Destruction on Gasheka Street

This is a bit incongruous with the fact that I'm now in DC...

I still have a vast archive of photos from my time in Moscow, including these photos of the demolition of the Dukat factory's workers' dormitories on Gasheka Street, which were taken around 6pm on August 14 of this year. The Stalinist building in the background is the Hotel Pekin.

Population games

If you are the type of person who gets excited about finding out how many people actually live in that hole of a town you rode through on the train, this website will be very fun for you:

Major Cities and Agglomerations of the World

Here I was able to learn everything that is knowable about the documented population of Moldova; including the "fact" that the population of Lorina's hometown, Floresti, is about 13,600 today and was roughly 18,200 fifteen years ago. Apparently the figures on this site are based on census information, which means you can draw your own conclusions about their reliability. But it is fairly cool to be able to swipe your mouse pointer over a city and see the purported population pop up, especially since the site allows you to do this for all former Soviet countries and many others.

Reflections of, and on, abandoned buildings

I don't usually post photos taken by anyone but me, but I liked this one a lot. I found it here, on the Moldovan photography community on LiveJournal. The photo is by someone who goes by the username inf_ected - whose LiveJournal site has more excellent photos.

The location in the above photo is a place I've driven by several times. It's just south of Chisinau, outside of the city on the shore of a lake. The plan, or so I've been told, was for this hulking building to be a hotel for long-haul truckers, and presumably lakeside holidaygoers as well. However, the building has been standing unfinished, as you can see on the photo, for years.

Maybe it's like the tall building in downtown Chisinau whose unfinished shell was condemned but left standing after earthquake damage rendered it uninhabitable; or maybe it's like the numerous unfinished apartment blocks I saw a few years ago in Balti, Moldova's second-largest city (if you don't count the ones in Transnistria), where construction just petered out before being completed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving behind rusting crane skeletons picked clean of any valuable scrap metal.

Photos of similar sites are available on abandoned.ru, a site which I've mentioned in the past and which is definitely worth a look.

End of the Line #6 - Крылатское

The western end of the light-blue Filyovskaya line - Krylatskoe.

The light-blue metro line has always been more of a source of confusion to me than anything else. It does take you to the infamous Gorbushka emporium of pirated intellectual property (at the Bagrationovskaya station), but before last month I had never used it to get to any other destination. The confusing part is that downtown, the light-blue line runs parallel to the dark-blue line, and three pairs of stops on the two lines are identically named: Arbatskaya, Smolenskaya, and Kievskaya (check out this high-res map).

The Kievskaya stations are linked by a transfer passageway (along with the ring-line station of the same name), but the other two pairs of stations are, for me, the most confusing part of the Moscow metro - stations with the same name but with entrances/exits in different places. The only distinction for that stretch of track is that the dark-blue line is much deeper underground, while the light-blue line is closer to the surface and crosses the Moskva River on a bridge. I guess I was just always bitter that I never used to be able to recall which of the two Arbatskaya stations actually got you to the Old Arbat pedestrian street, and by the time I learned the difference it was time for me to leave Moscow.

An expat's moving sale provided us with an excuse to take a trip out to the end of the line on August 13 - we wound up with a cordless phone, an iron, a bathroom scale, and a large metal pot for our trouble. Here's what we saw:



On the platform.



Statue hanging above the escalator onto the station's platform; the statue's pose is reminiscent of the Vladimir Vysotsky statue near the Petrovskie Gates, except that Vladimir Semyonovich has a guitar on his back instead of wings.



Rays of sunshine light up a partly cloudy sky.



Unexpected wildflowers.



A bird flies amidst large residential buildings.



Classic end-of-the-line graffiti - "Krylatskoe rules the world!" - on a utility shed, with residential buildings in the background.



Can you spot the kitty-cat in the balcony window?


PS - see the links on the sidebar at left for more photos from the End of the Line series.

Shapes of Moldova

View from the Old Orhei cave monastery, July 31.

Light and shadows in an apartment building elevator, Chisinau, Aug. 1.

Cats in the driveway at Lorina's parents' house in Floresti, Aug. 3.

View of the tarmac at Chisinau International Airport from the porthole-style window of the Yak-42 which took me back to Moscow, which was flagged with the colors of the Ukrainian airline Tavria but was operated by Air Moldova. Around 7am, Aug. 5.

Jumping for joy

Lorina and I jumping on a moon bounce (as such inflatable trampolines are called in the US) at Trei Haiduci, a highly recommended restaurant about 40 minutes' drive outside of Chisinau. This is from our trip to Moldova at the end of July. You can tell from my light-heartedness that I still had a few weeks of summer to enjoy. Photo by our friend, Virginia Babalau.

Judgment day?

Maybe I got out of Moscow just in time. This sticker - photographed on a Moscow metro escalator (I think at Tverskaya station, but I saw similar stickers in several stations) just after noon on August 10 - reads, "Christ is coming! It's time to love God". Repent, y'all.

Culture Shock

I knew I would have moments like this when I moved back... The week after I arrived in DC, I was walking down the street late at night with an old high school friend. We were both headed home and were talking about something, I don't really remember what about. Anyway, we were passing the "Lowest Price" gas station at 14th and W Streets, NW, in Washington - I guess they do still have the lowest price, even though it's 3 times what I remember from the last time I lived in DC 5 years ago.

All of a sudden I saw a police car and a couple of officers standing next to the car, and my first thought was that my friend and I should immediately stop our conversation or at least stop speaking English - I'm used, of course, to not wanting to be overheard speaking English when walking past cops in Moscow. I overcame myself and kept chatting normally, but it was surprising to me how strong the impulse was. Afterward, I told my friend about my reflex, and we laughed together about it. It hasn't happened again since, which I guess means I'm adjusting, slowly but surely, to being back home.

Narcissism

Little did I know there was recently - on August 31 - a holiday called "Blog Day." Apparently, on that day, bloggers are supposed to discover 5 blogs that day and post about them. I guess the goal is to take the self-referential tendencies of the blogosphere to new heights. But I shouldn't be complaining - it seems a fellow blogger named Stuart Mudie "discovered" Scraps of Moscow and wrote about it in his post on "Blog Day."

Photoblogging role models

Tim Newman has put all would-be travel photobloggers to shame with his entertaining account of his trip to Crimea this summer. Definitely recommended reading if you're planning a trip to that part of the world, or even if you're just interested in reading a personal travelog that offers good stories written well. Well done, Tim!

And I would be remiss if I didn't also recommend several series of photos that Veronica of Neeka's Backlog has posted recently.