Day 1 - Moscow

Day 2 - The Train to Yoshkar-Ola

Days 3-5 - Yoshkar-Ola

Day 6 - The Apartment

Day 7 - Cheboksary

Day 8 - Going Home

Before I even left town I lost most of my credit cards and was not able to get them replaced in time to take them with me. I did get a new credit card but not in time to see that it was activated. So I jetted off to Russia with nothing but the cash in my pockets hoping it would be enough to get me back safely. It turns out that that was a fitting start to the trip...

The first thing that I recognized about Russia even before landing is the amount of forest and the smallness of their cities. I had expected to see suburbs and farm land like here but except for in the southern parts mostly all I saw was forest interrupted by an occasional town or city and the forest often went right up to the edge of the town.

Because very few people in live in houses their cities are much smaller than ours. Think about it, when you drive thru a city or a suburb or fly over one, most of what our communities consist of houses with an occasional downtown or commercial park. But in Russia they can take all of the families that would live in a couple of square miles of houses into a single high rise apartment. The size of their cities then is a small fraction of ours. And of course this makes mass transit much more practical.

The next thing I learned, after getting off of the jet, is that lines in Russia take a long time and there are still a lot of them. There are a lot of security check points whether you are at an air port, driving out of a city or whatever.

Also, Russia is not a poor country anymore. particularly in Moscow almost anyone who has a decent job can buy a car. And while most city dwellers live in an apartment many have a cottage in the country-although it is really not much by our standards.

My final observation is that the Russian people are very, very friendly. For those old enough, like me, to remember the cold war, it is hard to imagine that we ever feared them. This has become a common trend in my travels. We hear people talking about how rude different countries are at home but in my travels I always come home talking about how nice and helpful everyone is. I think that we Americans must be the rude ones.

Enjoy the pictures,

Mark