At first glance, most visitors will not be able to decrypt the Russian mentality, which is puzzling and mysterious. Anyone who takes time, however, will become acquainted with this fascinating country and its people and will definitely not be disappointed. The rich culture and the turbulent history had left their traces everywhere.
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Moscow
Whether you visit Red Square, the Kremlin, St Basil’s Cathedral or the Lenin Mausoleum; the city of golden onion domes is always a feast for your eyes.
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St. Petersburg
Thanks to its architecture, St Petersburg is arguably the most ‘European’ city in Russia. Anyone who experiences the white nights here has well preserved memories for life.
START OF A NEW ERA
The Russian Federation, this land of immeasurable proportions, is going through a cycle of profound change. A new era following the reign of communism is very noticeable, whether it is in the metropolitan area of Moscow or St. Petersburg, or far removed in the picturesque villages along the Volga, the mother of all Russian rivers. Contact with the previously severely restricted, but now promising, world of the West is sometimes conducted in a hectic manner, but in other instances at a leisurely pace. The newly won freedoms in Russia have had their positive effect for foreigners, as visitors can now freely travel throughout the country without restrictions. However, visitors must take into consideration that occasionally services are still lacking within the tourism infrastructure. Russia’s cultural heritage is overwhelming. Especially during the 19th century, great contributions were made in the areas of literature, architecture, ballet, and music. The St. Petersburg Mariinsky theatre school brought dancers Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky as well as choreographers Marisa Petipa and Mikhail Fokine into the limelight. The ‘Ballets Russes’ took Paris by storm in 1909, and later on, the Kirov theatre’s ensembles and the Moscow Bolshoi theatre added fame and honour. Well known composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich created concerts, symphonies, and other orchestral works. Among the most well known Russian novelists are Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Pushkin, Gorki and Tolstoy.
THE GIGANTIC DIMENSIONS OF THE COUNTRY
Even after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia is still a huge landmass, and extends from the border of Estonia, Latvia, White Russia, the Ukraine and Turkey in the West to Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China in the east, a distance of over 6000 kilometres. Russia is for the most part a large plain, which is only interrupted by the Ural Mountains with their highest peak at 1,900 metres, as well as some mountain ranges in the far eastern region. The three largest rivers west of the Urals – the Dnieper, the Don and the Volga – all originate within a 400 kilometre radius around Moscow and flow into the Black or the Caspian Sea. The whole Eastern part of Russia, Siberia, is a vast region symbolic for exile and unimaginable emptiness.
