Foreign tourists said that they are not satisfied with the Russian everyday life

The current flow of foreign tourists to Russia has not only decreased by more than 90%, but has also changed its composition. According to inbound tourism experts, among the few foreign guests of our country today, tourists from the Islamic Republic of Iran are in the lead, followed by citizens of Egypt, India and African countries. Therefore, the ridiculous situations – both funny and sad – in which foreigners inevitably find themselves in the Russian Federation for the first time, have become completely different.

On a frosty March day in Siberian Yekaterinburg, a tourist from sunny Egypt decided to take a selfie on the embankment, but did not take into account that there was pure ice under the snow. He slipped, fell from a height of three meters, woke up in the hospital. Alas, the consequences are the most serious: a closed craniocerebral injury, bruising of the anterior abdominal wall and chest, multiple fractures of the ribs.

– It’s good that passers-by promptly called an ambulance and she quickly arrived, – says the capital’s guide, who works with foreign groups. – And that the ambulance took a person with a foreign passport, and the hospital accepted him. Alas, in such cases, sometimes it takes a long time to figure out where to take a foreigner, losing precious minutes to save life and health. But the main problem is that foreign tourists are now without supervision. There are few of them, and most walk by themselves. This is normal, but if earlier our contingent was mostly European, now we have guests who are unfamiliar with Russia.

Fortunately, during other incredible adventures of foreigners in post-pandemic Russia, no one was hurt, but the new season of traditional tales “Russia through the eyes of a tourist” has definitely started. It doesn’t look much like previous seasons though. Our Indian guest from sultry Mumbai slipped and fell… from the ramp for the disabled at the railway station of the city near Moscow. Vijay claims that he went down the iron stairs, along which the ill-fated ramp stretched. But the steps turned out to be so slippery that the leg of a foreign guest in a patent leather boot slid down the icy descent. However, the Hindu replies to reproaches for the wrong selection of shoes for winter Russia:

– What’s wrong with my shoes! You should have seen this ladder! It’s a trampoline, not a ladder! Or a 45-degree downhill climbing machine.

Aet, a guest of Russia from African Djibouti, was very proud that before the long-awaited trip she had completed three-month Russian language courses in her homeland. But, sitting at the airport in a Moscow taxi, just in case, she nevertheless opened an online translator in her smartphone. The African woman applied all her knowledge and all the options of machine translation, but the taxi driver did not understand her. And to such an extent that he did not even move. And when a confused tourist shared her misunderstanding with the driver at the airport taxi ordering service, where it was twice as expensive, but they understood English, she was calmly answered: “Our taxi drivers do not speak Russian very well. Just click on the navigator. And three days later, the impressionable Aet, who also studied maps of Moscow and St. Petersburg with a list of sights before going to Russia, was surprised to say that passers-by in the center of Moscow have no idea what is where.

– Well-dressed young people are walking, they are hurrying somewhere, they are not looking around, – the African woman shares. – But if you ask how to get to something in the center, they are so surprised, as if I ask them how to fly to the moon! They shrug their shoulders and advise turning on the navigator.

The Iranians also got away from our hospitality. An Iranian tourist who came to the Russian capital with her husband, rejoicing that you can walk around Moscow alone (before that, Shamsi traveled only to Islamic countries, where Muslim women can only go accompanied by men), went out to wander around Moscow shops on her own. Shamsi’s husband also let her go not without joy: it can be very tiring to accompany his wife to the shops. But this time, Shamsi was at home an hour later, and in tears. It turned out that in a budget chain supermarket, where she accidentally wandered, a man spoke to her. Shamsi did not understand anything, but at first she was even flattered that they were paying attention to her. But then the stranger, saying something in Russian, began to pull Shamsi somewhere in the direction of the back rooms of the store. Suspecting a blatant harassment that threatened to turn into a sexual crime against her personality, Shamsi screamed. Buyers immediately gathered around, the man excitedly explained something to them, actively waving his arms, after which some began to laugh. But no one could explain anything to Shamsi: no one knew Farsi in that supermarket, and the guest herself did not know English. So she would not have understood anything if a girl in a supermarket uniform had not appeared from the depths of the store, speaking almost the language of Shamsi.

“It turned out to be a Tajik woman, a store worker,” explains Shamsi’s husband, who told his Russian friends this story. – Their accent is different, some words too, but we understand each other. She explained to her wife that the man was their foreman. And he didn’t want to get acquainted, but he confused my wife “with the truant Gyulzada”! Another Tajik saleswoman who didn’t show up for work that day.

But by and large, we are very happy with the guests. After all, if you believe the statistics of the border service of the FSB of the Russian Federation, since 2020 the number of foreign tourists in the Russian Federation has been declining every year. And since there are no guests, it means that we are not very hosts.