Podolsk

Podolsk is a city (or a town according to Russian standards with only 180 000 inhabitants) in the South of Moscow. That's where we went to visit people. For the first time, I've stepped out of Moscow and could experience the life out of Moscow, the "simple life" like people from Moscow calls it. In case you wonder, I did walk 10min with the lady I was visiting to go grocery shopping, back and forth. Not that easy when the ground is covered in snow and temperature is -13C.



It looks very much like a communist town, with building blocks everywhere, some being 1km long (very impressive), large streets connecting them, former industrial town in the communist time.


Somehow, the signs of "modernity" and "capitalism" are limited, or not as obvious as in Moscow. But they do have McDonald's :)




Doesn't look like a place with entertainment, more like a place where people would live while working in Moscow.
Interestingly, there were many Datcha villages. Datchas are secondary housing where people living in the cities would go on vacation. Some are very small (less than 20 m2) and some are very big and fancy (I was told some have even swimming pool), but that's not the rule. Most of the time they look like log cabin.