Whose parking is it anyway?
Welcome to parking in Blagoveshchensk, where everything is made up and the lines don’t matter anyway! It may seem like a game show when you aren’t in the driver’s seat, but the road rules in Blago are different from everywhere else I have been, and as for the parking, there are no rules. This is a no holds barred, do it if you can get away with it situation.
Cars can pull in from any direction and take 2 or 3 spots. No one even bothers to use the lines as a guide. They simply whip in from any and every position and stop their engines. Cars might even parallel park, obviously taking up 4 spots of head-in parking.
It wouldn’t be such a problem except for the chaos in parking ends up meaning that some people don’t get a parking spot because cars are parked every which way but loose. It also means that a car might park behind you, leaving no way for you to get out. “I didn’t think anyone would be leaving this spot” is a fine reply for when you’ve been waiting for 15 or 20 minutes to leave and there is a car behind you.
Disclaimer:
Russia is a huge nation, so to extrapolate my experiences in Blagoveshchensk and say they are indicative of Russian culture would be small-minded and arrogant. Sure, these behaviors and cultural differences may be the norm for Russia as a whole, but they could also very well be an aberration occurring only in a small town in Far East Russia on the China border. Either way, I am only really offering a snapshot of the culture that I experience while living in Blagoveshchensk.
Cars can pull in from any direction and take 2 or 3 spots. No one even bothers to use the lines as a guide. They simply whip in from any and every position and stop their engines. Cars might even parallel park, obviously taking up 4 spots of head-in parking.
It wouldn’t be such a problem except for the chaos in parking ends up meaning that some people don’t get a parking spot because cars are parked every which way but loose. It also means that a car might park behind you, leaving no way for you to get out. “I didn’t think anyone would be leaving this spot” is a fine reply for when you’ve been waiting for 15 or 20 minutes to leave and there is a car behind you.
Disclaimer:
Russia is a huge nation, so to extrapolate my experiences in Blagoveshchensk and say they are indicative of Russian culture would be small-minded and arrogant. Sure, these behaviors and cultural differences may be the norm for Russia as a whole, but they could also very well be an aberration occurring only in a small town in Far East Russia on the China border. Either way, I am only really offering a snapshot of the culture that I experience while living in Blagoveshchensk.