Peeking Around Corners in the World Cup's Provincial Cities

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia — Olga B. Kalinina and Albina Marunova live in the socialist town, a collection of low-rise Soviet cottages that sit along the highway that links the airport with the center of their city, one of 11 in Russia that hosted matches at this summer’s World Cup.

Marunova’s building faces the highway, and so it was thoroughly repaired only weeks before the tournament arrived in Nizhny Novgorod. Visitors, hurrying to their hotels or to the new stadium on the bank of the Volga River, would see a tidy town surrounded by seas of green grass and trees.