Fun Observations

My favorite thing about traveling is observing all of the little things that make the country we are in unique. We haven’t been here too long, but I thought since we have internet access for the next few days I would post a few of the observations we have made so far. I am sure we will post another blog with more later.

1. We are not sure if it is nation-wide or just in our hotel, but the elevators here are really tiny. The door is about as wide as our suitcase and no more than four people can fit in the car. Also, there’s not an up or a down button, but just one button to call the elevator. Thus when you get in you are taken directly to your floor without stopping (besides, there wouldn’t be room to stop and pick up people on other floors!). It definitely makes the ride a lot quicker!

2. Despite the fact that it’s winter and pretty cold here, people seem to walk a lot more than they drive. Now because it’s winter, there is a lot of snow and ice all over the sidewalks, which makes it really difficult for parents to push children in a stroller or pull a cart with groceries or other goods. The Russians have an awesome solution to this problem: sleds. When you walk down the street you see all kinds of sleds, from the commercially produced to the cleverly homemade. I don’t know why, but every time I see them it makes me smile, especially when there are children aboard because they just look so happy.

3. Whereas Americans line up behind the person in front of them, Jeff and I have noticed a lot of people here line up next to you instead of behind you.

4. When exchanging dollars into rubles, Russian banks will not take dollars unless they are perfectly crisp and free of any defects. This makes perfect sense, because if you don’t deal in the currency often, you might not know the difference between real and counterfeit, so to avoid problems, you just take ones you know are perfect. Jeff and I learned this when several of our dollar bills were rejected at the bank for defects. We then decided to look at every bill we had and realized how many of them had writing or other ink blotches on them! It’s really funny, because it’s something that you rarely recognize when you’re in America, but I guess we have dirty money! Seriously, look in your wallet and compare the number of perfect bills to the number of bills with writing or ink or tears, etc. I think you’ll be surprised. In conclusion . . . stop writing on your money!

5. At the hotel here there is no such thing as a room tab. You pay for your room in advance, so every couple of days you go downstairs and pay for a few more days. Also, when you go to the café you can’t just charge something to your room. That’s definitely one way to make sure people don’t run off without paying their bill!

6. Before we left everyone asked us to see if the “traditional Russian hats” (you know, the big furry ones with the earflaps that tie on top of your head) are actually worn in Russia. Now it has been relatively warm here (nothing close to below zero Fahrenheit), so we can’t say for sure, but walking around I would say that about 1/3 to 1/2 of the people we saw were wearing the hats. They are so fun and Jeff and I definitely want to try and pick some up before we leave!

Musical Rooms

When we switched rooms last week the hotel forgot to note that the larger rooms were all booked this week for a children’s musical festival. What did that mean for Jeff and I? That we got to switch rooms again . . . back to the smaller room we started in. We are only here for two nights, so it’s totally not that big of a deal. Plus, this room is actually a little better than the first room we were in because it has two twin beds, so we can store our luggage on one bed during the day and it does not seem quite as cramped. However, the best thing about this room is that we are just below the café and we can get wireless internet access in our room (though the signal strength isn’t the best)!!! It is still really expensive, but at least I can spend a little time over the next two days keeping in touch with people back home and posting new blogs (I have been writing them offline so I can just copy and paste as soon as I get online). After that we are back to a larger room (probably without internet access) hopefully for the rest of our stay here. With all of this moving Jeff and I were really happy that we were able to cut out one suitcase from our last trip!

We're Here!

Greetings from Ryazan, Russia! We left on Thursday afternoon Chicago time, and after a 8 hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany, a three hour flight to Moscow, and a three hour car ride to Ryazan we arrived late Friday night Russian time. We had initially thought that we would be able to spend a few days in Moscow on our way in, but as things tend to go with Jeff’s job we had to skip Moscow and head straight here. I guess we’ll just have to try and check out Moscow on our way out instead!

The hotel we are staying at is nice, though not quite as luxurious as the Lotte in Korea. It has a security guard (which is nice), a little breakfast restaurant, a small bar, and a café/bar on the top floor. When we first checked in, they gave us a room that was, well . . . tiny - there’s really no other way to say it! It had no closet or dresser, and barely enough room to fit all of our luggage on the floor (not to mention that we couldn’t walk since our luggage took up all the floor space). I snapped a few pictures, but they aren't loading for some reason here, so I will try to post them later.

Jeff had to go to work first thing Saturday morning, but when he got back around noon he talked to the front desk and they had a much nicer room available for us (and the price is really not all that much more), so we moved right away. Our room now is perfect! We have a huge closet with plenty of room for all of our stuff, a big desk for the computer (and for scrapbooking!), a refrigerator, and a luggage bench. We also get cable TV, but the only all English channel we get is CNN World. There are a few movie channels that play American movies, but unlike in Korea where we were spoiled by subtitles, the movies here are all dubbed in Russian.

Since we arrived on the weekend, Jeff worked only half a day, so we spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons exploring Ryazan. We don’t have a car here, so we made sure to bundle up for our walking. The weather here isn’t as bad as I had expected (thought I heard they are having a warm streak right now, so that may change), but it was certainly cold! There was an employee from the office in Moscow here for the first three days we were here and he told us where we could find the Kremlin here in Ryazan. We walked over there on Sunday afternoon, and it was really cool. It was made up of about 8 different buildings, all of which were really different and unique. Again, I will try to post pictures when the upload feature is back and working.

Finally, internet is only available in the lobby and the café at the hotel (and is really expensive), so we definitely won’t be online nearly as often as we were in Korea. We will try to post as much as possible, but don’t be worried if you don’t hear from us!

The Wery's Are Going to Russia!

Jeff found out a few days ago that we are heading out to Ryazan, Russia. We will be leaving on Thursday and are scheduled to be there for about three or four weeks. It's been awesome being at home, but we are really excited to go! We should be staying near the Red Square in Moscow for a night on the way in, so we'll definitely post more when we get there!