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America for Pedestrians

Tiny Nissan Note? – eight suitcases of 23kg each and a total of four people. Ah! Picked up the family from the airplane

In our parts, snow is a useful thing to have around. It goes somewhere

Never seen anything like this here before. Bank services and ATMs on the go. On the right, a pneumatic tube goes up into the ceiling

Coming back to life

In the English language, signs and labels can speak and read. The sign says “No smoking”, and intriguingly, “the label read ‘don’t wash’, but he did”.

A guy walks into a bar and sees a sign that reads.

“Hey,” says the man to the sign, “If you can read, what does my shirt say?”

“I don’t know,” says the sign. “I can only read sign language.”

Yes, quite the fun. Today’s flight to Washington for the family was canceled. Rescheduled for tomorrow – and they just canceled tomorrow’s flight too, after we had already checked in a slew of suitcases and received boarding passes. Spent 10 minutes trying to get through to an operator. Now I have to go back to Domodedovo to rescue a heap of luggage and check in for the next flight, which isn’t until Monday, handing them back again.

I feel so sorry for my family. With this bad weather, it’s one trouble after another

Went for a walk. The weather is brutal outside, indeed. I lasted only half an hour. During that time, I only met a group of people once – but they were in full ski gear, with goggles, good footwear, etc. I encountered only two cars that were NOT snowplows, and about 30 snowplows. One of these two cars is in a photo – it got stuck right in front of me. It didn’t have much choice – there’s nowhere to park cars, and all the driveways into courtyards are too deep.

There’s a very strong icy wind with snow outside. My glasses almost immediately lose visibility because they get iced over.

Probably no need to mention that nothing at all works in the city – not even worth saying. Stores, pharmacies, cafes – all are not just closed, of course, but also buried under snowdrifts about a meter high. You can only walk on roads that are cleared. And now, that’s mainly highway centers. By the way, it’s a rare occasion when one can walk down the highway right in the middle of the road. If a rare SUV passes by, it will go very slowly, and even then, it’s most likely workers.

Outside the window, a Ford F-450 snowplow is stuck. It can’t get out—if you’re wondering, it’s clearing a five-lane road, not a courtyard.

If they actually make it to Dallas tomorrow, I’ll try to get to the airport in my Nissan Note))

When a journalist from one of the local Washington TV stations wanted to interview people at a gas station this afternoon about what they think of the approaching snowfall, she never expected it to be Alex Ovechkin (video).

I won’t post a photo from the window because it’s an incredibly boring view. Just a typical winter.

Washington and nearby states are declaring a state of emergency. Yesterday at five in the evening, both the metro and roads were closed, and I couldn’t meet with colleagues from SAP (@[1141515488:2048:Andrej Zhukov], hello!). Yesterday, people were panic buying in stores not without reason: a TV interview with a cashier of the only open store in Maryland was just shown (in DC, I think there’s more than one).

“Our” people don’t understand the difficulty—so snow has fallen, and there isn’t even much wind. Most of the winter here is like our early spring. Temperatures are above freezing, people are driving around, and warm winter jackets are hardly necessary. Even if you buy one, you’ll only need it for maybe three days throughout the winter, so people don’t generally buy them for themselves, and stores don’t keep large stocks (well, apart from before the snow, when of course everything was swept off the shelves). We are actually on the same latitude as Tashkent, Ashgabat, Valencia, and Athens; for example, it was 21 degrees Celsius with sunshine here last Christmas. Since snow is rare, there simply isn’t much snow-clearing equipment here, nor, for example, do many drivers have shovels or brushes for their cars. I won’t even start on winter tires and chains. From my hotel window, it seems no car has driven by since the morning, except for snow-clearing machines.

The snowstorm that hit the States is being reported in the local newspapers and on TV as something between Armageddon and the Apocalypse: on one hand, you need to fight, on the other, any resistance to the force of nature is senseless, and it’s better to accept the inevitable with appropriate grief and resignation. Therefore, the anchors laugh, showing people playing in the snow.

So, in the end, the entire city sits at home. TV, books, internet. We’re waiting for Sunday.