I finally indulged my city-planning interests today. I met with the main architect of the city of Vladimir, which is basically the equivalent of the director of planning in an American city. I expressed my interest to meet with someone involved in planning and development to the director of the American Home a few weeks ago, and she arranged a meeting. The main architect is a busy man, so we only met for about 40 minutes, and there was a big line of people waiting outside his office when we left, but it was great to be back in a planning office. There were big zoning maps on the wall, pictures of completed projects all around, and lots of planning literature. Of course, everything was in Russian, and we talked in Russian, but I have read enough about Russian city planning to be familiar with a lot of the terminology. 

I introduced myself and explained my background and interest in planning, and then we just had a conversation about current projects in Vladimir and problems and opportunities that the city faces. Vladimir is a historic city, and one of the biggest challenges is maintaining the integrity of the historic center while not stymieing development. Another major challenge is transportation; Vladimir is a fairly densely built city that was mainly constructed in a time when few people had cars. With the fall of the Soviet Union, more and more people can afford cars, but the transportation and parking infrastructure cannot handle all the new cars. Vladimir is no Moscow, where a five-mile commute could take an hour, but there are still some traffic snarls. For example, there is just one bridge connecting central Vladimir to all the cities that lie to the south, and this bridge is always clogged with cars and trucks. Also, city planners here in Russia face many of the same problems with controlling advertising and signage that American cities do--aesthetic control is a major goal for the Vladimir administration.

One new project that really excited me was a plan to convert a few streets in the center of Vladimir into pedestrian-only or limited-traffic boulevards. Russians love to walk outside even in the nastiest of weather, and these new boulevards would greatly enhance the pedestrian experience and hopefully encourage some new business activity.

The main architect gave me a link to the general plan for the development of Vladimir, and so I will read that and set up another meeting sometime to talk about the plan. It feels good to exercise my planning knowledge again!       

Facebook tells me that Ohio is also getting some winter weather (there's lots of complaining and pictures of snow-dusted parking lots). Well, Ohio, don't get too bent out of shape; it could be worse. Here's what my street looked like this morning, and that was before it snowed all day long:

I think there must be about three feet of snow on the ground, and we haven't seen the grass here since early November.  The interesting thing, though, is that no one seems to really care. Yes, this is has been a very long winter for Vladimir, and normally things are at least starting to look like spring by now, but there is no media sensationalism, no mass complaining, and certainly no conception of canceling anything (school gets canceled if it is -40F, but that, fortunately, doesn't happen very often). Tthe whole 24/7 weather-forecast-and-complete-and-utter-hysteria thing doesn't exist in Russia. In fact, no one really pays much attention to the weather forecast. There is a saying: "the weather forecast is only wrong once--but every day." It's true--the weather forecast is usually unreliable, and, hey, it's Russia--you have to be tough. People put on a good pair of boots and fur hat and go out into any kind of brutal weather.

I hear that American news channels have started to name regular old winter storms (winter storm March 15th--the worst wintry impact in weeks. Stay tuned for the live doppler 200000000000 coverage after these commercials on your source for winter weather information...). I don't miss that. 

Spring in Russia:

On Thursday, my friend invited me to his last day of student teaching at a school here in Vladimir. He is studying to be a foreign-language teacher, and so bringing a real, live American to class is a pretty cool way to wrap things up. He taught a group of 11 and 12 year olds, and so their English was shaky, but they were really excited to ask lots of questions. Then, we had lunch in the cafeteria--Russian cafeteria food is just as uninspiring as American school food. After I wolfed down my pizza and drank my tea, we went back to the classroom and talked to a group of 11th graders (there are only 11 grades in Russian schools). Their English was better, although they were kind of shy. The funny thing is that I recognized several of the students in that class from the gym or just seeing them around my neighborhood--Vladimir is a really just a big village. They asked lots of questions of video games and movies, and I showed some pictures of my family and even passed around my Ohio driver's license. 

Here are some pictures of the class. It's interesting to compare the classroom and how the students are dressed to what a typical American school looks like and how typical American teenagers dress for school (Russian schools have stricter rules about dress--a lot of schools don't allow jeans, for example). 

I went to the Piknik concert with a couple of my coworkers tonight, and it was awesome. I'm very tired and am getting up early tomorrow to go speak to a class of 10-year-olds (my friend invited me as a guest to his last day of student teaching), so I'm going to make this quick. The concert was in a nice hall--not your standard rock concert venue, but, then again, this isn't a standard rock concert. Piknik is a legendary group with its own very unique style, and it would be hard to exactly put Piknik into any particular genre of music. I really like Piknik's haunting sound and intriguing lyrics. They played for about an hour and a half to a packed house. Some musicians are very talkative during their concerts, and some aren't. Piknik is definitely the latter type; the lead singer said all of about three phrases during the concert ("здравствуйте," "перерыв 15 минут," "спасибо"). But the audience loves loves the group regardless, and everybody was standing and dancing and clapping by the end of the concert. Here are some pictures:

Here's a shot I snapped this morning while I was waiting for a bus. You can see we got a little more snow. Also, that short building behind the #14 bus is one of the strangest buildings in Vladimir. First of all, the coloring is weird, and, although it is hard to see, the building has these odd round covers over the balconies. I was, after all, a graduate of an architecture school (KSA shout out), and, although my degree isn't in architecture, I love to analyze buildings. Russia, unfortunately, isn't a good place for that--there are really just a few types of buildings. There is the standard grey apartment building (there are varying numbers of floors and layouts, but all apartment buildings look very similar), the standard ugly hospital/school/municipal building/office building/military base (all civic buildings have a very similar look), and the standard gaudy, post-1990 shopping center (the uglier, the better).

So anyway, for someone who appreciates the finer points of Russian vernacular architecture, this little building by my bus stop is an unusual find. Also, it is really three smaller buildings put together, and there is about a foot-wide gap between the individual buildings that I sometimes squeeze through as a shortcut to get to the bus stop. There is a well-worn trail through this little passage, so I know I'm not the only person who knows about this shortcut.

Today was the last day of Maslenitsa, which is a week-long celebration before the beginning of Orthodox lent. We went to the little, historic city of Suzdal for the festival today. The whole town was full of people, and the roads were closed. On the main square, there were tons of shops and food stands set up, and there was a concert going on.

This holiday has quite a few traditions associated with it. These include eating blini (thin pancakes) and burning an effigy (it is a giant doll that symbolizes winter). There are also a lot of traditional games and activities, such as climbing up a tall pole and a having "friendly" fistfight. There was a pole that people tried to climb--one guy even made it to the top--but sadly we didn't see any organized fistfighting. We walked around Suzdal, ate lots of blini, visited a few of the many churches and monasteries, had some medovukha (a somewhat alcoholic, very traditional Slavic drink made from honey), and then watched the effigy of winter get burned. It was a good day!

Also, somewhere in the course of the day we remembered that is it also St. Patrick's Day. Although I forgot to wear any green and didn't do anything related to the holiday, I wish everyone a happy St. Paddy's Day from the other side of the world.

Here are some pictures of the day's festivities.