I was pretty amused to see this story posted by a friend on Facebook: 5 Reasons to be Really Glad You Aren't Going to Sochi for the Olympics, because it's very accurate and in line with what I found when traveling in Russia for my adoption trips in 2003-2004.
The story mentions things like toilets where you can't flush the paper, uncovered manholes, and dirty tap water. Yep. Experienced all those.
I also was happy to just find a bathroom in a public store or other building. Usually, in stores, you are told there is no bathroom for customers. I spent a very uncomfortable afternoon in Moscow in 2004, learning that fact.
Or how about Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hilarious and gross hotel experiences? Again, none of those things surprise me.
Don't ever expect an elevator to work in a hotel or other building. Sometimes they work. Often they don't. If they do work, they are usually tiny. Like, 4 people will know what kind of deoderant you wear.
Hot water for showering? Good luck. Don't count on it.
I never drank tap water in Russia, or any foreign country, for that matter. Buy bottled water. lots of it. Brush your teeth with it.
One of the first Russian phrases I memorized was "Vada bee-yez gah-za, pah-zhalstah." Translation" "Water without carbonation, please." Helpful when you can't locate bottled water in a store because there are 5,000 bottles of vodka and only 3 bottles of water.
Stray dogs are everywhere in Russia. Very sad, but true. I have heard that the stray dogs around Sochi are being poisoned. Although this sounds cruel, and it is, you have to remember that human children in orphanages often go hungry, are cold, and are turned out to fend for themselves at 16 or 17, with no education or job training.
Cars don't usually obey traffic laws. I was nearly killed walking down a sidewalk in Moscow, when a small car jumped the curb and came racing towards me. I jumped out of the way. The car stopped. The driver jumped out and walked away, never apologizing or even looking at me. The car stayed on the sidewalk.
When I was on one of my adoption trips, an agency rep met me at the airport in Moscow and had to get me to a different airport - there are a bunch of them in Moscow. The car ride was harrowing. I gave my heart to Jesus many times. He drove on the median. He drove on the shoulder. He sat on the horn whenever another car was in the way. I was a shaky mess by the time we got to the airport.
The customer is not always right in Russia. On one of my last days there, I forgot to give the hotel cafe waitress my coupon for a free breakfast before ordering. We got our food and ate. When the bill came I showed her the coupon. She said sorry, you must pay. I didn't get the free breakfast because I didn't follow the rules about showing the coupon at the proper time. There was no apology, even.
This may be different now, but when I was flying in Russia, on Russian airlines, you didn't get to choose your seat. You sat wherever Aeroflot or whoever wanted you to sit. If you didn't like it, too bad.
American airlines now are weighing bags and charging extra for overweight or oversized luggage. That's been going on for a long time in other parts of the world.
Matt Lauer on the Today show did a piece the other day about Russian grocery stores not selling American products. Well duh. The grocery store he showed in the piece actually looked far nicer than most of the ones I saw. He had a lot of liquor in the buggy I noticed, not any food.
When my kids were small, they could buy vodka or any other kind of booze. My son was sent to the liquor store alone at less than 6 years old, at night, and vodka was sold to him. That was Kazakhstan but it's very similar to Russia. Kids in my daughter's orphanage often bought beer and cigarettes, no questions asked.
Lots of people in Russia still smoke, and cigarettes are everywhere.
Hotels are not the same as they are here. Most middle-priced American hotel rooms are luxurious compared to the average Russian hotel room. Russian hotels usually have single beds. Often there is no shower curtain. Forget about free shampoo and soaps, unless you are in an American hotel [like a Renaissance or Holiday Inn].
The front desk will ask for your passport when you first check in, and will make a copy and give to the police. If you don't like that, too bad. I doubt that policy has changed.
Americans take a lot of freebies for granted. We don't have to pay for bags in stores. We don't have to pay for ketchup in restaurants. We get free salt and pepper.
We don't have to carry our passports everywhere here.
I have a feeling we are going to be hearing a lot more about journalists and others being uncomfortable in Sochi.
this was the street outside my hotel in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan. Russian streets look very similar. I witnessed several accidents while there. Side streets often don't get cleaned off.
this was my room at the Moscow hotel in 2004, the old hotel Ukraina. By Russian standards it was huge and luxurious.
