Traveling Rockhopper

Russia is a large country with plenty of interesting places for tourists.
The most popular destinations are Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Many people visit only these two cities with some nearby places; and no wonder why, they’re beautiful and the easiest to be reached or explored.

Then, there is the famous Trans-Siberian Railway route, and Siberia with Lake Baikal.

I could list here a few more cities, however, as a subjective ranking, I have to mention also mountains (Altai and Caucasus) and amazing Kamchatka.

What’s your favorite place in Russia?

The majority of nationalities needs a visa to enter Russian territory.
Depending where you’re from, a Russian visa may be quite expensive, and also the procedure to obtain a visa may be more or less complicated.

However, there are some exceptions from the rules.
It’s possible to travel to Russia without visa if you go and back by ship (there are some restrictions, so check everything carefully before traveling).
The other special way of visiting Russia without a visa is e.g., during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, however you need to have a ticket that may be more expensive than a visa (depending on your nationality).

Based on all characteristic churches seen in Russia, it’s kind of natural to say, that Russia in an Orthodox country. However, it’s a bit misleading. It’s true, that the Orthodox is the main religion in Russia. But it’s important to remember, that during the Soviet Union period, religions were eliminated and replaced with atheism. So these days, there are also many atheists in Russia, as well as smaller number of other believers.

Alaska used to belong to Russia until August 1867, when it was sold to the United States of America. The price was about two cents an acre, what makes 7.2 million USD.
Many US-citizens were unhappy with this transaction, however after the discovery of gold and oil in Alaska, the opinion changed.

p.s. Today’s picture shows the Caucasus Mountains, not Alaska.

Ballet is the best known “Russian” dance.
I’ll risk the statement, that “Swan Lake” is the most known ballet in the world.
“Swan Lake” was composed by Russian Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

What’s interesting, Peter the Great influenced the way Russian ballet looks!

The Soviet Union (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR) existed (only?) for 69 years (1922-1991).
However, it was so intensive (and painful for many) period that it’s easy to have the impression it lasted much much longer.

I was planning to write a bit about the Soviet Union, but so many many (!!!) things happened during these 69 years, that I’m not able to make it short. There were lots of negative, horrible events, but there were also positive ones. And when you ask random 100 people from all countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, plus from e.g., Poland or Germany, you get so many different stories that it’s just not possible to make it short.
So, I’ll leave it without a comment…

From the history lessons, I well remember 3 names of Russian reigns:
-Ivan the Terrible (also known as Ivan IV Vasilyevich or Ivan the Fearsome)
-Peter the Great (Peter I or Peter Alexeyevich)
-Catherine II (Catherine the Great)

I believe, Peter I was the “greatest”, however all mentioned above changed “Russia” a lot, and made it much larger and stronger country (empire).

Matryoshka Doll is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another.

Matryoshka seems to be a traditional Russian doll. However, it was invented at the end of 19th. century, and later presented in Paris, as an old Russian toy. Anyway, the idea was apparently quite clever, because these days, Matryoshka Doll is one of the symbols of Russia.

Matryoshka Dolls follow different themes. They may consist of “Russian women”, as well as represent characters of Soviet leaders; everything is possible. 😉

Russia (or the Soviet Union) has worked intensively on space exploration.

The most known dates:
-In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1.
-Also in 1957, a dog Laika became one of the first animals in space (unfortunately died after a few hours from stress and overheating).
-And the most famous, in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth.
-In 1966, Luna 9 was the first spacecraft that landed on the Moon (without people).
-In 1971 – the first space station (Salyut, and later Mir).

“Anna Karenina”, “War and Peace” or “Crime and Punishment” – which one is the most known?
The first two were written by Lev Tolstoy, the 3rd one by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
There are more famous Russian poets, e.g., Alexander Pushkin, but I’m not sure is his “Eugene Onegin” so well known worldwide.

What name comes to your mind, when you hear “Russian literature”?

Russia has always been famous for highly educated scientists.
I’m sure, everyone can give at least one name of Russian scientist (some of them may not always be considered as Russians, because they worked in other countries).
My (very subjective) list:
-Mendeleev
-Friedman
-Cherenkov
-Pavlov

The Cyrillic script is a writing system used for various alphabets from Asia or Europe, e.g., Russian, Bulgarian, Mongolian, Ukrainian, etc.

Cyrillic was derived from the Greek script, and named after Saints Cyril and Methodius.

Russian is of course the official language in Russia.
But there are actually about 100 languages spoken in Russia, used by many ethnic groups.

I believe, that almost everyone who lives in Russia, can speak Russian (or am I wrong?).

And in general, Russian language is quite useful.
I was learning Russian in high school (it’s not a typical case in Poland) and some years later, while traveling, I found it’s very useful to have some knowledge of Russian.

What people usually drink in Russia?
-Well, my answer would be black tea. But, I can imagine that many may say “vodka”. 😉

I’m from Poland, and Polish have similar reputation concerning drinking vodka as Russians. But in both countries, there are many people who don’t drink alcohol at all. However, there has to be some truth, that Russians (and also Polish) can drink much more vodka than other nationalities. 😉

Is “Russia” a synonym of “cold country”?
Well, I guess it may be.
In this huge country, you’ll find many places with extremely cold winters. However, the continental climate dominates in Russia, so in winter it can be very cold (even about -70°C), and very hot in summer (even +45°C). These numbers are quite extreme!

My first trip to Russia was in winter, and it wasn’t actually so cold. Well, it was quite mild period, with not so much snow, I was lucky. 😉

Russia spans eleven time zones (including Kaliningrad Oblast), ranging from UTC+02:00 to UTC+12:00! Isn’t it an impressive number?

For comparison, in the United States you can count up to 9 time zones, however it includes all territories.

Russia is located partly in Europe and partly in Asia.
About 25% of the total area of Russia is located in Europe, but this part is inhabited by almost 80% of Russian citizens.
So majority of Russians can say they are Europeans. I guess, not so many people say that they are from Eurasia – but that sounds much more unique than “I’m from Europe”. 😉

Russia is the largest country in the world.
Its area covers over 17 million square kilometers, it means Russia occupies one-tenth of all the land on Earth!

Russia shares land borders with many countries (in alphabetic order): Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Ukraine.

There are almost 150 million people living in Russia. That’s a lot! But taking into account its total area, Russia seems to be quite empty. There are huge cities with many citizens, but there are also many completely empty places in Russia.
So Russia is large, populous and empty.

Welcome to Russia!
October on my blog is going to be all about the Russian Federation.

Since many years, Russia has been a controversial country (because of different reasons). I know people who doesn’t want to go there because of political reasons. On the other hand, it’s still a very interesting country.
I’ll show you places that I’ve visited in Russia, and, as always, I will try to skip politics but will mention some historical facts.

Have you been to Russia? What’s your favorite place in Russia?

It’s already the end of September, so the series about Malta on my blog is almost over.
How did you like it?

As a summary, I’ll give a list of my favorite places from Malta:
-Megalithic Temples (all are great!)
-Marsaxlokk (lovely town)
-Ta’ Kola Windmill (Gozo Island)
-Mdina & Rabat
-Valletta
-and coast, especially with nice rock formations, e.g., nearby the Blue Grotto.

See you tomorrow! 🙂