What about telling us about your interests, your favorite books, music, or your favorite foods? Do you live in a city, a small town, or the country? Is your life rushed or slow-paced? Is the family valued where you live? Do people value morality? What is the prominent religion? Any of this would be interesting to me. :)

Jura, it is very interesning story! I was laughing a lot))) especially, in term of the Russian ideas about Australia. Russian "Babushkas" is very specific part of society))) They can much more than we can imagine))) And what is most surprising, it is not the first time in this term, when people called Putin's name, but nobody doesn't know the current president - Dmitryi Medvedev, apparently. I wonder why?

This is a summary of all the facts students learn about Russia in schools: Vast, cold, many different cultures and incredible hardships under their czars , Russian Revolution, communism, collectivization. World Wars 1 & 2, NKVD, KGB secret police, gulags, Siberia, mass forced deportations of innocent people. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Kruschev, Cuban Missile Crisis, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, disintegration of Soviet Union, Afghanistan war, Vladimir Putin. Writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Privet Svetlana. I have been to Russia twice. Last year I went from St Petersburg to Moscow and saw small towns like Yaroslav. Like all over the world, there are modern buildings and luxury goods in Russia that neither I nor the average tourist could afford to buy. Comparing it to the last time I went just after Perestroika, there were no queues outside the shops, people were better dressed, some longed for the good old days of USSR and the babushkas were still trying to sell a basket of apples in every place I went to.Unless you have actually been to Russia, impressions are gleaned from what you see in the media. That is true for everyone. In fact the Russians I met, thought that we had kangaroos like pet dogs here in Australia and crocodiles everywhere.