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I've walked the slums of Naples, Rome, Nice, Barcelona, Toulon, Marseilles, Warsaw and a few others in my time. It never seemed that different to me aside from the fact that in some of those places you are definitely not safe or in some cases not welcome. In most poor districts of a Russian city I have never felt threatened, I have never been stolen from like I have in my travels around Europe. I have never been accosted by paid thugs on a bus because I threw away a bus ticket as I was one time in Warsaw. I have never been followed by thugs down dark streets in Moscow, Minsk, Smolensk, Belgorod or any other place I have been in Russia. I have never seen a Russian 20 something so drugged out of his mind that he was unable to pull his pants up from his ankles as he struggled trying to put a bottle of Mt Dew in said pants pocket.
I saw this just last night in Seatac Wa. I know Russia has drug problems but not on the scale of what I see here. I would be shocked to see that there, it's so common here in Murika I did what every person in sight of this individual did. I kept walking. I feel bad about walking away this morning but I know that nothing would have been done by the authorities and had I personally intervened I may have ended up in trouble myself.
Those people who think Russia is 4th world need to crawl out form under the gold plated rock they live under and look around where they live. If they dare they need to step out of their gated communities and see what the real America is like.
I hope you know, CuriousAboutRussia, that Russians need travel permits to travel within Russia. With nine time zones and how big it is, it makes sense.
Your visa gives you permission for an exact town and an exact housing address. Your visa may not be for the entire country. You should be very careful about travel outside your visa approved area. Find out what is and what is not allowed before you leave.
Russians do not need travel permits any more, that was old soviet times. They are as free to travel within the country as you are in America.
The Visa for foreign visitors does usually require the "invitation letter" from where you are staying, at least for the first stop, although this information is rarely checked beyond that official looking document which you can buy online from any "official" organization. You can put any address you want for the Visa, then change to any other place you wish to stay, however, the "registration" by the host hotel/apartment/etc is required, it is never requested upon departure of the country.
Russian government is gradually lessening the burden of paperwork, but it is a slow process.
Russians do not need travel permits any more, that was old soviet times. They are as free to travel within the country as you are in America.
The Visa for foreign visitors does usually require the "invitation letter" from where you are staying, at least for the first stop, although this information is rarely checked beyond that official looking document which you can buy online from any "official" organization. You can put any address you want for the Visa, then change to any other place you wish to stay, however, the "registration" by the host hotel/apartment/etc is required, it is never requested upon departure of the country.
Russian government is gradually lessening the burden of paperwork, but it is a slow process.
Even back in Soviet times no "travel permits" were needed for Russians - it's a myth stemming probably from Stalin's times, and for a totally different reason, concerning peasantry trying to move out of the villages.
What WAS needed though, was permission to reside permanently at the new place whatever it was - village or city, and particularly when it were places like Moscow or St. Petersburg, because everyone had to go through the registration process, to establish the new address.
There's a lot of disinformation on this thread. I advise anyone caution about thinking of living in an uncivilized country like Russia thinking its as great as its proponents on here want to believe. I had the privilege of living there for a time. The following link is sadly true.
There's a lot of disinformation on this thread. I advise anyone caution about thinking of living in an uncivilized country like Russia thinking its as great as its proponents on here want to believe. I had the privilege of living there for a time. The following link is sadly true.
Oh boy, look who is talking - DKM advertising *civilized* Ukraine, where mob is ruling the streets.)))
I'm not advertising Ukraine, just pointing out that Russia is as bad of a place to live, if not worse. Neither is a destination an American would want to move to which is why so many from both countries live here.
There's a lot of disinformation on this thread. I advise anyone caution about thinking of living in an uncivilized country like Russia thinking its as great as its proponents on here want to believe. I had the privilege of living there for a time. The following link is sadly true.
"Now, let me get this straight — my goal here is to show you the dark side of a Moon, to confront the veneer of a prosperous and powerful country with the ghastliness of a daily life. For this sake, I may be exaggerating things — of course, such horrifying conditions are not that often in Russian cities."
This is from the link you've posted.
You know what else Russians say about the poverty in their country?
"We have a problem in our country, that doesn't exist in many other countries in the world - that is that people are working, yet they are still poor."
Ughhmm.. Right.
Is there a "dark side of a Moon" in Russia?
Of course there is, as it's present in the US. It's in the tent cities of the West Coast, it's in the ghettos of the East Coast and homeless shelters all over the country.
So slapping couple of *horrific pictures* and claiming that "that's how the rest of the Russian cities look like once you are out of Moscow and St. Petersburg" is very deceptive too.
Because number 1- both of the cities brought as a "typical example" ( Chelyabinsk and Voronezh) steadily come in the bottom 10 cities to live in in Russia,
and number 2 - those are just couple of shots that don't quite portray these cities overall.
The first one - Chelyabinsk - is an industrial city with a lot of chemical/metallurgical plants in it, so obviously it has more smog over it and worse air quality than many other places.
However if we look beyond that grim image slapped across the page in your "sadly true article," this is actually what the city looks like;
I see nothing particularly horrible here, keeping in mind that out of the big Russian cities ( over I million population) it's one of the worst cities to live in.
The other one - Voronezh ( population over 1 million) - is yet again at the bottom, and it's criticized for many things - not just the economy, but poor planning as well.
Yet again, closer look - and there is nothing disastrous there, with plenty of new districts growing;
(That's the very Varlamov guy mentioned in the article, exploring Voronezh. He is a well-known blogger and journalist in Russia, an architect by education.)
Again - keeping in mind that those are the bottom cities, I see nothing particularly disastrous there.
( Overall I was surprised to see so many big Russian cities ( other than Moscow) nicely updated and renovated, with constructions going all over the place.)
Now when it comes to SMALLER Russian cites, town and villages ( rural Russia overall) - yes, those one are dying a slow and painful death, and I already explained in this particular post why.
So as usual DKM, you are full of it - a clearly biased approach when it comes to Russia, but what else is new I suppose...
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