chilling times

In Moscow, the hot water pumped into my bathroom apparently doesn't originate from the basement. I had naively believed that (well actually I'd never really given it much thought) that deep in the bowels of my apartment building, a boiler heated the water for all the tenants and delivered it through a system of aging Soviet pipes. My first clue that a different method is at work here is the fact that my building doesn't have a basement. All the Khrushchovkas built in the 1960's and 1970's were constructed as temporary residences. So they were built on blocks much the same way that a mobile home might come to rest on cinderblocks in a Missouri trailerpark. Actually, when viewed from the proper angle, the Soviet era flats bear an uncanny resemblance to a double-wide trailer home.

My second clue came from the icy cold water spraying on my face.

Apparently, the central planners of the Soviet era decided to construct water heating plants in various locations around the city that would deliver hot water to all the "temporary" apartment buildings. But like so much else of that era, the pipes that feed the homes were built with substandard materials. Which means that for up to three weeks each summer, every district in Moscow is deprived of water on a rotating basis so that the city water authority can peform the needed repairs to get the pipes through one more endless Russia winter.

The symbolism is quite beautiful though. The instant wealth of the oil-fueled economy pulses everyday through the streets of Moscow, rubbing it's silicon boob job in the face of those who missed out on the party. The party going on RIGHT NOW in the stretch Humvee limo racing along the Garden Ring road at 120 km/h on it's way to the newest Sushi bar opening where the diamond encrusted party-goers will down shots of overpriced sake and feel a certain sense of disappointment bordering on slighted outrage that the prices are not sufficiently outrageous enough, failing to reflect the true value of the patrons.
And yet, silently rusting below this grand party is the constant reminder that all those years of deprivations and corruption, all those hours spent standing in endless lines for a ring of mealy sausage, all those silently borne humiliations of communal living, all those mornings spent with clenched teeth as the bone-numbing water pours from the shower head are not quite over.

But I gotta go. I think I hear my bath water boiling on the stove.