Kineshma, Palekh, IvanovoDecember 23, 2007 The “slippery road” signs in the Ivanovo region depict a car with cooking pot- style steam coming off its tyres. Or they’re tongues of fire licking the tyres. Or two crooked fingers.  KineshmaMapGuess what’s on the posts standing at the entrance to the city? That’s right — hammers and sickles. Shout-out to Vyazma, Pripyat, Novoaltaysk and Barnaul, Kansk and Bratsk, and also Syzran.  Further on there’s a five storey building with two messages written on the side: “the mayor is a crook” and “bloody sneakers giving me blisters”.  Turns out that in terms of atmosphere Kineshma is not-quite-a-city, just like Ples. However, in terms of size it’s significantly larger. Also, clusters of animated people would appear out of nowhere in the central square.  Motor boats full of artists moor here during the summer boating season on the Volga. They come to get drunk, perform onstage and then continue their boat trip the next day.  The lampposts in the centre are spellbinding. First of all, there’s plenty of things on them to look at.  Second, they have an astonishing middle piece that looks a bit like a spot for mounting loudspeakers.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see loudspeakers hanging on posts here — for the locals, even a “Vityaz” counts as a new TV. 
Your new TV The best parody of “United Russia’s” poster style (have a look at this example in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) — a public service ad for what truly is the right choice.  A clean city — the right choice Kineshma also has its own signature style for signs stating the distance to manholes. Aside from that, there’s nothing else to see.  PalekhMapThey handpaint lacquered jewellery boxes in this village. I had my hopes pinned on at the very least a bus stop depicting a horseman in a red kaftan. But there’s bugger all — even the sign pointing to Nizhny Novgorod still says Gorky, as it used to be called.  They do have an enchanted tree here, which a guy with the same last name as me drove into. This spot is nothing but trouble — first the fatal car crash, now the bent pedestrian crossing sign.  Sergei Alexandrovich Lebedev tragically lost his life in this spot As for the lacquered miniatures, just like with Gzhel, everyone has been hoodwinked into believing that it’s an age-old trade, but it’s not, it’s actually a modern technique invented in the mid- 1920s. As for the Gzhel technique, now famous, it only appeared after WWII. IvanovoMapThe city turned out to be ten times bigger than anticipated. Ivanovo is considered to be the city of brides. This is not actually so. Ivanovo is the city of traffic light poles.        They also have a phone box here, just like the ones abroad. “Ivtelekom”, nothing to sniff at. The bricks and the tiles give it away though.  |
