I am in Moscow.
Russia is cool, what can I say, especially for a European provincial, which I am.
We left at 17:25, hit the border at 19:30. The customs officers look so Rrrussian. Russian faces, some sort of hardcore uniform, and the letters PV on their epaulets, which probably stands for "Border Troops". Everything is more glamorous in Europe.
All of us bus travelers were thoroughly scrutinized and cross-checked against our passports, while our luggage was run through an X-ray, or whatever it's called. I filled out the migration card (the document for entering the Russian Federation) in a rush and with a dying pen, so I traced over the letters a hundred times and skipped some boxes entirely. Despite this, the young, light-brown-haired customs officer didn't say anything to me, just looked at me closely 3 times (I counted, yes)
The next stop was at a trucker motel with the Latin-script name Vitka (usually all names here are in Russian, so this was showing off). And immediately the wonders and oddities began. I tried to find the toilet inside, but instead, right after the entrance on the right behind a brick wall, there's a washbasin. With a sign saying WASHBASIN. And on the left is a security room. With a sign saying SECURITY.
The security consisted of 4! shaved-bald young guys in camo and beastly massive boots. Back home, security guards wear neat uniforms and generally stay out of sight, but here it's like a whole army.
Thus, one can immediately draw the speculative and mythological conclusion that present-day Russia puts an emphasis on cleanliness and order (the bloody Putin regime, hehe).
However, this speculation is refuted by the "Eastern-style" toilet. For those not in the know, it's a classic hole in the floor. I haven't seen toilets like this in about 5 years. Back home, shiny new plumbing sparkles everywhere, and it's free. I have to say I prefer the Polish option—better to pay for a normal "crapper" than use an elegantly pear-shaped hole in the floor.
Another fun fact: in the middle of the night, in a bus bouncing over potholes, I happened to open my eyes and read "Zapadnaya Dvina River" on a road sign. For those not in the know, this is what the Russians christened our main Latvian river—the Daugava, which is 1020 km long. It starts on the territory of the Russian Federation, flows through Belarus, and ends in Riga. Its width in Daugavpils is over 500 m, and at the mouth a full 800. But at the spot where I saw the sign, it barely reached a dozen meters.
Around 5 o'clock our time (6 Moscow time) we drove into Moscow. The psychedelic first impression was a massive construction site, where a huge number of identical multi-story residential buildings are being erected simultaneously. The ground around was all dug up, no people, just the shells of high-rises standing in the fog and a bunch of gigantic tower cranes. In Riga, there are only 3 cranes of that height, but here there are 10 of them at once on a single site. Plus the height, size, and sheer quantity of the high-rises—we don't have anything like that in Daugavpils at all, and in Riga they build maybe a dozen a year, but here it's 30 at once, maybe more.
The next impression was stray dogs running past the bus in packs. It was just like they write about it—I read once that there was a problem with them, and I saw that there really is. I definitely wouldn't wish to run into a pack like that in the morning, that's for sure. Later on during my wanderings, I saw dogs multiple times, though not in such numbers. They looked friendly enough, but I didn't stick around to check.
Another confirmed piece of information was the enormous number of immigrants from the ex-USSR. I mean the poor Moldovans, as well as Tajiks, Kyrgyz, and other natives of the
Caucasus. The street sweepers really are all of the "not-the-kind-they-need-in-Moscow" nationality (to use Yandex's expression). Yandex also thinks that a professor in Voronezh earns as much as a street sweeper in Moscow. Basically, "I'd go be a street sweeper, let them teach me".
Next on the list of glaringly obvious platitudes uttered by provincials in Moscow is the advertising. Or rather: "SO MUCH ADVERTISING HERE!" I mean outdoor ads, of course. It's everywhere. Without exaggeration—every 50 meters on the MKAD there are 4-8 billboards across the entire width of the road. You ride the escalator in the metro, and they're on the ceiling every five meters. Even at the bus stop right above the bus schedule it says "your ad here". Nothing is sacred, you know.
I should also mention the insane number of detours due to road repairs, and the fact that there's already a decent number of people in the metro at 7 AM. But still not packed, so it's a comfortable ride. I also liked that there are signs everywhere in the metro, and it's impossible to get lost if you have even a slight idea of where you need to go.
But when I got out of the metro, I picked the wrong direction and ended up doing a loop of about 4 kilometers. For those who happen to know—I emerged into the light of day at the "Shosse Entuziastov" station, walked down Elektrodnaya Street, reached Zelyony Prospekt, walked along it a bit, turned around, and walked back to the metro along Plekhanova Street. And all I really had to do was walk 3 stops straight ahead down Shosse Entuziastov to the "Slava" movie theater.
I wandered around not because I have geographical stupidity, but because I left in a rush and didn't take the exact address of where I needed to go, and I couldn't buy a map—first it was too early, and then they simply didn't have any maps at the kiosk.
I should probably also mention the hardcore Moscow shopkeepers who drop dead from shock at the words "good afternoon," "please," and "thank you," but I have no time.