Without a bike or car and mistrusting public transit, walking is my primary way of getting around town, or at least the 4 km radius that I operate in. Walking in UB is a peculiar experience. On my way to school, for example, the quality of the path ranges from pristine (beside the parliament building) to tolerable if sometimes lacking (near the university) to nonexistent (near school). And, by non existent, I mean just that: the pavement disappears, or it's been covered over by (take your pick) dirt, debris, broken bricks, garbage, ice and snow. In the spring and fall, workers randomly excavate parts of footpaths for reasons unknown and then just move on or stop their explorations due to winter, so that walking in the city involves a lot of walking over crevices, open sewers filled with garbage and electrical wire and just plain old holes in the ground.
Recently, I've been considering whether UB is in ruins or if was never finished in the first place. The number of odd, misplaced, useless, and absurd structures you come across in a brisk walk around town is striking and unmissable. Last week, as I was leaving the supermarket/department store near school, I spied a bridge across the river (see above) that, since it was more generally in the direction that I was going than my usual route home from that spot, I reasoned was going to be a bit of short cut and that it would surely link up with Peace Avenue, the main street in town. As I approached the bridge, I noticed it had no railings of any kind, and the usual crumbling concrete that is endemic of Mongolian infrastructure. When I reached the bridge, I found that to get on the bridge, involved climbing up an icy embankment to reach an improvised "staircase" (i.e. a couple bricks stacked up next to a short concrete wall of the bridge). The bridge itself was wider than expected, much bigger than a pedestrian bridge, at perhaps 4 metres across. When I reached the other side, I slid down an icy hill and followed the river to Peace Avenue, passing by a number of unfinished/ruined structures including one circular building with a tiled floor but only half of circle completed, although it had a staircase to its roof which featured a tangle of wires that could be mistaken for either (a) modern sculpture, (b) antennae or (c) a Hill's Hoist.
Back to the bridge though, what was this structure supposed to be? Due to its width, was it actually meant for cars? Or was it always a pedestrian bridge? If either option, why was there a metre high drop off from the bridge itself to the land surrounding it? If it was for cars, why aren't there any streets it could theoretically connect with? Is this ruins or was it just never finished, a Soviet era project that languished after the fall of Communism and was repurposed by people who just needed a way to cross the river at that point? Or did it once serve a purpose and has crumbled into its ruined yet still useful state?
In light of recent news, perhaps this is an apt metaphor for the country as a whole.
