[Photo/The New York Times]

Moscow, April 16, 2011

I just had dinner with my wife and our best friend when we decided to take a walk in Red Square. It was very cold, but the view was worth it: the Kremlin looked amazing, the moon was beautiful and there were couples walking hand in hand. I spotted this person cleaning the square, almost stone by stone. The dust he was kicking up was illuminated by the lights in the store right in front of Lenin's mausoleum. It felt magical. We soon realized they were cleaning up the square for a parade celebrating an anniversary of a victory over the Nazis during World War II.