After 27 months of construction, a bridge over the Kerch Strait linking the Crimean peninsula with Russia’s Krasnodar Kray opened for traffic in May. In a dramatic PR stunt, President Vladimir Putin unveiled the bridge by driving across the 19-kilometer span in an orange KamAz truck.
Plans for the bridge were announced immediately after Moscow occupied and then annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. The ostensible goal of the bridge is to end Crimea’s physical isolation, boosting tourism and easing shipping, which to this point has relied on a Soviet-era ferry link prone to closures during bad weather.
The four-lane bridge surpasses the Vasco da Gama bridge in Portugal as Europe’s longest. The top-priority government project has cost a reported $4 billion, and companies participating in the construction – notably Stroygazmontazh, belonging to Putin’s ally Arkady Rotenberg – have been targeted by Western sanctions. A railway bridge is still under construction, set to open in late 2019.
Cars traveling over the bridge must be searched, and certain articles, including any weapons, are banned.
Meanwhile, Ukraine considers all travelers to Crimea (which all but ten countries consider Ukrainian territory) to have illegally entered the country, unless they enter Crimea via the land link with Ukraine’s mainland and have permission from Kiev to do so. It is highly unlikely that any Russian vacationers traveling to the peninsula will take that circuitous route.
St. Petersburg has re-opened the Summer Palace of Peter the Great, shut for the past four years for renovation and restoration. The palace, adjacent to the Summer Garden, sits on the Fontanka River and was built for Peter I in the early eighteenth century by Italian architect Domenico Trezzini.
Compared to other lavish manors in the Northern Capital, Peter’s summer palace is a modest dwelling, yet it features the latest technologies of its era – for example, the city’s first indoor plumbing. Exhibits at the palace include articles of Peter’s clothing.
The building is a branch of the Russian Museum and is open to all visitors of the Summer Garden.
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg has another new museum, this one dedicated to the tin soldier. It houses some 60,000 items in its collection and is located in a house formerly belonging to the guardian of the Suvorov Military Museum.
One exhibit is a tin soldier reconstruction of a 1914 imperial parade on the Field of Mars, a meticulous work crafted from 2,564 hand-painted figures. Another is Suvorov’s 1799 crossing of the Alps, which positions the tin figures on a mountain slope.
For the moment, visitors are organized into groups, which are guided through the museum every 20 minutes.
The entrance fee is R400 for adults, and the museum, located at ulitsa Kirochnaya 43B, is open from 10 am to 7 pm, excluding Wednesdays, when it is open from 1 pm to 8 pm, and Monday, when the museum is closed.
Moscow has opened a new terminal at Sheremetyevo airport. The B terminal (formerly called Sheremetyevo-1) has been refurbished to serve domestic flights, and Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship carrier, has already moved some of its flights to the new building.
Terminal B is located on the opposite side of the runways from the main Sheremetyevo terminal and thus access via public transport is for the moment not very convenient.
The Volga River city Samara has opened a museum dedicated to one of the country’s most beloved film directors, Eldar Ryazanov, who made some of the most popular comedies of the Soviet era – including The Irony of Fate, Office Romance, and Beware of the Car – many of them cultural icons.
The museum is located in the house where Ryazanov, who died in 2015 at 88, was born and later spent time during World War II, when his family was evacuated from Moscow. Its collection includes items from when the filmmaker lived in the house, as well as costumes of characters from his films. The museum is located at 120 ulitsa Frunze.
After several years of running a successful bike share program, Moscow has launched not one but three programs that allow users to rent electric scooters.
The first, DeliSamokat (“ShareScooter”) has opened 25 stations in central Moscow. Users must register with the program by taking a selfie with their passport, after which they can rent any of the firm’s 1,650 scooters by paying R100 an hour.
Another company, YouDrive, offers 200 scooters that can be rented through a phone app. The third company, Samokat Sharing, had not yet launched at press time.
delisamokat.ru/en
lite.youdrive.today/
samocat.net/ru
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