It’s nice to be back in the U.S.A.! As excited as we were to travel there’s nothing better than coming back home to familiar sounds, sights, smells and foods. We spent our time in the actual city of Krasnodar which is part of Krasnodar Krai. That’s kind of like saying we live in Wichita which is in Kansas. Krasnodar is a fairly large city and overall modern. The buildings tend to be older brick buildings but you would often times see a nice, newly constructed, modern building in the mix as well. Here are some other observations we made during our stay that you may find interesting:
Fast food restaurants, or more specifically the lack of them. The only ones we saw were in the mall or at the airport. They are not on every corner like in the states. Sushi is very popular and we saw several restaurants for that along with a few other sit down restaurants. However, even these places were very localized and not a restaurant chain that you would see everywhere. We typically ate in a cafeteria style place attached to the hotel. They had coffee shops but it wasn’t like here where there’s a star bucks on just about every corner.
The public transportation system either by bus or train is the most common means of travel and people walk everywhere! That said, the traffic in Krasnodar is still awful. What a bunch of chaos. There’s no way we would ever feel comfortable driving there and even at 1:00am when we arrived there was still plenty of traffic on the streets.
It seemed like no matter what time of day it was or where you were at, the ladies always had their make up and hair done. In addition, they were always dressed nicely and they wear a lot of high heels. Even in the winter and snow, you will see them in their heels and often their boots are dressy and have heels, too. You never see a woman in sweats, tennis shoes and a hat. Women in hats is not an acceptable style in Russia. Also, a lot of the coats worn by women were fur or had fur on the cuff or hood. They seem to take a lot of pride in their appearance and beauty is important to them. The men were also very “put together” and since it was winter they usually had a hat on but it wasn’t a ball cap. They wore a hat typical to what you’ve seen in pictures and movies, big and furry with flaps buttoned on the sides or top. Another thing we noticed were that men often carried a bag or satchel with them. If you’ve ever seen the Seinfeld episode where he’s talking about the “man purse” you will find the humor in that observation.
Probably due to the lack of fast food and large amount of exercise everyone gets, you don’t see people that are overweight. Everyone appears very active and fit.
In Russia they drive on the same side of the street as we do in America. While most cars are the same as in the states, it’s not uncommon to see a car with the steering wheel on the right side. The other thing that’s very common in Krasnodar are the round-a-bouts. They have them everywhere so again, we were glad that we weren’t doing the driving.
Their currency in Russia is the ruble and given the value of the dollar while we were there approximately 30 rubles equal $1. It was kind of shocking when we got our bill for our hotel and it was over $13,000. Once we did the conversion we realized it was approximately $450 which was a lot better.
Another unique thing we noticed was on our flights. As soon as we would land the other passengers would all clap and give applause which I'm assuming was for the captain and symobizes a good flight. We never were able to ask about this but found it very interesting.
On our next trip we will be spending approximately three weeks in Russia. The first two weeks will be back in Krasnodar and the last week will be spent in Moscow. During the first two weeks we plan on taking a short trip over to the Black Sea area to visit the town where Sasha was born. Even though the baby home is in Armavir that isn’t where she was actually born. We are really looking forward to our time in Moscow. The place we will stay is close to Red Square so we will definitely get a family picture in that area.
Until then, we have a lot to do at home to get ready for Sasha’s arrival. We will keep doing updates on the blog of our preparations. If you sign up to follow our blog, I believe you will get an e-mail whenever there’s a new post. Thank you all for your prayers, interest and concern for our growing family. That means more to us than you will ever know.
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