Most of the houses in Siberia are made of wood. While the major cities such as Irkutsk have many normal buildings, entire neighborhoods are still filled with beautiful wood houses such as this one.
Siberians seem to love brightly colored shutters. They're everywhere.
The sign on that building reads--I'm not kidding--Perfume Center. Go figure!
The hottest trend among Siberian women these days are tight pants with floral prints.
Of course there are the ugly buildings too.
Many of the first-floor windows are at street level. Presumably this is so that the first floor is partially below ground, thereby affording a little more warmth during the cold winter months.
Kvas is a fairly popular drink made from what I understood to be fermented bread. Let's just say that it must be an acquired taste!
Billboards in Russia...the concept 20 years ago for advertising would have been unheard of. Now they're everywhere.
These abandoned military barracks date back to World War II.
This is one of the greatest mysteries of Siberia: all of the younger women are tall and skinny; yet all of the older ones are really short and rounder. Do they just shrink a foot and a half when they reach a certain age??
Construction in progress on some upscale apartment buildings.
Notice the guy asleep at the wheel?
So we went around taking pictures of these really cool aircraft thinking it was a museum...turns out it was actually a military base! (Most of these aircraft pictures come courtesy of Pablo, who insanely kept taking pictures despite my doom-and-gloom warnings about what would happen to him if he were caught!)
The plane on the left is a Mig-29, one of the top fighter planes in the world.
