summer Heroes of Stalingrad has been torn up since spring, and they seem to be putting the final coat of asphalt on this week. The main road on the left bank also got completely redone. It can be a bother to drive on them while they are fixing them, but what a change from the rough shape they were in last year to when they are finished!
Remember this spring when I mentioned the overpass they are building that is off our highway to connect the highway to the other highway toward Kiev, without driving to and through Dnepropetroesk. They made the detour around the construction site on our highway and paved it, and put up some signs.
You have to realize that signage here is maybe half a km before the right turn you need to take. If they are painting lines or something, it is more like 10-20 feet! It's one of the reasons you have to be constantly aware of your surroundings while driving here.
As the summer progressed so did the project, and the amount of signage warning drivers to turn. Remember how people with expensive cars speed based on how good the car is? We think that a number of cars have run off the road with resulting injuries or worse. If the missed the turn, they would hit a big pile of dirt. In the dark, you didn't see the pile, and not everyone drives the highway several days a week like us. They painted a short (like 400 feet) get into one-lane merge lines, they even put a little line of dim rope lights they turn on at night under the big arrow sign. Some car drove off the curve of the U detour they made on night, so curve signs were added at those two curves.
Any way they dug this impressive hole to put the new road under the highway (really would be bad for the cars missing the turn and going straight) recently they started putting up the posts for the overpass. We really hope that it will be finished by winter.
I uploaded these pics on Wednesday when I drove to the city, successfully navigating past the slow truck full of bricks, the fast Mercedes limo on the highway, the stopped in the road parked to buy produce from a roadside stand, the auftobus changing lanes the buses attached overhead to the powerlines, the two lanes making a left-hand turn, and the car that thought I would magically let him in the lane I was in as he eased over into it (I solved that by stepping on the gas so he had room) and returned to the village, where I just had to weve through the herd of cows coming home.
On Sunday I saw my first body on the road here. Garry has seen three bodies of pedestrians since we moved here. This time we were in Zaporosia, and there was shiny green motercycle on it's side going in the the other direction, no sign of a driver, police car behind it, traffic backed up, and on the median strip, a body under a white piece of plastic, withred and black basketball shoes sticking out from under the tarp. Motorcyclists here have a habit of weaving in and out of traffic, and don't all wear helmets.
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