them an excuse to work. Which isn;t such a bad thing I suppose.
-Russians are always, always reading. On the metro, walking down the street, everywhere. The book shops are huge, with massive sections about all kinds of things. Great reverence is shown to authors like Pushkin, Dostoyevksy, Gogol etc. There's a Pushkin statute and Pushkin Street in almost every town, along with various other writers.
- Girls must wear spiky heels at all times, especially when it's icy outside, or when going for a walk in the park. The nastier the boots, the better it seems. Oh, and it works better if you're clutching a beer too.
- the metro. In a word, amazing! The moscow metro is the deepest inthe world - makes London look like a mere storey below ground. The tunnels are so deep that the super fast, super steep elscaltors often take 4 or 5 to whisk you down to the stations. The stations themselves are beautiful too - most stations are decorated according to a theme, such as ukrainian folk tales, the revolution, worker's struggles etc etc, and covered in very ornate murals or other kinds of decoration. They're also crammed full of people though - when a train stops there's always a massive crush of people shoving forward for the elscalators. I dread to think what would happen if there was ever a fire - the stampede would be horrendous.
- train connections - instead of you going to the train, in Russia the train comes to you. It involves a lot of shunting about, carriages here, there and everywhere, but you don't have to get off and wait for the next train. It's common to get on a train going in a direction with carriages bound for many different destinations. The carriages are dragged down the main line as far as they need to be, then unhooked and probably joined to another to take them to where they need to be. One train I took involved waiting at a station for five hours (in the middle of the night though, so it was way better than being thrown out in the cold) for the next train to pick us up.
