Voice of America: Russia winter transport goes from the troika to rubber tires
It snowed in Russia last week.
(Yawn. What else is new?)
But Russia no longer is Dr. Zhivago country, a rural place where troika sleighs slide smoothly across white, wintry landscapes.
Modern Russians have a deep, passionate, often unrequited, love affair with rubber tires.
Last weekend, on the highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, the nation’s two largest cities, an above-average snow storm trapped drivers for three days in a traffic jam that stretched for 200 kilometers.
In Moscow, drivers ignored snow warnings, and drove into a storm that paralyzed the capital’s streets for hours.
A snowstorm in the beginning of December is nothing new for Russia. Over two days, the city was treated to 30 centimeters of snow and some freezing rain. Not pleasant, but part of winter life in this part of the Northern hemisphere.
But Russians’ inability to cope with the white stuff is news.