Russian 🇷🇺 here lobbing in the UK for the last 20 years AMA

[YourRubyHiker]

I don’t fee like disclosing my first nationality anymore. Ask if you have any questions or give me thumbs up if you feel the same xx

p.s: it should have said living not ‘lobbing’ ha 🤦🏻‍♀️

Lobbing! Ha ha!!

Hopefully people here in the UK are understanding

I spent quite a bit of time in Russia as a young adult (was last there in 2000) but it's not somewhere I want to go back and visit currently...

Has Russia changed much since you left? Do you still go back and visit family? When I was there, outside of Moscow and St Petersburg, I could still imagine it was the USSR. The blocks of flats, trams, statues of Lenin. Babushki sweeping the streets with manual brooms and selling those pirazhki (not sure how to spell in Roman alphabet) on train station platforms, men spitting out the shells of sunflower seeds on the floor. Having to queue and order things in a shop rather than picking up from a shelf. Getting told off in the street. Getting told off for a broken coat hook by the cloakroom attendant. Happy days!

Ah you’ve unlocked some memories for me! I haven’t been back in under a decade but when I visited last time I was really surprised how modern my city was starting to feel ( Moscow).

Do you speak your native language in public in the UK? What about if you're speaking to Ukrainians? Any advice for a near-beginner learning Russian? (I could ask XDH or DS for advice, but the former is a twat and the latter laughs at my execrable accent.)

Oh dear, they sound really harsh! Well done for learning Russian! It’s not an easy language to learn. Tips would probably be get yourself someone you can speak with and listen to Russian movies with subtitles (or dubbed ones that you know well). I also speak a bit of German, Spanish and French and that’s how I learnt it. A friend of mine learnt Italian and English by using textbooks and watching films too.

I have a couple of Russian friends here and I do speak Russian in public with them. Although when we are within an earshot of a person we know we tend to switch to English. Western Ukrainians speak Russian between themselves too and sometimes it’s hard even for a trained ear to tell who’s from where, let alone strangers on the street. My dad’s side of family is Ukrainian and I’ve visited my great grandparents aunties etc near Kiev all my childhood.

Anything that you miss? What would be a culture shock for brits living there?

Do you think when putin finally dies things will get better?

Any good russian film or tv recs?