Dear CCI friends,
Kudos to Mike Metz for his terrific foto-journal pages of our September group while traveling throughout Russia. This is a very different place than what we read about in mainstream media. In the capital cities and in the regions, Russian people are friendly and their students are quite interested in talking with us. Russian cities are clean, trimmed and well-lighted. It’s clear local people feel safe at night on their streets, parks and metros. There are few policemen/women around and they don’t carry guns. To me it reminds me of my youth in Kentucky in the 40s and 50s. Our downtown areas were safe, as were our river banks. Kids rode their bicycles until dark set in and there were few street lights around.
Russia’s youth today wear the same styles as ours, but it’s clear there is a more conservative trend in clothing than a decade ago. Gone are the scant show-all cleavage of the 1990s, hemlines are somewhat lower than earlier. One sees young women in skirts and classic jeans … with lots of long straight hair like our youth. They don’t seem to have a “grunge culture.” Everyone has a smart phone and all seem to be connected to another reality. Russian parents and youth are admitting this and questioning whether or not this is a healthy trend.
Enjoy the latest foto-journal from Mike Metz.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
I’ve never been to a Rotary Club meeting in the U.S., as I’ve always worked for large companies, not the small businesses that typically make up the clubs. But we were invited to a meeting in St. Petersburg tonight. The clubs started there back in the wild 90’s, after communism died and the Russians were trying to figure out capitalism. Here is tonight’s group:
There were architects, realtors, developers, doctors, and contractors, all of whom described the local business climate as positive and, surprisingly, corruption-free. There’s a hotline for reporting any official wrongdoing; the group suggested corruption was common back in the 90s, but the business community is happily past that now.
We were driven to and from by Natasha, a high-energy woman whose company specializes in emissions management, helping her clients meet proscribed limits. Natasha’s a polymer engineer, she’s had her business for twenty-five years, has a dozen employees and over a hundred customers. When I asked if the company was profitable, she said the Audi SUV we were riding in was paid for, she had a villa in Spain, and thank you very much for asking, the company is quite profitable. Here we are leaving for the meeting:
After the meeting, Natasha wouldn’t return us to our hotel without a tour of her city, which she clearly loves. St. Petersburg is unique, reminding a bit of Paris for the architecture, Washington DC for the statuary, and Venice for the canals. A city worth getting to know —here are a few pix:
CCI’s Natasha Romanov and Katherine Metz are down the street from the Hermitage.
Mike Metz
Citizen Diplomat
September 2018