A simple Google search reveals that there are many Moscow Survival Guides, but they tend to be aimed at tourists. Today, I’ve learned a little bit about how Russians survive Moscow. One secret is the dacha.

A dacha is a summer home outside of the city, usually very modest and not inhabitable for long periods of time or during winter months. Any romantic ideas you have about summer homes with gauzy white drapes that flutter in the salty breeze off the sea and cast fluid, lacy shadows on the window seat with its taffeta cushion? Toss them. The dacha is the place where the windows rattle because the panes are warped with age and the paint on the sill comes off in chunks.

But the air is fresher than in the city. There’s a nearby pond or forest or, if you’re lucky, both (sure, the trees in that forest may be planted in such straight rows and segregated by type so thoroughly that you’ll think a nursery was left to its own devices for a few decades, but it’s still a forest). Most importantly, there’s space. After spending time in the city—always living in the shadow of one building or another, always sharing a room with one family member or another, always breathing in air that’s just been exhaled by one stranger or another—space is very valuable.

I should be clear, I’m not actually at a dacha. A Russian friend invited me to her family’s place outside the city, but it is a year-round home and so it is a warm, welcoming building in good repair unlike what I’ve described above. But we passed plenty of dachas on the way here, some of which don’t even have roofs (if the building is incomplete, the tax rate is lower). But structure itself is not nearly as important as the location, where dachas are concerned.

It’s incredibly freeing to be out of the city, and I find I’m aware of the absence of so many things I don’t notice consciously. Someone has shut off the constant soundtrack of cars on wet pavement. The scenery arises from an entirely different palette—rich golds and blues—and makes me realize how little gray there is here, and also how over-saturated the jolts of color are in Moscow to compensate for their drab surroundings.

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