Arriving in Paris after four days in Moscow, what was the most discernable difference between the two cities at first glance? The size of the vehicles people drive. In Paris bicycles, motorcycles and Smart Cars seem to be multiplying overnight. In Moscow, the same can be said of large, flashy sedans. True, at $8 a gallon, gas in Paris was double the price in Moscow. You would think crippling traffic would be incentive enough to downsize, but Russians don't seem to be feeling the pain. Maybe the explanation is as simple as the difference between a European society that's in a tight economic squeeze and a Russian society that's sowing its wild oats in the post-Communist era. Maybe it's the difference between a culture that believes in austerity in the name of the environment and one that won't worry itself about such things until every oil well is sucked dry. Or maybe it's both. Whatever the explanation, my husband Jeff observed there seems to be a simple inverse relationship between the size of people's apartments and the size of their vehicles in these two locales. According to his calculus, Muscovites have tiny apartments and big cars; Parisians have big apartments, tiny cars. I'll go with the Parisian model anytime. After all, what good is a big car if it's stuck in traffic all the time? Jeff's Unscientific List of Popular Cars:For more on traveling in Russia, click here
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