Springtime

Note: This post was written a week ago but I had to postpone it since it suddenly started to snow in Moscow. Now the weather is somewhat ok...but i cannot recover from my semi-monthly illness (I know it is because of this filthy Metro...)

After a rather balmy winter (nothing compared to what our fellow invaders have endured last year...reaching -30 degrees) and a short season of распутица (the infamous thaw and bad roads season, where the german blitzkrieg was bogged down in 1941-3), the spring has come to Moscow.

Now the moscowites and the invaders have been kindly reminded that Earth revolves around the Sun, which haven't seen for months. The ever-heating central heating system in our houses (The soviet answer to the Sun itself) is expected to be gradually shot down through to May; but already all the windows are open in our office and at home to pay our homage to the global warming.

Opening the windows are also the only way to ventilate our office (which have no self-ventilation system and leaves all the employees comfortably numb after the lunchbreak, where the air quality becomes considerably unbearable). Not only that Moscow has an air quality compared to Bombay or New Mexico, but the chemicals that have been extravagantly used to cure the ice on the roads, now constitute a layer of grey dust and winds that form a direct threat to everyone with contact lenses and asthma.

The other nightmare will be the Metro, where the last vain attempt to ventilate the system was in 1960s. It must be told to the tourists (that somehow crowd the metro stations after 10 o'clock to photograph fading facades) that they may be breathing the same air that did many famous authors and scientists in the history, since nothing has changed in the air quality and composition since.

Not everything in spring is demoralizing of course. The good news for the invaders is that the average length of skirts have fallen sharply, the parks and streets are full of russian glamour (or "all you can show policy" as the civilised world would call it). Some of the restaurants have already taken tables and chairs out to the street...a lot of outdoors fun is to be expected throughout the spring, like roaming alcoholics, who have risen from their hybernation in hot zones in Metro or public buildings. (Anectode: A die-hard alcoholic has somehow fallen asleep on a fresh painted bench in a park nearby my house and as the paint dried off, it literally glued the man to the bench. I saw the police shredding his clothing to disintegrate the man from the bench. As a result the bench has now an art-nouveau covering with darkened and stinking clothing and the man was wondering half naked and half beaten in the street. Actually the man can be one of the neighbors. I will tell you soon how it is possible to be neighbors with a Nobel laureate and an alcoholic in the same building in Russia)

But no spring is complete without a ride in a cabrio sports car (I hate myself to sound so dumbly american, but I have to show these photos to you anyway). I have limited knowledge that there was an attempt to make a cabrio sports car in Soviet Union but I think that project hasn't really moved on from the "joke phase". In a country where the technology of the 80's are still praised and commonly used (and already in full production), the ingenuity of the citizens usually exceed that of the state. Here is a good example: The Lada Cabrio

"Enjoy the radioactivity, Breathe in the fresh plutonium traces"

Lada Cabrio. Every Soviet Citizen is Equal...but some are more stupid

Note: Turkish Invasion has nothing to do with Lada. It was well-known and liked all around the Warshaw Pact countries until they learned that the evil capitalists can produce better and cheaper cars. Turkish Invasion supports the Soviet technological breakthroughs: Soon They will produce cars that will move.

Note to the jerks who message me about Lada: I don't care how you like your cars..i am definitely sure that you will buy another brand when you can afford one. A lot of your citizens have already done so...but you can never afford another brand when your best-time hobby is drinking beer with semechki...