The Good, the Bad and the Ugly things of Russian Culture

When you live outside of your own country you will find comparing your own culture, language and people around you. Sometimes we can find things that can be so different that maybe we never stop to think about them before, so in some way we are dealing with many difficult or weird things. Sometimes things can be surprisingly interesting and in some cases you can say, Hey! Why we don’t have such things at home?

Believe me, sometimes you can find such things in your own country, remember that from town to town, from one side to another, from one family to other family we will find such things. So here you have in my opinion, the good, the bad and the ugly things in Russian Culture. By the way, my experience came from three places Nizhnekamsk a little industrial city in Tartastan (three hours from Kazan), Kazan and Moscow, and all places are very different from each other.

Remember, this is my personal opinion so, maybe you can agree with me or not.

The Good

1. The culture is interesting, it is the mix of different ancient cultures, and you will find that there is a lot to learn.
2. Usually the streets are very clean and you see that people around take care of the city.
3. Russian pay attention in healthy food, at least the families I met always bought fresh food or maybe they grow their own food in the dacha.
4. You have a lot of light during spring and summer, if you go to the north you can have white nights.
5. Little cities can have all the services, you can find good malls, gardens, movie theaters restaurants, coffee shops; maybe not in little towns, but is up to you where you want to live.
6. Maybe I was lucky, but all the Russian people I met were very kind with me, even people on the street and many of them help me when I needed to go to some place.
7. I like that you can find many radio stations with music from many parts of the world, usually I hear music from France, Italy and the USA, but in fact you can hear from many other places, including of course, Russian music.

The Bad

1. I found that exist a lot of racism between Russians and the other countries that once were part of the Soviet Union.
2. Many Russians believe that Russia is the center of the world (how can I explain to them without make them feel bad?).
3. You will find that not many people speak other language than Russian, very few places can help you in your own language (in my case I speak Spanish, French, Japanese and English and I found that very few people can talk to me in any of them).
4. When you are watching the Russian TV you will hear in the background the original voices of the TV show, so if you are watching, Discovery Channel, you will hear the guy talking in English while a Russian guy is talking at the same time. Only one guy is doing the voice for all the people in the show!!!
5. Many people have a wrong idea of how is to live in other countries, and some of them will never listen to you about how is to live in your country.
6. I found that usually people don’t help other people. One day I was at the store and the bag of a woman next to me suddenly broke, nobody tried to help her, I had to help her. Another day I was in the trolley returning home and I saw this old lady carrying things, nobody did nothing so I gave to her my place to sit down. A young woman was trying to open a little car for her baby, she was carrying a bag and her baby, many people was walking around her and of course, nobody helped her, so I went with her, open the little car and take her bags while she put the baby inside. I have many other examples, so I don’t know, but I saw more people doing nothing that people helping to each other.
7. Once in a year, you will not have hot water, the reason, maintenance of the general plumbers of the hot water.

The Ugly

1. Many products, like avocados, pineapples, and other fruits have to be imported so you will not find fresh things, and they sold in a high price.
2. I can say that in general, it is a place with a lot of homophobia.
3. Exist a lot of corruption in the government, I think they are working on it, but meantime…
4. Have a lot of bad roads in the cities.
5. People in general are sad, their face look sad, I don’t know like if some heavy thing is burden their heart.
6. Not many people have a good income, in big cities I found that many of them have two jobs so they can reach the end of the month.
7. Many people are very superstitious and I found that not knowing some of them can give you problems.

You like the country or not, there is no in between. People love it or hate it.

I found that many Latin-American people believe that Russia is like the old times, sorry guys, very few things remain. You need to visit Russia to see what I am talking about.