A Few More Thoughts About Russia and Siberia

Start to finish, there were a lot of surprises on this journey and there are a lot of little mental images that keep popping up. Some – not nearly enough, but some – I managed to photograph at the time. Here are a few, along with the impressions that remain.

First, the traffic congestion in Moscow rivals anything in any U.S. city, with the number of cars growing far faster than streets can be widened and added to accommodate them. And speaking of avenues in Moscow – they’re called prospeckts – they are often six or eight lanes in each direction, with cars whizzing along at breakneck speeds and changing lanes impulsively as openings occur. Pedestrian crosswalks are a real adventure!

Infrastructure leaves a great deal to be desired. This photo was taken in the main parking lot facing the train station in Irkutsk. Throughout Russia and Siberia, one has the constant feeling of being in a construction zone. There are small piles of broken bits of concrete, barricades in place, perhaps a piece of equipment parked off to the side. But most of the time there is no apparent work going on.

The signs are in the Cyrillic alphabet and do give you a helpless feeling. I wondered at the time if perhaps it’s a bit like how an illiterate person must constantly feel. But even in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, you turn a corner and there’s something that reminds you of home.

One of the members of our group used a wheelchair and was constantly confronted with daunting obstacles. One of us carried the chair while he gamely grabbed his cane and labored up the stone stairways and, usually, back down again at the end of each particular sightseeing experience. For all the touring we did, I can only remember once or twice when ramps were available.

Finally, I was interested to learn that the soil across most of Siberia is not very fertile. Case in point, there are millions upon millions of birch trees, but they never grow to more than 15 or 20 feet in height before withering and finally dying from lack of nutrition. Most of Siberia’s prodigious wealth comes from what’s under the surface – oil and a huge variety of minerals.

Still, Siberia was by far the most surprising place of the entire journey … nothing like what I expected … so very much more.