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The fall begins with the last days of flying water in the fountain in front of the Bolshoi - it will be turned off in a few days, when the first night frosts will be forecasted by professional liars also known as meteorologists. The light becomes unmistakably autumnish, transparent and a bit smoky at the same time, and the brown leaves cover streets and paths in the parks like brick pebbles that remain at the space where old houses have been demolished to clear the area for modern office blocks and international hotels.
Mikhail Shemyakin, a famous Russian sculptor who now lives abroad but frequently brings pieces of his art to Russia, opened a big group in the park almost in the middle of the city. It is supposed to fight moral degradation of a big city: describes (or, rather, demonstrates) all the human vices that threaten poor innocent kids. Vice is black, kids are gold, everything is very straightforward. The sculpture is popular among families spending weekend in the park and among guests of Moscow who found a new background for tourist photos.
Views of the late fall and early winter are more spectacular in the dark. A few daylight photos are shown in the row above, and on the left you see a few traffic pictures...
Lights of shops' windows and cars' headlights illuminate Moscow more impressively than street lamps. Street lights are dull and tell you nothing, while bright windows offer either straightforward services and goods or elaborate shows created by advertising companies. And the cars add motion. Moscow is a fast city - many people who come here form different places across Russia keep repeating this. "Moscow is a crazy place where everything and everyone race instead of decently moving, where you have to watch everything at fast forward, not normal play mode." The question is, what is normal. We who live in Moscow for all our lives, or at least for some long while, believe that our pace is normal, and anything below is too slow...
More about light... It is so strange and treacherous in Moscow. Pale late afternoon sky above the channel with a strange silhouette of monstrous monument to Peter The Great makes a nice contrast to the streets overloaded with ads. Endless billboards, bigger and brighter stand in front to walls decorated with other ads (where the cellular phones have the shapes and are packed like condoms) - and the tram in front of all that is not just a public transportation, but also another ad-on-wheels.
Inside the buildings there is also a lot to watch. Big malls offer all sorts of entertainment for shoppers, and the fashion shows are among the nicest. In a large Russia hotel in the middle of Moscow for three weeks six young people were living "behind the glass", under close surveillance of cameras broadcasting their every move on TV and the Internet. Moreover, spectators could watch these participants of the first Russian reality show through the glass walls of their apartment. And the line of Muscovites waiting for a chance to look behind the glass was very, very long round the clock. As long as once the line to the Lenin's Tomb (by some irony located a few hundred feet away from the location of "Behind the glass" apartment).
Indoors Moscow keeps the pace of its outdoor life. Of course, there are quiet places - but many more offer rhythms of a huge urban beast, and they are the same all over the world. Anyway, Moscow is the most international - or cosmopolitan - city in Russia. American blues sound natural here, and are welcome. Disco clubs and DJs play the same pieces as in other capitals. And all these sounds and dances belong here... Vanessa Mae was playing her enchanting violin this December in Moscow Kremlin for one evening - and her impossible mix of tradition, modern sound, and loving soul was also fitting Moscow perfectly.
The closer Christmas and New Year sounds, the more numerous are festivals and other events, both professional and for entertainment of a general public. Year end means summing up - and we all prefer to do it in the merry environment.
But before showing first Christmas pictures, let us take a look at the city a few thousand kilometers east of Moscow, in the middle of Siberia. Just for a change…
Novosibirsk in November may be a bit jumpy. Almost springtime mild weather can overnight turn into harsh winter, with biting clod wind, angry blizzards, and -15 Centigrade (approx 5 F). Views of Novosibirsk are also sometimes surprising. Passenger jets fly low above the city, and the big WTC sign on a building of Siberian Fair may look ominous to impressionable persons. Interiors of the building at some points are also surprising at some points. A huge wooden crucifix next to the ad of a plastic card company and the State Seal made of cast iron marks the entrance to the bar, the only smoking area in a non-smoking exhibition environment. Easy to find but a little bit difficult to explain.
Novosibirsk in November may be a bit jumpy. Almost springtime mild weather can overnight turn into harsh winter, with biting clod wind, angry blizzards, and -15 Centigrade (approx 5 F). Views of Novosibirsk are also sometimes surprising. Passenger jets fly low above the city, and the big WTC sign on a building of Siberian Fair may look ominous to impressionable persons. Interiors of the building at some points are also surprising at some points. A huge wooden crucifix next to the ad of a plastic card company and the State Seal made of cast iron marks the entrance to the bar, the only smoking area in a non-smoking exhibition environment. Easy to find but a little bit difficult to explain.
...And like two years ago, when I had visited the city the last time, I was enjoying the Bowling Center in this November - the right place to spend a few hours in the evening after long sessions of a big Internet Festival...
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