Россия
After two weeks (only? seems rather like two month!) in Russia I just wanna give a short summarise of my experiences:
First I must say I had no problems with the public authorities, neither entering, nor with the police nor quitting the country! But by Railway it takes hours to pass the boarder – even without any complications. I did not get stopped by police once and it was the same for other backpackers. And there are loads of officers, police, security, military, controller and so on. One could think half of the employees is working for the government. Btw I also did not get a single stamp everybody is talking of…
Even if they appeared somewhat rough to me on first sight, all people I met were very kind not mentioning my CouchSurfing hosts, who were just amazing!!!
Russia is quite modern in most respects but at the same time one can find these tiny wooden houses with electric but no water supply. People still have to get there water from outside, partly even from hand pumps. This is even more true for the people in the country side. Most of those living in bigger cities have for sure water supply and central heating but still nearly all buildings seem to be built in Soviet times, massive (and ugly) blocks of flats (largely without house numbers ;) and usually one can not adjust his heating, if at all its possible to turn it off. Also one has to pay the same amount in any case. Therefore heatings normally run all the time, even when people are away for a longer time. Its the same for water, mostly one pays a fixed quantity per month instead per cubic meter… In addition electricity is very cheap and there is hardly any consciousness of possible effects of wasting energy to the environment or global warming. Speaking of waste: there is no separation, Russians would not even fold any boxes.
As already mentioned traffic is just awful in Russia and people are also crazy about their cars. There is myriads of really expensive off-roaders like Porsche cayennes. Russians are in general quite up to German cars, especially BMW.
On the other hand I had also jeopardies to face in Russia, primarily in Siberia, right up to fleeing hordes of Yetis!!
I highly recommend everybody to visit Russia and explore it her- or himself, best by surfing couches!
Да и как ему не любить тебя, такую умницу и красавицу.
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