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Moscow in the grips of a traffic jam and blisteringly cold weather. (ABC News: David Sciasci)
From the deep impenetrable walls of the Kremlin and beauty of Red Square to the Bentley showroom and hipster restaurants — Moscow is a complex combination of surprises.
Inside Putin's Russia
The ABC's Lisa Millar and David Sciasci secured rare media visas to visit Russia. Here's what they're planning:Subscribe to get updates on the series:
The immigration officers at Moscow's airport offer the first reminder that this was once the Soviet Union.
Boxed into decades-old glassed partitions, they take your passport and seem to conduct an interrogation needing no words.
For five minutes they flip through the pages, checking and rechecking the details, looking at photos, looking at me, looking back at photos and then offering just one word — London?
"Yes," I said. That's where I'd flown from. The ABC had finally been granted media visas after several failed attempts.
Getting into the country is one thing but working as a western journalist is another.
Our first step was picking up official press passes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — a department found in one of the imposing Stalin skyscrapers built in the 1940s and 50s and still dominating the Moscow skyline.
The press officer there spoke a little English and I told him I was last in Moscow in 2002 as a tourist visiting friends who were in the ABC bureau at the time.
He shook his head as if to brush away that memory. Very different city, he said.
"What's different?" I asked.
"It's more modern, it's more European, it's just like New York and London, no difference," he told me with confidence.
And it's soon evident that Moscow has definitely changed. In fact, on the surface it seems to be thriving.
There's a confidence about it I don't recall from my previous visit which was also in winter.
The new Moscow
Snow lined streets, dark and seemingly uninviting, suddenly deliver you to hip new restaurants hidden behind discreet doors.
There's no beef stroganoff here.
It's Russian food for a new generation. Served with a swagger. The cafes are filled with young Russians.
But try to get a taxi home and you'll discover some things haven't changed. At least, if they have it's for the worse.
Moscow's traffic is some of the worst in the world.
Perhaps not surprising considering it's a city of 12 million people and its roads are a system of circles.
According to one navigation company, Moscow and St Petersburg lead Europe in traffic jams.
And in the evening rush hours it suggested Moscow was the second worst in the world.
Authorities say it is getting better and certainly some Moscow locals insisted to me that was the case.
There is now regulated paid parking. Two or three years ago you could park wherever you wanted and the ensuing chaos was legendary.
The metro is efficient and the stations beautiful, but with all our camera gear we don't travel light.
Taking the metro and dealing with stairs wasn't an option.
One of our first journeys took us two-and-a-half kilometres.
Our online map told us it would take 30 minutes to walk. In our cab it was 45 minutes. Looking back we should have considered ourselves lucky.
At least the taxi options are cheap. Competition from ride-sharing companies has come to Moscow too.
And that's a relief because in 2002 it was a choice between official taxis or gypsy cabs.
I recall one night back then when four of us in one car followed the then ABC correspondent Jill Colgan in her gypsy cab.
Crossing a snowed-covered bridge we watched as her car careered towards the edge having lost one of his wheels.
Not a puncture — but a complete separation between wheel and car — the tyre disappearing down the road overtaking traffic.
We still laugh about how she bolted from that rust bucket and threw herself across our laps in the already crowded backseat.
A way of life — for most
Things have certainly improved since then.
But sitting in traffic jams is a way of life for Muscovites — unless you have a blue flashing light.
Normally regarded as the preserve of emergencies services vehicles, the blue light in Moscow is also regarded as a perk for people with money and connections — and that's been controversial.
Locals despair, to the extent they don't want to pull over for anyone trying to force a path through the traffic.
'It's getting better'
Alexander Yuryevich has been driving taxis in Moscow for 35 years.
"There are lots of car accidents during heavy snow," he tells me.
"Every hundred metres, nothing major, but still. I've seen all kinds of situations in those 35 years."
"It's getting better," he says, almost trying to convince himself.
"But traffic jams, I don't think they'll ever end."
We spent two hours with Alexander as he took us from one town to another outside Moscow.
It cost the equivalent of $A30.
We left him at 3pm and he indicated he wouldn't take another job for the day.
He wanted to get home by dinner time and he knew it could take a while.
Topics: community-and-society, history, russian-federation
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