Weekend of aviation and LeninsJune 23–24, 2007 YakhromaMapThere’s a new helicopter club at the “Volen” ski resort where you can fly American recreational choppers. The instructor has taken his feet off the pedals and folded his arms — from here onwards, I’m on my own. I spent an hour flying over the town of Dmitrov, learning to hover at low altitudes and to go in circles. For me the biggest psychological challenge turned out to be moving backwards at an angle. Flying forwards and in a circle at a given altitude turned out to be obscenely easy.  As you drive into Moscow there are signs they’ve installed in order to ease driver suffering. If drivers do manage to make out anything at all behind the metal fence erected in front of the sign, they will see a diagram of an eyeball with callout lines. Some of the lines are just there, unmarked. A further mindfuck has been added by spinning the diagram around so that the Leningradskoye highway runs South-South-East.  SerpukhovMapA scream, frozen in brick, has been installed at one of the entrances to the town.  The town itself is rather idyllic.  With a well-preserved central square built in 1930.  Lenin is an absolute must. Spruces growing behind him are a must. No one knows why spruces always grow behind Lenin. Perhaps conifers display greater ideological loyalty than other trees?  The house numbers are rather well preserved as well. I had thought that such scenes could only be found in rare photo banks. Were I the mayor of some town, this is the first thing I would spend money on.  A temperature sign on the main street.  By the way, in Serpukhov the yellow bit on all “main road” signs is smaller than in other towns. Is this the new standard or what?  Typical Khrushchev-era housing, complete with female suicide bomber.  On the road from Serpukhov to Polenovo there’s a place with impossible spelling — there should be a soft “ь” sign instead of the hard “ъ”.  The nature in these parts is well and truly picturesque. Even the guardrail sits in perfect harmony with the birch grove.  PolenovoMapLast entry to the museum is at 16:45, of course, I had to arrive at five p.m.  Get dressed! You’re in a museum. The alley leading to the little houses looks a great deal like the alley leading to the little houses in Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s residence. Except that Tolstoy’s trees stood in a straighter line.  The Russian landscape painter Polenov knew a good thing when he saw it, this is a nice plot of land.  There’s nothing else but the river and forest as far as the eye can see. Not a single house, not a single village in the background, as though Polenovo were the only thing in this region.  The path leads to the Oka river over which a plane is flying at a very low altitude. What a daredevil.  TarusaMapIt turns out that they do have a few asphalted roads here.  A typical street in this town:  A memorial plaque on the house where the Russian writer Paustovsky lived:  Lenin. Spruces in the background.  On the waterfront there’s a mysterious memorial stone with an odious message — devoid of punctuation, all capitals, with an undignified discrepancy in the line spacing, not to mention the word spacing: 
Memorial to the victims of radiological disasters On the bright side, if you can make it across this construction site you can light a candle.  Candles may be lit in the cathedral The main archaeological find is without a doubt this Soviet-era “Soyuzpechat’” newsstand. Nothing will happen to it in the next hundred years.  Soyuzpechat’ |
