Vasily was delighted and quickly replied with a flattering smile:
"That's wonderful!
Although it's winter now, not the most beautiful time of year for Lake Baikal, the snow-covered lake has its own unique charm.
It's been particularly cold this year, so the lake froze over early. You can set up tents and camp on the ice, even barbecue there. Chairman Mikhail, I'm sure you've never experienced anything like that before, haha..."
Winters in Siberia were even colder than in Moscow, often reaching around minus forty degrees Celsius. Lake Baikal's ice could grow over a meter thick, so driving, camping, and barbecuing on it posed no problem at all.
And because the lake water was crystal clear, the ice it formed was especially beautiful. It was said that you could even see fish swimming beneath it through the ice...
Wang Ye nodded slightly without saying anything more.
By then, the convoy had entered Irkutsk proper. There was barely any snow on the main roads; they had been swept spotless, clearly cleaned specifically to welcome Wang Ye's arrival.
After all, in Russia, heavy snow fell every few days during winter. If they cleared it away every time it snowed, it would be far too wasteful in manpower and resources.
Even in Moscow, most roads were simply covered with de-icing salt. As long as the roads did not freeze over, that was enough. No one cared if they ended up looking filthy.
Only major streets, or when the snowfall was so heavy that traffic could not move without clearing it, would snowplows be sent out.
In a city like Irkutsk, with its relatively small population, there normally would not even be a "snow removal" budget...
With a population of just over five hundred thousand, the city was not particularly large. One straight avenue