thoughts from blighty

Been in London for a few days with my Russian colleagues V and L, and stupidly blurted out at some point that I found London much more civilised than Moscow. Then spent a lot of time back-tracking (and trying to clarify what I was getting at). That I didn't mean that the people are uncivilised, or even the mindless rules combined with chaos - muscovites notice lots of random rules in London and cannot believe that we follow them - only that the public urban space of the city is so much more comfortable, much more for the 'public'.

Although we also nicknamed London ToyTown, both because of the tiny houses all lined up, and because compared to Moscow, public transport is designed for midgets.

festivals and more festivals

Following cities like Barcelona, Bilbao and Dublin, Perm (in the Urals) is trying to sell itself as a City of Culture.  This has even involved going to Brussels back in May to propose that that the European City of Culture title should be formally extended this far East.  However,  local opinion is clearly a little dubious about the motives of those in power. What everyone knows is that a Muscovite gallery owner, Marat Guelman has been invited in by the regional senator Sergei Gordeyev - or maybe by a regional governor, Oleg Chirkunov - and this can easily be read as a sign that the Moscow elite are taking over.

And, as usual, there are complicated gaps between appearances and actualities. I have been invited here to talk at one of the masses of festivals Perm now organises, in this case bringing together a craftt/household items fair with an architectural and interior design competition and festival (like a miniaturised Ideal Home Exhibition). Quite how these may improve the cultural or economic generation of the region is a little unclear. But there is plenty of energy and many good and creative conversations.

But in terms of other - more solid and long-term - projects, much is started and not completed, There has also been an international design competition for the Perm contemporary art gallery - marketed as PermMuseumXXI - a winner chosen, but then nothing; although now some plans for a much simpler glass extension. There are also proposals floating around for the Opera House (which nobody I talked to knew anything about) and last year some proposals for new wooden houses. So nobody really believes anything will happen.

a city of yards

As the weather improves (this is an old photograph!) I have been increasingly taking shortcuts through the courtyards or dvors/ двора between buildings. These feel like a defining feature of Moscow; not just back gardens as in England, or central courtyards within blocks as in much of Europe, but a unruly set of confusingly linked spaces, flats, houses, factories, offices and misc. sheds interspersed with paths, tunnels through buildings, alleys, greenery, small parks and playgrounds and car-parking (of course).

It takes a bit of reconnoitering to work out how to cut through; the first time was at Christmas when a friend from London showed me how to shave the journey time of one of my 'standard' walks in half. I understand from a Russian colleague that taking these shortcuts has got harder as more and more new housing is fenced off into 'exclusive' enclaves. There is a also the problem of ownership and maintenance. Where I live, as already mentioned, the maintenance people are obviously paid in a way which means they are always looking for jobs (even when these don't really need doing) to justify their existence. But there are also places where nobody is doing anything, producing a patchwork of extreme neatness and relative squalor.

I like the yards. Makes for nicely random and unexpected walking, if and when you have the time to explore.

Skylines

I also really like the evening light when the weather is like this - from about 4.30pm to when it gets properly dark at about 6.00 it takes on a increasingly rose-tinted, almost Mediterranean hue. This everyday skyline captures a lot of Moscow components - trees, overhead cables, some non-specific vaguely industrial wall, cars (parked on the pavement of course) and silhouettes of both a Stalinist skyscraper and a left over social realist monument.

And -for me- most typically, the reddening glow of thick white smoke from one of the many heating plants spread around the Moscow near-horizon that keep us so warm (and probably the city so polluted).

Missed it....

Cant believe it - missed the snow whilst I was back in London for a week; and now it is mild and wet again. But something else has happened. The light is different, muted, and a low level cloud mist mainly hangs over the skyscrapers.

So suddenly, Moscow feels more like a Soviet city. The big, small, old, new cars are beginning to look alike under a even muddy grime, part of a city shifting into brown monchrome. In a local railway station, everyone is black-hatted and black-coated, and the place cloudy with coal smoke.

Meanwhile the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, is planning cloud seeding, to prevent snow in the city. I was so looking forward to some new whiteness....

If you want to read about Russians following China into geo-engineering - illustrated by a great picture of snow in Red Square - see this article in the Moscow Times.

On life, feeling like a student

And just to continue that student feeling, I currently live a one-saucepan life, which is slightly worse than it sounds as I don't have any bowls either! For some reason I am being coy about either demanding more from my landlady, or just going out and buying what I need; as previously mentioned, all the underpasses (of which there are many, due to it being the only way to cross the major ring roads) are full of stalls selling just that kind of tat; along with - suddenly - winter coats and scarves, did I mention it is getting colder?

How can I not love Moscow!

How can I not love a city that paints so many of its buildings ochre and pink and mint green and turquoise blue, and then tops them off with roofs of glittering gold and white? That provides blankets in cafes so you can sit outside, even as the ice begins to rim the puddles? Where people just park anywhere and anyhow?

It makes a great pair with London; if only I could afford to live in both simultaneously!

Hotel

Being driven into Moscow and already trying to locate it in and against other European cities. My image of Russia has been so blurred by that sense of the otherness of communism, that I really didn’t expect it to feel so normal. Much like any large German or Eastern European city, but crossed with Nordic light and colours (ochres, sky blues, mint greens). Sprawling monumental neo-classical blocks, wide boulevards rattling with trams and trolley-buses.  Cleaner and less shabby then Budapest. Hints of Instanbul (easy to forget that Russia has borders with the Baltic, with Europe, but also with Asia, China, Japan, the Artic.)

 

And then just when I was settling into a city like Berlin/Helsinki, we reached the hotel. Which for reasons that were not quite clear, seemed to be in the centre of a military barracks. It also has an interior with peculiar interests, fluctuating between an off-key attempt at bling –bronze statues, waterfalls and flounced curtains (by the lift) - art celebrating heroic aspects of the locality (some weird displays in the foyer); and grubby plush crimson and gilt chairs in the restaurant, oh and a grandfather clock that is also a fish-tank. So, of course, I love it.

 

Except for the mosquitoes.