7 "-" FACTS ABOUT RUSSIA

#1. Moscow traffic: This problem would be indeed the #1 in this list. You can hear both foreigners and locals complain about Moscow traffic. It's not just bad, it's 24/7 bad. My husband had a car in Russia but before him I always used that confusing but handy subway system. By the way, traffic can be in subway too and you don't want to be there during rush hours... I call it "Going Wild: The Strongest Survives". This could be a good name for some movie about people turning into some wild animals on their way home from work.

#2. Paper work: This is another major problem that annoys absolutely every single foreigner and quite honestly I can agree with it. If you have to deal with some banking issues, housing bills, hospitals and other government and social actions, in Russia it will easily take you the whole day (no, much more). At first my husband was wondering where Russians get so much paper for this long documentation process and on the way home we would usually count trees to see if they start to disappear. But his favorite saying was that Russians can't even use a restroom without some piece of paper (and it's not about a toilet paper)....

#3. English: Another problem that makes the foreigner's life in Russia more difficult is lack of English speaking people. This situation worsens the farther you move away from Moscow. My husband had to work in Eastern Russia for a while where people didn't know even the well-known sentence about London being a capital of Great Britain. So if you want to explore Russia outside of Moscow you better prepare well. My advice: play more charades and practice your drawing skills before you visit Russia because this is exactly how you will have to communicate with Russians!

#4. Business: I guess first 3 facts fully explain why business in Russia can be rather difficult for a foreigner. Unless you are super strong to be able to survive the traffic, supper calm to deal with paper work or a great charades player and a perfect drawer! If you have all these qualities and can overcome all these problems there is sometimes another issue you can face - dishonesty. Russians are generally nice people, but not all of them. You should be careful and familiar with how Russians do business to make success!

#5. Rich Vs. Poor: This brings us to another problem - social stratification. You have 2 ways to become rich in Russia: be very smart or very dishonest. It all starts in childhood first with expensive toys, expensive clothes, then expensive schools and expensive food, then go expensive cars, expensive vacations while poor suffer with cheap toys, rejected clothes, public schools, bad food, no cars and obviously no vacations. One of the reasons why poor people don't get too upset about it is that money is not a necessary ingredient for happiness!

#6. Lifestyle: I pretty much explained the lifestyle of rich and poor people in Russia but in general it is not so bad. There are a lot of advantages of living in Russia but some disadvantages wreck the whole picture about this beautiful country. And since this post is about bad facts about Russia here they are: the life particularly in Moscow is pretty stressful - it actually could perfectly fit for my movie about survival: you survive on the way to work in that traffic both above and under ground, survive at work to beat that social stratification and paper work. And if you finally survive - you are lucky and can have a pretty decent lifestyle.

#7. Superstitions: The last one and I would say ridiculous characteristics about Russia is Russian superstitions. There is a list of some things you can and cannot do according to the Russian superstitions: Never whistle inside of someone's house or they will kick you out because they supposedly will loose money because of your whistling, if you see a black cat - run, drive away or never come back home because it is a bad luck (maybe that's why the traffic is so bad - nobody can get home because of these evils), or this one (my husband's favorite) - never go outside if it's raining because you can die from cold..
My advice: Just be careful in Russia and take care of yourself!