more snow cleaning operations (but hardly any snow)

Despite unexpectedly minor snowfall this winter (although glad to say we are at last having those incredible pale blue icily clear skies, with eye-watering-frozen-nostril-hair temperatures of minus 15) the snow cleaners are still out in force. Have stopped myself showing you yet another picture of road snow-gobbling machines, but here are some humans whose job it is to repeatedly jump out of a van and sweep snow off the top of tram-stop shelters.

And even this is just a substitute for what I really wanted to show you, but didn't have a camera at the time. For there is the fab snow-clearing train, a proper-sized train but which is a symphony of snow-gobbling front end, together with a conveyor belt carriage, followed by a long sequence of carriage-shaped but roofless snow containers. All, of course, mainly empty of snow since there isn't much.

hanging about (more)

...and the other, other obsession - people hanging off buildings from basically just two pieces of string...

leaves falling

Regular visitors to this blog will know that one of the things I am obsessed with (along with the weather and food) is the creativity in 'making do' when it comes to street cleaning equipment. But I just going to pretend this photo is showing how quickly the autumnal leaves are falling (oh, damn, but that means I am talking about the weather again...). 

hanging about

I have already noted my street cleaning tools obsession. Now realise I have another one - the very common tendency to see people working on roofs/hanging from buildings/doing building work in extreme dangerous places and ways. In the winter this mainly involves scary ways of clearing snow, in the summer months it seems to cover window cleaning, gutter replacement and - for some strange reason - knocking holes out half way up 12 storey facades.

So, let me introduce you to our window-cleaner. 

spring-cleaning

Another sign of Spring for me, is the change in street cleaning utensils (about which both winter and summer versions I seem to have a strange obsession). As the sun begins to shine, the shovels and scrapers and ice-breaking crowbars are being replaced with little swish brooms and wheelbarrow variants.

We have also had a subbotnik* in the public outside areas at work - which I missed - and meanwhile the Mayor is talking about cleaning up the decaying entrances and yards of Moscow's housing blocks. This would be a massive investment as a huge amount of housing has been left to decay in the post-soviet period (and was not well looked after in soviet times) so I am not sure I believe it. And of course the public zones of stairs and entrances have suffered worse. A public campaigning group called чистый подбездChisty Podyezd/Clean Doorway has been getting people to post pictures to their website of bad examples, and giving prizes to the worse!

* to quote directly from Wikipedia - "Subbotnik and voskresnik (from Russian words суббота [suˈbotə] for Saturday and воскресенье [vəskrʲɪˈsʲenʲjɪ] for Sunday) were days of volunteer work following the Bolshevik seizure of power. The tradition is continued in modern Russia and some other former Soviet Republics.^[1] Subbotniks are mostly organized for cleaning the streets of garbage, fixing public amenities, collecting recyclable material, and other community services."

worked it out

Think I have worked out what the smell is.  In some kind of vague spring-clean operation, a woman had been going around filling cracks and covering  the base of the whole estate in thick grey paint. And it stinks. Maybe its an anti-infestation thing, I have no idea (and I am trying really hard not to mention the slapdash nature of the work).

I still need to find out more about how the whole post-Soviet housing situation works. With privatisation in the 1990s I guess many people - at least those officially registered in Moscow - were just handed over their flats. But now, how is maintenance paid for? Here, its a bit rough, but it seems to happen; I have been to other places where the apartment interiors may be beautifully done up, but the hallways and stairs are almost in ruins. And the stories about buying a flat, only to get into the (often fraudulent) quagmire around who owns and/or is registered to that particular apartment, are completely terrifying.

coat-beating

The snow may be melting, but there is still lots of it piled up, where it has been scraped off roads and paths all winter. And - at last - an example of the snow-cleaning my landlord insisted was the best way to get the dirt out of my carpets. This bloke is doing his winter coat, alternatively hitting it with a stick and a broom, and then turning it over again and again. Brilliant. Wonder if this is still a normal past-time, or just left over from the 'old times'?