I did move to an apartment Friday, and I spend the whole weekend just being lazy.
Russian Weather:
I haven't been well-prepared for the weather. But not badly prepared either. If I repacked my clothes, I would pack a couple more polo-type short sleeve shirts, a couple more dark dress-type long sleeve shirts, and a couple more pairs of dark pants. And, an umbrella! In Moscow the weather has been much cooler and rainier than I expected. We did quite a bit of research before coming, but somehow I didn't seem to find a wealth of info on what weather to expect. Shades of memory, the same thing happened when I went to Ireland to cycle across the country! Blast from the past, they had the coldest and wettest summer for 50 years in the history books. Snow in May in Dublin, snow covering the mountains in Wales. Now, I'm not seeing snow here. Someone told me it would be hot and humid in the summer. Well, it's not hot and humid. There have been two days when it has been warm and somewhat humid. Now I've been told - by Russians - that this summer is either exceptionally cool, or is like a more typical Moscow summer than the last few years have been. Hmmmm, the truth lies somewhere in there.
I was able to find out a lot more about other major cities than I could about Moscow. Things like average monthly humidity, average monthly precipitation, and temperature (including highs and lows), average days of sunshine, all those things that will tell you what to expect. I think I found one place with average temperatures for Moscow. I know now that this is the search engines, and not me. When searching for "Moscow metro map" I found more sites with Moscow weather than when I searched for "Moscow weather"!
Here is what I do know - it has been cool. Not jacket cool, but just cool. It has rained several times - enough so that I had to buy an umbrella at the market/bazaar. The rain has not been massive dramatic thunderstorms, just regular rain, but a couple of times there has been plenty of water comin' down. A couple of days have been warmish - say gettin on 80, but not more than that. Some humidity, but not like the central US like I feared. So, overall, so far, extremely pleasant.
This weekend, though, it is warmer for the first time. Temp is 25 C - high 70's F. The sun makes the apt a bit warm, the outside air temp is still nice. It's just the sun and the windows building up indoor heat.
