Spring Painting Season in Moscow

Well, the Spring painting season has begun here in Moscow. 

As an example, I took this picture of a nearby statue which has been repainted for the summer season.  I call him "Platinum Lenin".  He gleams, he glistens and he even almost glows in the sun!  You can see him from a mile away!

This statue is interesting in that it was obviously torn down in the early '90's.  He's cracked all the way through and his nose is missing.  When they threw off communism these statues were some of the first targets, yet, he has been repaired and gets a fresh coat of paint each year. 

This year's paint was outstanding though.  He's usually a dull silver and quite unremarkable.  Now he is downright luminescent! 

Lenin statues are not the only things that get a new coat of paint for the Spring though.  It reminds me of our Army policy of "if it doesn't move, paint it". 

Fences, posts, curbs and trees all get the treatment. It really helps to freshen up the city.  If you can see the curbs around this monument you can see that they're painted too.  This year, we got a colorful change from the usual black and white.  Our curbs are now a bright gold and green!

I woke up one Saturday morning to the smell of oil based paint.  Wondering what was going on, I went over to the window to see crews of central Asian workers slapping paint all over the place.  When I went down later to get into the car I found that my little black car had psychedelic wheels!  It was almost flower power man.  Dig! 

Now I am with all the other cool cars running around our streets with green and gold tires. 

I'm glad Spring has sprung.  Our park is being beautified too.  They cut all the branches off the trees and painted the trunks where the branches were, you guessed it, green.  At least the tulips are coming up through the ground.  In a couple of weeks it will be really nice. 

Now if the city would only turn off the central heating in the offices and apartments; it is already over 70 degrees here and the heat is still blazing.  The official dates for turning it off is May 15th.  Maybe we'll have a few days of warm temps and they'll go ahead and shut them down. 

I'm ready for a walk in the park now.