What are the biggest misconceptions about Russia ?

[kwassa]

17. I visited Moscow in 2002 for five days.

Impressions

1) Many Russians are very attractive people, and fit, too, unlike cliched portrayals.

2) Moscow is a very busy city that is full of dust and dirt

3) The subway system is amazing and huge, and uses tickets almost identical to the DC Metro, cardboard with a magnetic stripe. Probably the same vendor.

4) signs of Western capitalism everywhere. An IKEA right next to the airport, 60 McDonalds in the city, TGIFridays, Sbarro pizza, KFC, all signs in Cyrillic.

5) we were on a bit of a junket, went to the best restaurant, also attended by men who looked like gangsters with their much-younger girlfriends. We also got lost with a free-lance cabbie.

6) heard a very candid discussion of middle-aged Russian versus 20-something Russian about Russia's prospects. They both talked about how there were villages a few miles outside of Moscow that were un-electrified and basically lived in the 19th century. This was at an economic development meeting. The older Russian was cynical, the younger starry-eyed. At that time, all Internet servers were outside the country in Finland.

7) there were homeless alcoholics in the streets

8) despite Communist rule, there are an amazing series of Orthodox cathedrals in the Kremlin that are preserved and restored. It is a very interesting town.

9) heard an amazing Russian men's choir in a huge re-built cathedral that had been blown up by the Communists in the 1930s. It was rebuilt exactly in the mid-1990s.