warning - rant:
the
metro? are you kidding me? NO ONE who has any self-respect (i'm told) takes the metro these days (i'm rolling my eyes, but friends in moscow
insist that they
absolutely have to drive to work - that the mere thought of anyone seeing them coming out of the metro
gives them shudders. in fact, one i know drives
an hour and a half each way from chertanovskaya to dobryninskaya - the height of madness, in my book, given that's about 18 minutes on the metro).
ok, sarcasm aside, i was actually quite appalled at the degree of pomposity and the obsession with prestige when i visited this past fall. ok, given i'm writing from portland, oregon, where anything big is automatically viewed with a high degree of suspicion, but i know moscow pretty well and will even admit (sheepishly) to being impressed by wide avenues and massive ministries - but this project is just ridiculous. i'm sure the builders aren't idiots, but i have to suspect that the first thing on their minds is that those
arabs (!) down in
dubai (!!) are building all this wild architecture, how can we let them outdo us??? oh yeah, traffic and so on, sure, no eto melochi, ne interesno, glavnoye: PO-BOL'SHE!!!!! (i PO-DOROZHE!!!!!!!!!!)
as my wife and i were discussing this today (gleefully "vorchatting"), she pointed out the beginning scenes of Sluzhebniy Roman, where Myakgov is going on and on about "gorod slyshkom zabyt lyudmi, slyshkom bol'shoi", but, while on the surface he may be complaining, in fact there's this inner
gordost' at the thought that, yes, moscow is indeed a big deal, a player on the world stage, exciting, dynamic, full of crowds and traffic - just like NYC or London or Tokyo. and of course, that film was made back in the 70's; these days i hear that attitude loud and clear bez kontsa. it used to be "we've got the biggest dams in the world" (or, the joke goes, "the biggest pocket calculators in the world!!", now it's "the biggest traffic jams in the world", which are presented as proof that moscow is not an overgrown village, but an Actual City.
also, given the buildings in the background (on the opposite riverbank) this looks like it's on Prospekt Andropova (
link) - unless they build totally new roads *through ZIL* (which, ok, that might be possible, they're removing a bunch of ZIL, anyway, right?), the only access will be across one bridge each from the north and south. an excellent recipe for a traffic disaster. sure it's a spectacular setting, but geez...
[and, my wife adds, what happens when the turkish construction firm, in order to meet deadlines, builds too quickly, the cement doesn't cure long enough and then one winter evening the snow collects just a little too deeply on that spectacular glass roof...]