Moscow
May 27, 2011
By a large margin, Russians are the most publicly passionate people I have ever seen. The level of PDA is remarkable. Almost every couple that’s walking together is hand in hand, and kissing abounds. Of course, life being what it is, the gay couples have to be more discreet. But they’re around.
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Last night I made it to a movie. I saw Life in a Day, the first movie I’ve seen produced by YouTube. It’s a beautifully edited documentary built from thousands of clips sent in from all over the world depicting ordinary people’s lives on July 24, 2010. I really enjoyed it.
The theater experience was puzzling, however. It was very challenging purchasing the ticket, as there was no clear way to point to the movie I wanted to see. Happily an English-speaking native in the line behind me helped. Then the movie started almost forty minutes late. No explanation, no apology. That’s just how they cinematically roll in Moscow, I guess.
I had no problems getting there, a journey which required a subway ride with transfer and a walk. As I’ve pointed out ad nauseum, I’m good at this.
It occurred to me on the way home that the New York subway is the only one I’ve been on (that I can remember, at least) that has an extensive network of both local and express trains. All the other systems I’ve been on have local only. I wonder why that is? Is it simply because of Manhattan’s linear shape? That theory doesn’t hold water, as the rest of the boroughs are as round and lumpy as any other city map. New York’s size? That can’t be it, either. There are plenty of subway systems in cities with larger areas than New York – Moscow, for example.
In fact, Moscow’s Metro carries the second –largest rider volume of any system in the world after Tokyo. The city has over ten million people, after all.
Another thing about New York’s subway: It seems to me to be the shallowest of any I’ve ridden on. Meaning you don’t seem to go so far into the ground. I suppose that has something to do with the soil in New York. But it also seems a bit surprising considering all those tall buildings it runs under – wouldn’t you need lots of room for the foundations of those buildings, and wouldn’t shallow subway tunnels interfere with that? Oh well… my Dad’s the civil engineer, not me. I’ll ask him.
Metropolitan Subway Systems I’ve Explored[1]
- New York
- Boston
- Washington
- Atlanta
- Los Angeles
- San Fransicso
- London
- Paris
- Brussels
- Munich
- Berlin
- Rome
- Moscow
- St. Petersburg
- Milan
Right around the corner from where I was working, there's this statue of the man who invented Cheetos (the crunchy kind; the softer kind were invented, as every American schoolchild knows, by Benjamin Franklin)
[1] It’s possible I’ve forgotten one or two.
