>>9181903Soviet architecture rarely had anything but functionality and cost efficiency in mind. Buildings that aren't INTENDED to look fancy and pretty - never do.
Those two cities are THE cities, of course - but hardly represent how the rest of the 11-timezone-wide country truly is.
There are big stretches of empty, almost wild land, the further you go West and North. In my part of Siberia, the nearest airport is 400km away.
You stop noticing the beauty of the nature surrounding you, if you live here. But when winter comes and I drive through vast plains of pure white reaching the horizon, or when snow slowly falls on an completely windless night, it still gets to me. Makes you feel that gay "struck by the beauty" stuff that they write about in sappy poems.
