On the way back had a one night stopover in Beijing. Definitely where the next Masters of the Universe live. An extraordinary combination of, on the one hand, chaotic, endlessly entrepreneurial everyday life (selling everything* and operating at every level from people riding sellotaped mopeds to owners of shiny polished black Mercs); and on the other, totally organised mega-scaled infrastructure development - not pretty, always overlarge, but well-built and smartly finished - and new buildings going up everywhere. Makes Moscow feel quite normal.

*As evidenced by the fact I got caught a mere three minutes from my hotel by the Beijing art student scam, an activity ubiquitous and famous enough to have its own entry on Wikipedia.

happy new year (and happy 'old' new year of course)

Amazing time with my daughter in Sydney, including an island picnic watching the New Year fireworks. Lovely. I can't help wishing that you could bottle whatever it is that makes for laid back, sunny-mannered, easy going Australian life - as a present for Muscovites to inhale from periodically. Not all the time of course,  just now and then. 

on new russians

Everyone at the dacha was dismissive of New Russians who buy up dacha plots nearer to Moscow and build huge mansions. They said that being at an hour and a half distance from the city made the group of dachas here too far for NRs in their 4X4s to be bothered to drive each weekend (given that - especially in the hot weather - everyone goes to their dacha for the weekend, and for as much of the summer as possible, making the already bad traffic jams even worse.)

This means that many of the buildings around here are small and elderly, picturesquely decaying, very basic in terms of kitchen and washing facilities. In old peasant houses, most of the volume was taken up with a huge masonry stove, built to retain heat - which people slept on, used for cooking and smoking, and for sitting inside to wash. A wanted to build one in her dacha, but it was too big and too difficult to fit in. She says that such stoves are becoming trendy again (again with the NRs), but that is hard to get good stovemakers and that many are just for show. 

Dacha time but not for me

I was planning to spend the summer traveling across Russia, but unfortunately my intentions have had to change; besides a short time in August I will be in London until the beginning of September. And looks like I will miss out on a dacha trip also. Damn.

Will just have to catch up with my Russian reading, all those 19th century novels and travelogues and anything else recommended...