Russia! introduces a series of reports from towns small and large around Moscow. This week, it’s Dubna and Kymri, situated on the banks of Volga river, 120 kilometers south of the Russian capital.

Exhaustive heat wave covered Moscow. The temperature here, in the city of 12 million with lots of cars and very few ACs, has been stuck on 95 degrees and is climbing up. Moscow is half empty: the opponents of climate change policies died of heat exhaustion, the politicians and businessmen went to Africa to watch soccer and enjoy winter, and the artists went to Perm.

We really needed to get out of Moscow for a day, so we decided to take a random highway out of the city (there are a total of 15 highways going out of Moscow, which is structured like a giant circle with the Kremlin as a bullseye and the 15 roads as meridians). According to guide to Moscow region, published by Afisha Magazine, we were heading towards the cities of Dubna and Kymri.

The first discovery of the expedition: Russians get married on Saturdays, and they like to pay their respects to Lenin. That is, they take the wedding party, the vodka, the bride, the mother and go the the nearest monument of Lenin and party there like it’s 1917. In the town of Dubna alone, we saw about 10 couples getting married and getting drunk under Lenin.

The monument itself is a magnificent 50 meter-high structure situated on the bank of the Volga river. The monument, included in the Guinness Records log as the largest monument dedicated to the actual person, was established in the 1930s. It was removed in the 1950s to be replaced by Stalin. In the 1960s, Lenin was restored. The founder of the Soviet state is set up in such fashion that when the cruise ships are passing, the passengers can see the huge figure of Lenin towering over the river and looking towards Moscow, the capital of the USSR.