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Just to provide you with an outlandish impression some few snapshots will follow, taken in one of those Eastern countries, which is decades away from our everyday life. Cars are a seldom sight there but if, then mostly heavy Soviet trucks from the 1960.
While in the army I drove them. The truck rightmost and the one leftmost are KRAZ-255 with doors, planked with wood.

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Gerd,

Seeing the title of this thread, I was expecting this!

Mal, I haven't met people, dressed in aluminum foil, I grant. But a great deal of them seem to live in a parallel universe or at least time-displaced.
Apropos aluminum. I carried my belongings in a customary suitcase (picture attached). When driving by night train, there was no possibility to store it in the train compartment. I had to take it with me in my bed like a stuffed animal. But as a quid pro quo all passengers were well cushioned by down-filled pillows and Persian carpets sound deadened the floor.
That's what I call time travel.

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Economies with a small amount of privately owned cars necessarily develop alternative forms of public transport. Railway stations grow to cathedrals.

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Amazing. Thanks for sharing, Guscha.
Pat

Pat, thanks.
The train station was equipped with large destination boards, well known from airfields. Even deep at night commuter trains and long-distance trains start at minute intervals.

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During a break in negotiations I streched my legs and took a couple of photographs. Some of them seem to remove the veil of oblivion for the last time. The military airbase offers both, infernal machines and a wrecking yard. Among them is a museum of stranded holdovers of the cold war and even pterosaurs. Click to enlarge.

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Guscha, Thanks for sharing those photos. I am very curious as to where they were taken? If that is the Cyrillic alphabet I am seeing I am guessing it is in one of the old Soviet republics. One of the nice things about European travel and obviously where you are now is the efficient public transportation systems. They are so convenient to use and usually very comfortable. We used to have good train service in Canada but that now is limited only in certain densely populated areas. We in the north and indeed most of Canada lost our rail passenger service decades ago. To live without an automobile in the part of the country that I live in makes travel difficult and in some cases impossible between towns. It is a real pity.

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Dave, correct, it is Cyrillic. The pics were taken in one of the successor states of CCCP this week. This airbase offers the full spectrum, starting from supersonic, variable-sweep wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bombers, even launching platforms up to flying boats from the pioneering days of aviation. A pilot could start in the morning to bombard the one or another country and when he's back at launch time he could feed the free range chickens.
The trucks at pic 3 are -> ZIL-130. Click to enlarge.

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No snow on the ground so obviously you are not in Siberia We are having a balmy winter this year with only one day at -25C . It certainly is an interesting collection of aircraft. Thanks for the photos.