Bit of a moan about Russia...

Our last week in Russia was unfortunately a bit of a let down and an anti climax as we ended up imprisoning ourselves in Ulan Ude, a Siberian town not too far from the boarder with Mongolia. The town was pleasant enough but was small and didn’t have much going on, the few museums that were supposed to be there we couldn’t find and no one was willing to help us. The main problem was that despite the extra Asian faces and slight Asian feel it was still very Russian, something that by this point had started to annoy us a little… we were getting sick of people being rude and the difficulty of having to make anyone do their job!
The hotel we were staying in was terrible, £35 a night for a crappy single room with an exceptionally uncomfortable bed booby trapped with sharp wood so only one person could attempt to sleep and then only if they lay in the middle at attempted no sideways movements. I (Sam) slept on the floor for the week, Sarah had the bum deal with the torture bed, man those Russians are evil. We didn’t really find anywhere worthwhile to eat without spending a fortune so survived most of the week on instant noodles and mashed potato with tinned fruit for pudding.. not much else you can make with only a kettle… and to use the kettle you had to go poke the dragon at the end of the corridor and expect a torrent of abuse for making her work (no joke).
Everything about the hotel was such a hassle. After paying for two nights in advance we were given a shitty bit of toilet paper about the size of a credit card with the dates we had paid for circled. We had to take this piece of paper up to the woman on our floor to collect our key, something we were used to, listen to her sigh and tut and generally flap about for a minute or two before she would thrust it into our hand. Every time we went out we would have to find her to swap our key for the same crappy small bit of paper, it would always take five minutes or so to find her which was a pain, but every time we tried to leave with the key she would be there and yell at us until we gave it to her. We had to use this same piece of paper every time we wanted to leave or enter the hotel over the course of the week so it became more and more scrappy.
Its kind of hard to explain the mentality of the people we dealt with in Russia without it sounding like we must have done something wrong or that we are exaggerating We were only there for three weeks and overall we enjoyed our time there, but unfortunately the overriding memory which will stick in our minds about Russia was the shear blatant rudeness of the people we met or had to deal with. Whilst we understand that all those years of communism wasn’t great for creating a customer service culture the reception we commonly received was just awful. It seems that in Russia nobody wants to do their job, fair enough we all feel like that sometimes, so they just take it out on each other by being miserable, not smiling, swearing and shouting or just ignoring each other. There cannot be many countries in the world where you can walk into a hotel reception and stand for ten minutes whilst the receptionist is clearly pretending your not there… it sounds funny and it was for a while, she will just be looking at the computer and no matter how many times we say hello she will not turn to you until she’s ready.
Sarah and I spent a year trying to learn Russian and knew enough to have a basic conversation, ask directions, book a room etc, an effort which would be appreciated in every other country I can think of except Russia. Nope, not Russia, this seemed to get on their nerves more as we couldn’t speak it properly. It was common for people we had asked a question (train staff, hotel staff, ticket ladies) to just shout or unleash a torrent of loud Russian (often causing raised eyebrows amongst bystanders), the word foreigner was heard many times.
Ok, so lots of rambling heres a few examples…
Hotel receptionist Kungur. Wanted to charge us 500 roubles more than the printed rate for the room… when asked why she just faced her computer and completely ignored anything we said regardless of language until we put the money on the table. Cow.
Bin lady in the hotel Ulan Ude. This lady hadn’t once been in to clean our room all week.. on day 4 she came in to empty the bin, we had been nice and put the rubbish in bags all lined up but oh my, how much did she want to tut and sign and moan and go on about it!? It was like a Monty python sketch. We just laughed at her.
Café Listvynenka. Waited about 15 mins to order 2 cups of tea, when the waitress came and we asked she stood there and did the best impression of Harry Enfield we’ve ever seen, shrugging of the shoulders and tuting and sighing, the whole works, think am I bovered. We laughed in her face and told her to smile.
Train stations we were always shouted at.
We could go on and on but then we might give the impression that we didn’t enjoy it! There were five people we met which were nice! (Yes we kept a tally… )
- Scientist at ice caves
- Scientist at Listvynenka
- Waitress in Kungur
- Buryat woman in Ulan Ude
- Ulan Ude hat lady
Anyway, people on the street don’t smile, in fact we don’t think we heard any Russian people laugh the whole time we were there - we like to think that maybe because its winter but then again maybe not. The smaller town of Kungur felt different, in the larger cities it seems people are too busy rushing about trying to buy as many consumer goods as possible and make up for lost time.
Its quite hard not to be negative about Russia, its somewhere I’ve always really wanted to go and have read a lot about but have left feeling a little disappointed. I had imagined that by learning some of the language and travelling by trains we would meet some genuine people but we only really met drunks. The rudeness and unhelpfulness of the people we did meet shocked us. We could ask open questions such as ‘which number bus do we catch to town’ in Russian and just have the reply of ‘nyet’ back. Great. Normally we have a lot of patience but it was cold and started to grate on us.
Russia is annoyingly expensive, but it seems only because people are willing to pay for a perceived image. People pay way over the odds for things just because Russians think they are western. It’s quite sad to see them all clambering over each other desperate to have every possible status symbol available, it really is consumerism on crack.













On a positive note Mongolia was the best snap decision we have made so far! Everything we were expecting of Russia we have found in Mongolia, friendly people, smiles, good food, wilderness, adventure etc etc. The two weeks we have been here have been amazing. The capitol Ulaan Baatar is a crazy mix of nomadic gers, soviet town planning and new modern glass blocks. The streets are hectic gritty and very Asian, the people hold the door open for you and we found a curry house just round the corner. Lifes good! The best thing about Mongolia is they have really cast aside all the crap that’s been flung at them and truly value their history and customs, unlike the Russians who are pimping themselves off to the American dream. Ok Mongolians want big cars and some new tall buildings, but the music that’s popular is still Mongolian, people wear traditional clothes and most people still live under felt!

Mongolia has the lowest population density of any other country on the planet, the total population is thought to be just 2.9 million (less than half of London) in a country which is apparently the worlds 19th largest. Out of these 2.9 million between 900000 and 1.2 million live in the capitol Ulan Baatar (coldest capital in the world), but this changes on the season as nomads arrive in the winter to pitch up their tents then leave in the summer to graze their livestock. It’s a strange feeling being in a city where half the residents are living in tents! (check out google earth and look all around the centre of the city, its all just round gers!) When you realise how few Mongolians there actually are it really drills home how amazing it is that people all over the world know about them! What other countries with just 2.9 million residents have such a worldwide and fearsome reputation as the Mongolians? Mauritania, Armenia and Oman all have a similar population and we don’t know much about them!