Moscow is an impressive city, not at all drab. Commercialism has hit big-time: shops everywhere, billboards ditto including some that are a block long and 60' tall, lots of cars and trucks and buses. People drive crazily, like in any big city, and park wherever they can, legal or otherwise. We saw people drive up on the curb to pass on the right, park and drive on the grass, and take their lane out of the middle of the road, regardless of lines. Oddly, they must do it pretty well because we saw very few dented cars.
The countryside is beautiful, the cities are just cities. It is an old country with plenty of old buildings, but they are building new high-rises in Moscow ASAP. Apparently there are some controls on such tall buildings in the older parts of St. Petersburg. However in the newer parts of St. Pete 20 story apartments are common. One sees very few non-Europeans (i.e., Asians, Africans) in Russia, the population is overwhelmingly white and most are fair. This makes sense because at various times the Norse (Swedes, mostly) controlled the land.
City dwellers all live in apartments but many have so-called dachas, summer houses in the countryside. In Yaroslavl we were told people were given a plot in the countryside, not a bad deal if true. Some of these dachas are truly shacks, without plumbing or power, others are quite upscale. The Russian dacha occupies roughly the same psychological space as the New Zealand bach (pronounced "batch" and probably derived from bachelor place). Having a summer place makes having a car highly desirable, to enable getting back and forth. It seems everybody with a country place grows vegetables, or tries to. The countryside is green, unlike California, so irrigation may not be essential for garden success.
Speaking of summer houses, they also have over the years built "summer churches" and "winter churches." A summer church will be expansive and therefore impossible to heat in winter while a winter church, often built next door, will be more compact so it can be heated for use when everything freezes.
We were in Moscow on the longest day of the year - June 21 - aka the Summer Solstice. It was light outside long before the alarm went off and still light at 11 p.m. This tells you that Moscow is far north, and St. Petersburg even farther north. Winter has got to be dreary.
We've returned to CA tonight, I write this in San Francisco. Tomorrow we drive to Chico and get ready to move to the summer place in Wyoming. We should be there a week from now.
