May 05, 2004

Moscow-St. Pete/Москва-Питер

I just spent a beautiful holiday weekend in Saint Petersburg, the cultural and aesthetic capital of Russia. The leaves have finally started to emerge here and the weather is great. In celebration of this, with some Russian friends, I decided to drive to Saint Petersburg. This, I found out, about the same as playing Russian roulette.

The road reminds me of a road I took from Managua out to the Nicaraguan coast. This particular road was paved in the 1950's and hadn't been repaved since. The Moscow-Petersburg road is in a similar state--more potholes than road in some places--except for this road connects two metropolises.

The road in most places is three lanes, which means one lane for each direction and one lane for whoever has the balls to be in it. Since Russian drivers don't take their lives too seriously, this means anybody who wants to pass the Жигули Zhiguli (read very old Russian car), goes into the middle lane, resulting in many a near head-on collisions.

So there I was going 170 kilometers and hour while avoiding cars trucks and potholes. I, of course, was the only one bothering to wear a seat belt. Quite an experience--worth doing once. Next time, however, I'll take the train. Posted by Aaron at May 5, 2004 02:49 PM

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