{"id":989,"date":"2007-04-03T06:54:15","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T14:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/03\/arriving-in-moscow-and-it-looks-like-everywhere-else\/"},"modified":"2007-04-03T06:54:15","modified_gmt":"2007-04-03T14:54:15","slug":"arriving-in-moscow-and-it-looks-like-everywhere-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/arriving-in-moscow-and-it-looks-like-everywhere-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Arriving in Moscow – and It Looks Like Everywhere Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is something both sad and comforting to drive down the streets of Moscow and see a Sbarro sIgn in Cyrillic<\/span><\/p>\n

First impressions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there are a lot of signs in English here
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201c\"Moscow_day_1_009_2\"<\/a>
\nalmost as many as there were in Amsterdam. Despite the old-world concrete
\nfrowning feeling of the Passport Control Center in the basement of the airport,
\nyou can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel too intimidated if, while standing in line, you can look up to
\nsee two brand-new Panasonic HDTV plasma screens playing an endless loop of ads
\nfor expensive consumer products. <\/p>\n

Apparently, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big deal here to have dirty keys on your
\npiano \u00e2\u20ac\u201c luckily, they have special attachments to the vacuums (courtesy of some
\nRussian company) designed expressly to clean the keys on your piano. <\/p>\n

There were lots of Mercedes and BMWs in the airport parking
\nlot \u00e2\u20ac\u201c alongside a tricked-out Lincoln Navigator with oversize chrome rims. Someone here has been watching MTV. <\/p>\n

There are a lot of big car dealerships on the outskirts of
\nMoscow \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it looks a little like Tony Soprano-area New Jersey that way. And the people scurrying around these
\nenvirons look a little like extras from the Sopranos as well.  Near the airport, the highway is smooth and
\nnew. Closer to Moscow, the streets are
\nrutted, jammed and potholed & patched. <\/p>\n

The radio stations in English play a very eclectic mix \u00e2\u20ac\u201c
\nfrom The Bangles doing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Eternal Love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to Beyonce and Eminem. <\/p>\n

I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get over how many international brands there are
\nlining the big highway into town. Pioneer car stereos, Samsung computer monitors, DHL couriers, even a
\nSbarro (although that was the one sign that was in Cyrillic \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I just knew it
\nwas Sbarro cheapass pizza from the color and typography of the sign. Now there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a case study in branding, if
\nanyone wants to tackle it.) <\/p>\n

The river (Volga? Home
\nof the storied Volga Boatmen? I think I
\nfaintly heard their signature dirgelike chanting\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6) is sluggish with ice still \u00e2\u20ac\u201c
\nI didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to look too much like a tourist, and take a picture on the way
\nin. I later overcame my reticence in
\nthis area \u00e2\u20ac\u201c only to find that I had neglected to pack the cable to scarf the
\npix off my camera \u00e2\u20ac\u201c luckily, the Vaio has a nice little slot in the front where
\nyou can click in the fragile little wafer. It kinda clicks in like the glass
\ndoors on stereo cabinets \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you know, you push once and it goes \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cli-CLICK\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and
\nis kinda recessed, and to remove it you push on it and it goes \u00e2\u20ac\u0153CLI-clunk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and
\npops out. And the damn thing was only
\n$14 at Circuit City? <\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the ride into Moscow. There are still the
\nbig high-density apartment buildings lining the roads \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but not as many nor as
\ndense as I had been led to believe. Which is no big deal, really. <\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weird to see these fearsome Red Army soldiers in full
\nbattle rattle on the street, getting yelled at for knocking over a ladder. <\/p>\n

I can quite connect what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m seeing on the streets to the
\nworld I saw in the movies or on TV. Can any of these be the snow-choked streets
\nthat the Bolsheviks marched down in 1917? <\/p>\n

This city just sprawls \u00e2\u20ac\u201c block after block of frowning brick
\nbuildings, with Westernized ads and signs; some in the process of being spruced
\nup. How much blood and history took
\nplace on these streets? Is history ever
\ndone with us? Or are we all making history right now, every second of the day,
\nwithout really being cognizant of it? Freaking out and thinking all the while
\nthat we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re desperately improvising and that at any minute the whole house of
\ncards is going to collapse on us. Meanwhile, the past seems to have so much clarity. There’s a lesson here for those wondering about what to do about the digital revoiution…
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is something both sad and comforting to drive down the streets of Moscow and see a Sbarro sIgn in Cyrillic First impressions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there are a lot of signs in English here \u00e2\u20ac\u201c almost as many as there were in Amsterdam. Despite the old-world concrete frowning feeling of the Passport Control Center in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[847,352,105,370,354],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-journalism","tag-online-multimedia","tag-travel","tag-webtech","tag-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}