Georgia attacked civilians of south ossetia in the middle of the night for no reason. They got punished for that, and got it right.

Yep. I have.

GDP per capita on Eastern Europe has been a stable one third compared to the West for at least three centuries now, though, mostly because of the Atlantic trade corridor, and a favorable climate before that. Except for the 80's, the economic growth under communism wasn't that bad. It wasn't catching up, but it wasn't eating dust either.

On the other hand, the fall of the communist regime demographically condemned most of Eastern Europe, with a few exceptions (Russia itself and the Caucasus nations). I think the Eastern bloc could have made the necessary economic and social changes and pull a China, but instead it collapsed in a rather spetacular fashion ://

I also learnt Russian in school and I think it's not the easiest, but in the same time it's the hardest language. For example I think German was much much more trickier than Russian. There's lots of irregularity in grammar and not always the words are pronounced as written (o is sometimes pronounced as a etc). I could say that if you learn the cyrillic alphabet you will notice that Russian has borrowed lots of loan words from German/English/Swedish/French and it easies the learning a lot if you are familiar with those languages. I haven't either used Russian for a long time and starting forgetting.....

As I'm german, I have no problems with it. But I agree, most foreigners I know claim german is very hard to learn.

@pezus: I can't Icelandic, is it really that hard?

Hi! Not visited Finland yet. Too many places inside Russia I haven't travelled yet. Baykal and Vladivostok come to mind first.

It's like an alien language.

OT: Is vodka like the beer of Russia? Available to anyone and everyone yet still vastly prefered over something that could arguably be better.

This thread is great. Russia is fascination. I have love/hate relationship to Russia. Currently it's a great balance against the damn, rotten and politically correct EU.

No. Vodka is sold now only during day hours (from 10 till 23 if i'm not mistaken). Also its not sold to children, if shop sells vodka to kids younger than 18 years it could have serous penalties or even be closed.
Vodka consumption is falling lately in Russia. And overall alcohol consumption going down also. A lot of my friends stopped drinking at all. Many people also changing their habits from drinking vodka to whiskey/brandy. I prefer whiskey with ice too. Never liked vodka tbh.

Thank you, I also like this thread! )