Getting around Moscow: There is an easier way

Its seems every single time I am in Moscow, someone always takes me to the University to see Moscow by night. This was my third trip there and by far the most impressive. It was a cold night, with an unreal sunset.

Maria, a colleague of Andrew's, had decided to take us under her wing and took us first to the University, then her local church, and lastly dropped us off at a fabulous steak restaurant. We had thought that she was going to join us (Andrew had hoped), but we were surprised when she left us at the restaurant and told us that we could find our way home by simply flagging down any car and they would take us to wherever we wanted to go for a few rubles.

We were all a little dumbstruck. Just about every publication I had read had warned about getting into unmarked cars and here someone that had gone out of her way to enhance our experience of Moscow was telling us to do just this. In nervous anticipation, we spent much of our dinner discussing the interesting trip that no doubt lay ahead.

It gave me more time to reflect on my thoughts of Russia and of how it has embraced capitalism. The noise of colourful advertising is everywhere, with everyone trying to grab your attention. Once again I had cause too to reflect on a suspicion of mine that countries traditionally thought of as democratic free markets, which are characterized by regulations and institutions that entrench the economically empowered, have a lot to learn from those we view as less developed economies, where the major barrier to entry into the economy is simply education. In some of my travels in Africa I have thought that it is a place where the free-market, above all else, rules. It is a place that the rest of the world sends their disused machinery so that they even more value can be squeezed from them. It is a place where everything has a price dictated by market forces. Malawi is a place where everyone with a vehicle is in the transport business, the only question is one of price. Russia it would seem is little different.

The first car we flagged down pulled over for us. A second stopped too to wait to see if we could all fit into one car. Our journey was rather uneventful, punctuated only by our excitement at having pulled it off, some local music, and the observation from Tony that never before have we ever seen 14 lane wide streets!