The Life Line of Moscow

Metro station in Moscow

Like most major cities in the world, the life line of Moscow is its amazing metro system. It carries around 10 million passengers a day on weekdays and is one of the most elaborate systems you will ever see. With a route length of over 180 miles, 12 different lines and 180+ stations getting to any place in the city is within reach. The complexity of the network takes some times to get used to, especially if you do not know the language, but once mastered reaching any corner of the city becomes super intuitive.

Art work at different metro stations

The connectivity though is not the best attribute of the Moscow Metro system – the stations built as “people’s palace” give a royal feel to the commuters. The Stalin time architecture of Moscow metro (the style got lost in the 1960s to give way to uninspiring concrete structures), is striking for its elegant ornate designs, lavish use of marble, mosaics, sculptures and chandeliers and classic iconography of the rich Soviet history. These luxuriant spaces were designed to double-up as bomb shelters in case of war and a place for important political and tactical meetings.

The Irony…

As a foreigner in Russia, I am super impressed with the wonderful metro system; the irony comes when you talk with people about it. Most of the people would tell you how much they hate the metro system in Moscow, many of them disclose that they rather be stuck in a traffic jam for hours than travel by metro.

Thanks to the population of Moscow and the convenience bestowed by metro, the trains get extremely crowded during peak times on weekdays (no competition to Mumbai local trains though)….but I guess the apathy of the Muscovites towards the metro shouldn’t come as a surprise, after all they are the same people who often responds to “how are you?”, with “too tired” “not good”… for petty reasons (definitely not the most positive group of people*)

Rush Hour (above)
Some of the stations are extremely deep (>80 mts below ground)
as they were built to double up as war time shelter
Escalator to one of the deep stations (right)

Irony of Irony…

Can you imagine that the first phase this huge underground installation was built mainly by volunteers who weren’t paid a dime for crawling around the dirty tunnels, risking their lives nearly every moment? They say money can't buy everything - probably passion is one of them :)

* This is just generalization after observing and interacting with a few people over the past few months and is a definitely a crude inference like all other generalizations

Feel at Home: The Story of Soviet Russian Architecture

As years pass since the collapse of Soviet Union, most of the ancient traces of socialism are slowly getting wiped out from Moscow, but every now and then you see some left over crumbs from history.

Once you get away from the center of Moscow, you can’t ignore some very similar looking buildings scattered all over. These are not aesthetically pleasing structures which make you commend the architect rather “ugly” brick and concrete structures that make you wonder – why do they have so many of them?  

Little bit of enquiry with the locals (who can speak English of course) will lead you to the answer – Khrushchevki (five storey buildings) – one of leftover pieces of Soviet history.



Khrushchevki



With the cities expanding and people coming in from all over in the post war times, there was acute shortage of houses for people. The government started huge project to quickly built thousands of cheap, tiny apartments in five-story buildings, with no balconies, extremely small kitchens (where no more than one person can fit), box-like toilet-and-bathroom spaces and thin walls separating the apartments, allowing residents to hear everything that's going on in their neighbors' places!

 "To add to that...", an old man pointed out, “…there were no choice of selecting your own furniture at that time – there was only one kind of TV unit, one kind of sofa which everyone had at their homes. Not just buildings from outside, but also the homes from inside looked remarkably identical”

Though these unpopular “Khrushchevki”  buildings are soon disappearing from Moscow, it makes me wonder how depressing the city would have looked at that time....“Feel at home” – the common phrase we use to make our guests feel welcome would have had a completely different meaning in Soviet Russia ;)



No Parking

 “Walk consisting of a paved area for pedestrians; usually beside a street or roadway”, a primary school child would probably answer that if you ask him/her to define “sidewalk” for you.

But of course if you are in Moscow you ought to be ready for a surprise. Sidewalk apparently is a place to park your car in this space starved city!!!

Don’t get what I am talking about? Probably a picture will explain better…

Beautiful sidewalk on the banks of Moscow River: Chock-a-block with cars (L). Car parked on a busy sidewalk (R)

It is actually customary to drive your car up the curb and park in a way such that half of your car body is on the street and other half on the sidewalk.

Parking: The Moscow way!

According to one article published in the Moscow Times ^*, the rule of parking in Moscow is simple:

“Park your car wherever and however you feel like – on the sidewalk, on a playground – and preferably so it sticks out onto the roadway or blocks other cars. In fact, if you can figure out how to park it in a tree, go for it.”

Probably this is not too bad for the bearings of cars

* June 18th article in Moscow Times, a local newspaper of Moscow

Moving in to a new apartment

When I came to Moscow, I was promised that I would be able to move to an apartment “soon” – the initial hotel booking was just for 5 days. 25 days after arrival and repeated extensions, I was still in the hotel room.

But on 10^th September, Friday evening, I was all set to move into an apartment – my home for the next few months. After the day’s work, I reached the apartment at around 8 pm.

After less than 2 minutes of excitement I found out that there was no drinking water, there was a bed, but no bed-sheet, blanket or pillow and the internet password given to me was not working. I called up the agent who had convinced me to take this apartment, “oh that’s obvious that there would be no blanket etc, you need to buy it…we can arrange for you to go to a shop on Monday”…that’s all the help she managed and this after she assured me that the house would be fully ready to “just move in and stay!”

Next, I called up the landlord as not having internet for the entire weekend was already giving me jitters. It is my only source of entertainment in this country for me when at home. The landlord promised that the previous tenant would be over in 30 min to fix the internet. Given the time frame, I decided to stay home and wait for the guy before venturing out to “explore” the nearby mall to find some food and other essentials.

I had no idea that 30 minutes can be almost 2 hours long in Moscow! Finally the guy showed up. Smartly he mentioned that “see this is the network you need to connect to and the password is…” he began to type while talking, “…and oh incorrect password! Probably it was 0987654321 or maybe…” incorrect once, incorrect twice…...incorrect nth time. Finally after 20 minutes he gave up, “I don’t understand what’s wrong….I will call the service provider and get back to you tomorrow”.

At 10:45 pm he left in the house leaving me fuming and with no time to go for dinner or to go to buy water or blanket for the night and of course no internet. Cursing the loser, I started trying some random passwords on my own. Since he was entering mostly number combinations, I tried a few like his phone number, the landlord’s phone number etc., until I entered “1234”….an error came up stating that the password need to be at least 8 characters long… next obvious attempt was ”12345678” and  VOILA I WAS ONLINE!!

 (Makes me believe trial and error is not too gross after all, what say?)

Pack of instant noodles which I had carried all the way form US and half a bottle of water left over in my bag from office came to the rescue for dinner. One my towels severed as my blanket and the other as my pillow on my first night in the new apartment!

But on the positive side, I had a chance to chit chat with friends and update my facebook status at night thanks to the internet ;)

And yeah, I do love the new place! Pictures of my home for the next few months follow...

Living Room

Kitchen

Bedroom