If you are single while visiting Russia and end up meeting someone, take into account that you are not just gaining a significant other, but a whole new family. Russian families are extremely close and if one of them has chosen you, expect to be welcomed into the fold.
Typically, Russians are very supportive of their loved ones and will do almost anything for them. So when you get ready to meet the parents, don’t be surprised if you are promptly adopted into the family and treated like their own son or daughter.
Subbotnik
The Trashtag challenge is getting people together to clean things up, and that is something that everyone can get behind. It’s nice to see people looking up from their phones and actually getting something done, but the Russians have been doing the same thing for a little over a century, and they didn’t need a clever hashtag to do it.
One day each year, which is known as Subbotnik, the residents of every city get together and just clean it up as a community. They pick up garbage, fix things that are broken and take care of recycling. The tradition started not long after the Russian Revolution and has been going on ever since
Fraud is Rampant
In the United States, dashboard cameras are mostly used by the authorities, and the footage taken by them can mostly be seen in court or on Cops. In Russia, however, almost every car on the road has its own personal dashcam, and the videos from these cameras have become an Internet phenomenon.
In a country that is extremely large and in which law enforcement is oftentimes corrupt, the dashcams protect regular citizens from insurance fraud, in which motorists or pedestrians fake car accidents in order to collect the insurance money.
Russia’s Massive Pipelines
Russia is not only big in size, but it is also rich in natural resources. It has one of the biggest petroleum industries in the world, with the largest reserves. It is also the leading exporter of natural gas and has the world’s second-largest coal reserves.
All those gases need to be transported somehow, and Russia has developed an extensive network of pipelines. There are so many pipelines that if you put them all together, they would make a pipeline that is 259,913 kilometers long. The circumference of the Earth is only 40,075, so traveling through all of Russia’s pipelines is like going around the world six and a half times.
A National Pastime
Chess has been one of the most beloved games in Russia for hundreds of years. Historians have even been known to claim that Czar Ivan IV died in 1854 in the midst of a chess match. In 1917, when the Bolsheviks came to power, the game’s popularity increased, and it became Russia’s favorite pastime.
Russians love chess because they feel that the game represents their ideals. It is not a game of chance but requires skill and a carefully thought-out strategy. The state-sponsored its first national chess tournament in Moscow in 1921, and to this day, many of the best players in the world are Russian natives, including the current number five Alexander Grischuk.