ahmmm... ahmmm... i m an aiesec alumni and i now live between switzerland and russia... amongst many different thoughts and opinions about russia today i feel its a good time to write my long over due update from my most favourite country in the world...  read further if you wanna know how i see russland as an outsider from inside russia...

over the last year it was fun to see russian bombers back in nato airspace n radioactive poison all over the restaurant tables in london.... and it was also quite funny to see british petroleum managers packed back home b'coz they said no to vodka... i guess like everyone i was bored by american burger munching nose poking everywhere and i waited for the world headlines to read 'russia - the empire strikes back !!!'

and it happened.... now i don't really support wars...  and obviously, it's not so great when you're on the battlefield with a big leak in your torso and an arrow in your eye, but, truth be told, battlefields have very little to do with the eventual outcome of the conflict... i wont talk abt war or the conflict but for all those who don't know much about russia i would love to share my great experience in a very very big country with very very russian people...

you see the problem is you cant just get up and go to russia or talk about them...
firstly the flights to russia are full of ox-pecker businessmen.... they're all bright-eyed and bouncy with anticipation, keen to ride the rhino of russia's oil-and-gas boom by drip- feeding it with a selection of boutiquey euro luxuries: shotguns, powerboats and fusion- restaurant concepts etc etc.... and on the way back, they don't look quite so good.... bankrupted financially by russian business practices, and morally by a klondikesque nightlife, they are nursing empty wallets....

there are only two reasons you go to russia then...
if you want a good night out eating your supper from the toned belly of a ukrainian while snorting pink cocaine from the back of a golden swan.... or... if you want to participate in a rally, and beat yourself with twigs while sampling the workers' struggle for control of the factories or demonstrations against Vladimir and Dimitry uncle....

well actually i m kidding... when u land in russia you actually feel like james bond... i lived in moscow and st. petersburg... and russia is a wonderful place... everything here is enormous... everyone is white... and everything costs billions... in soviet days, you could have a flashing light on your car if you were connected in some way to government.... and this is still the case....

Tax inspectors.... Lollipop ladies.... Men from the ministry of fish.... They all have what they call "blinker cars".
and now, for 200 quid, anyone can buy a license to have a blinker car.... this means that at every road junction, almost everyone has the right of way, and moscow echoes almost permanently to the sound of tinkling glass and tortured metal.... but i simply love travelling in mashrutka's (buses that can be stopped anywhere u want), metro (with stations that go underground to the core of the earth)

then you go for the russian night out.... expensive girls.... expensive food..... and expensive cars.... i once spent most of the night talking to a girl whose grandfather, Vladimir Chelomei, had been made a hero of the Soviet Union for inventing what became known as "Satan": the SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile.... for more than 20 years, this was the launch vehicle for Russia's nukes.... for a generation, it brought sleeplessness and terror to billions of people outside the USSR.... me included... yet there i was, sitting in a bar full of ukrainian ironing boards, chatting to its inventor's agreeable granddaughter.... tell me the world is not a weird place.... I dare you.... I double-dare you.....

living with russians everywhere is very very different... most of them are pulsating, intriguing, bit tall but in general they are really really interesting... they are like little children... russians are different... you spend 10 minutes queuing for trams/subways and think you know it all.... but believe me, compared to the russians, we know nothing.... they spent 70 years queuing for a loaf of bread and they know every trick in the book...

you just have to look at the russian travellers.... they have digital cameras that make the japanese look backward and sat-phones that could steer the space station.... and you don't get that sort of hardware, or holiday, by writing art and poetry.... off course u think they are mafia, and that meant they were ex-KGB or spetsnaz.... you just have to say "pardon, monsieur" and the following morning you would be found buried head down on the beach, with just feet sticking out of the sand.... and that's the thing about russians.... we wear a No Fear T-shirt..... they wear the look in their eyes..... so u think one should be very very scared of the russians... but actually that's not true really...

russians are the most humble and most caring people i have met in my life... off course most of them are extremely beautiful russian girls.... and obviously they have no connection with ukraine :p but admiring the beautiful russian when you are in a queue in russia is not advisable.... if you spend a long time looking at her when you look back again, half of ukraine will slip in front of you in the queue....

then if u go roaming around in moscow.... there is a lenin's tomb... which is boring.... but then comes the reason i think all the squares in the world r boring... its b'coz i have seen the most amazing one... The Red Square... you come from the south, through the new arch by the Museum of Something Not Interesting and even though a portion of the cobbled centre is taken up by a makeshift ice rink, the rest is so beautiful and so evocative that you actually gasp...

and the St Basil's... the silly onion-shaped church whose designers were blinded after they'd finished it to make sure they never did any such thing again... and the blue fir trees that are replaced quietly, and overnight, when they grow taller than the placenta-red Kremlin walls they shield... and the big department store lit up like harrods of london....

you find yourself whizzing round and round like an eight-year-old in a shop full of train sets, not quite believing that an image you've seen a million times in pictures could be so much more eye-wateringly spectacular in real life.... best square in the world? Oh yes, and by quite a margin.... off course moscow has the stupid markets too where you could buy cheese made from a Bolshevik's armpit sweat, and then there will be a matroushka's everywhere...

then you go to siberia.... and you think Al Gore has melted all the snow from the north pole in an attempt to get nobel peace prize... but everything there is always covered with waist-deep snow, which the residents use to build houses....in siberia icicles hung from every nose and polar bears stalk the homeless.... there is no visible civilization and no chocolates but its my most favourite part of russia....

st. petersburg... where can i start ? its my russian paris... hermitage : the worlds biggest museum... winter palace... summer palace... pushkin... peterhof... and the most amazing church in the world : savior on the blood... imagine the most beautifully crafted brilliance in architecture for a church n give that for painting to a 3 year old kid... and he goes painting yellooow, greeeen, blueeee, orangeee... its spectaculaaaar... i can go on for years n still wont finish how much happy it makes me being in russia...

russia is wonderful... there is no better joy in the world than watching a tchaikovsky's ballet swan lake in marinsky theatre or going to philharmonic listening to vivaldi... off course sometimes u pop down to mikhaelovsky and watch something like Three Bloody Sisters by Anton Bloody Chekhov... it's about three sisters who want to go to moscow and then spend the next 5,000 hours not going.... grown men have been known to climb onto their chairs in the middle of act number 3,279 and shout: "oh, for god's sake, just get on the f------ train."

nothing in russia is like anywhere else.... even the guard at lenin's tomb... smoking a fag, like he wouldn't care if anyone had weed on it.... or him.... you don't question anyone with more money, biceps or contacts than you.... the cost of questioning back may be a black eye... the cost of a speeding ticket is a quiet bribe and you get the best table in the restaurant with a small glare...

i like russia.... really a lot... when you are in russia there's nothing to indicate that you're in a 21st-century wild west... so stop talking about wars n politics... get on that next aeroflot boeing cart n get here to real russia... its the most amazing place in the universe...

and i promise u when you are ready to get back, you will find yourselves on the plane, back in the clutches of your democracy.... in economy class.... and then for some reason you will start to prefer russian...

/neel
p.s. my life and times in russia.... http://picasaweb.google.com/neel.shikhare