A Grande Wedding

You probably think you’ve seen big wedding corteges or celebrations,
but for sure those you’ve seen can’t compare with modern Chechn wedding
celebrations. Like this one on the video above.

A few police support cars are the must, as well as shooting in the air - that’s a tradition.

And of course if its in Moscow it’s even more fun.

sent by Evgeny

Comments (43) 8:22 am



Soviet Cars: History of the Copy-and-Paste Industry — Part 1 of 3

Once some music com­poser said  that “There are only seven notes which com­pose all the music in the world.  No wod­ner some songs sound alike”.  Undoubt­edly,  all cars  have got four wheels, so pla­gia­rism in the auto­mo­bile indus­try is hard to pinch.  In this arti­cle we delib­er­ately ignore a pop­u­lar Soviet point of view that a steam loco­mo­tive, an air­plane and the radio were not invented in Rus­sia.  All we attempt here is to make a small digres­sion into the his­tory of Soviet auto­mo­bile indus­try in order to iden­tify its ori­gins and its development.

ZIS-110

ZIS-110

A Russ­ian  philoso­pher Vasiliy Rosanov once noted that in Rus­sia every sin­gle case of wealth orig­i­nates from theft or extor­tion.  His­tor­i­cally, the econ­omy of the Russ­ian Empire before the 1917 was so deeply inte­grated into the Euro­pean econ­omy that the exchange of ideas, some­thing, which now would have been hugely copy­righted, was very com­mon.  Like, in 1901 in St Peters­burg the car­riage fac­tory Freze and the Riga bicy­cle fac­tory Leit­ner suc­cess­fully assem­bled the French oil engines De Dion Buton as part of Russ­ian car­riages. Another fac­tory Aksai in Rostov-on-Don pur­chased the license for the pro­duc­tion of the Amer­i­can Oldsmo­bile Carved Dash.  In 1906 a Russ­ian engi­neer Boris Lut­skoy organ­ised the assem­bling of  Mer­cedes cars for the Russ­ian mar­ket. At last, the main pride of Rus­sia – the auto­mo­bile Russo-Balt — was made from for­eign parts – the chas­sis with four-cylinder engine was adopted from a Bel­gian com­pany with a Swiss name Fondu.

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Comments (15) 1:27 am

Two Cars, Two Obstacles

Russian roads

Two almost the same looking obstacles often can cause different consequences if met by different people. Same with cars.

This Rover was less fortunate meeting the road fencing.

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Comments (12) 10:25 am

Satellite Jam

Russian traffic in Moscow

This kind of traffic jams are pretty often in Moscow. The reason for them is often the top security measures that are needed by the governmental agencies to protect the important people while their ride. This time the jam got on the sat images in Russian analogue of google maps so it now can be seen from space too. Clicking on the image can reveal the map itself so that one can scale it or move up/down to see the real size of the jam.

It’s interesting that the vip cars are not seen on those sat images. The reason for this that according to the same security regulations road should be closed far before the motorcade appears.

And inside there are some shots “from the ground”.

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Comments (15) 9:46 am

Glass Parking Lots

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The main problem of drivers in any big city including Moscow is where to park, especially when you are in the centre and there seems to be no free lots for a few decades more. In Europe there are loads of parking paid space, and they even have special buildings just for autos. But here in Russian that’s not a tradition yet, though, it really should be. One way of solving the problem is constructing multistory automated parking garages, and Muscovites are about to make these glass buildings widely spread (of course, if they will manage to save up money enough to cover enormous expenses). (more…)

Comments (47) 2:08 pm

The Most Unusual Underground in the World

photo_05

Lebedyan town in Lipetsk region is known for the greatest juice producing plant in Eastern Europe, but very few people know that the most unique and weird underground station in the world is located there as well. It was constructed just 2 meters beneath the surface of the earth. The works began in 1984, and 166 people were eager to start as soon as possible, but when they learnt that the money would come only when the construction paid for itself, they all backtracked in a second. So, the whole project was to be implemented by the one who brought it up, Leonid Muliarchik.

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Comments (22) 7:21 pm

Over Stocked

Russian cars

That’s a photo of some random airport near St. Petersburg. A few years ago it was looking like this.

What’s going on there let’s see inside:

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Comments (17) 7:40 am

The Story of the String Train

Russian string transport

To continue the transportation theme for today, as we had the new trains, now something that was planned to be built 30 years ago, back in 1970s. It was called the “super string transportation system” and was claimed to come to replace the existing rail road technologies.

The steel cords under great tension had to be stretched on the polls across all the country to support the high speed (up to 500 km/h - 300 mph) trains movement.

The project was pretty fast approved by Soviet government because of its cheap cost if compared to conventional rail roads - no need to prepare Earth surface - just put some polls and you are ready to go.

Russian string transport 2

As always, it started with just sketches on paper, made in the manner it looked to be contemporary in 1970s.

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Comments (26) 7:59 am

The Biker Secret and Cayenne Coupe

Russian cars

Today there is another part of some curiosities that regulary can be met on roads of Russia.

This guy from Moscow paints his car differently each season. When he is asked how road police treats him for such car decoration his says “They first smile, then ask to pass drug test”.

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Comments (15) 3:07 pm

The Balancing Eggs and Unbalanced Fans

Life in Russia

Some short stories and curiousities that are too short for a separate post. First photo is a small size version of the epic drawing made by some Russian guy depicting truely epic fight between Hollywood heroes against Russian cartoon and cinema characters. By the click you can zoom it on and see in detail who is winning.

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Comments (24) 2:15 pm


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