Today is Conception Day in Russia!

by Neil Woodburn on

If you happen to be in Ulyanovsk, Russia today, man are you in luck!

In an effort to boost Russia’s sagging population, the local government has proclaimed Wednesday, September 12, to be Family Contact Day.

What does that mean, exactly?

Well, today is exactly nine months before Russia’s national holiday on June 12. Anyone who pops out a baby on that day will be awarded a ‘valuable prize.” Last year, one lucky mother won a brand new car for giving birth on this special day.

Officially dubbed, “Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia Day,” the pseudo-holiday is nothing more than a gentle reminder to go home and boink. In fact, according to the Moscow Times, the local governor has asked companies to give their employees the day off to help accomplish this patriotic act.

Don’t you just love post-communist Russia?

Russia Gets its First Starbucks

by Catherine Bodry on

While the Forbidden City is forbidding Starbucks, the global coffee chain finally opened its doors in Russia two years after it won a legal battle to protect its brand in the Russian market. It took long enough. McDonald’s has been there since 1990, so I’m surprised it took Starbucks over 10 years to set up shop in Russia.

The shop is located in a Mega shopping mall in Khimki, just north of Moscow. The company plans to open another shop on Moscow’s historic Stary Arbat street before 2007 is up, but is keeping mum on further expansion plans.

My prediction? It won’t be long before Starbucks shops pop up across Russia like pimples on an adolescent’s face.

[via Reuters]

Where on Earth Week 22: Moscow

by Neil Woodburn on


Congrats go out to Jim Lee and Kyle for correctly identifying this as the holocaust memorial “behind the Great Patriotic War Museum” in Moscow.

The memorial can be found within Victory Park, an enormous complex in the suburbs of Moscow which houses a Russian Orthodox church, a synagogue, a mosque, a rather large museum detailing the events of World War II, a one-ton memorial obelisk standing 140 meters tall, and this 8-meter tall, memorial to the victims of the holocaust. This sobering Tragedy of Peoples is a haunting portrayal by controversial Moscow sculptor Zurab Tsereteli.

Victory Park itself isn’t the first place on most tourist itineraries. In fact, most visitors probably never make it out this far from the city center. The park, despite its morbid themes expressed in a variety of artistic ways, is still a very nice place for a stroll as well as an opportunity to observe locals enjoying themselves on a sunny afternoon. Many Russians come here to just hang out, skateboard, and drink. It’s an odd mixture of paying respect to the war dead and seizing the day.

Russian Town Bans Phrase “I Don’t Know”

by Iva Skoch on

Have you ever tried to get anything done — report theft, start a business, get a driver’s license — in Eastern Europe? If so, you will appreciate what Alexander Kuzmin, the 33-year old mayor of a Siberian oil town of Megion, is trying to do: make bureaucrats more friendly.

He has banned the following phrases among state employees:

  • I don’t know
  • I can’t
  • What can we do
  • It’s not my job
  • It’s impossible
  • I am having lunch
  • There is no money
  • I was sick/on vacation

If they banned these in all of Eastern Europe, state employees would become officially mute. And they say Russia is not progressive. Pretty soon, their bureaucrats might even smile!

Want more Russia? Check these out:

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First Russian Space Tourist to be Launched in 2009

by Catherine Bodry on

Plans are already coming along for the world’s first space hotel, and now Russia is planning to send up its first space tourist, in 2009. Five other tourists have already paid (a cool $25 million!) for this honor, but four were from the U.S. and the other from South Africa.

The mystery man (described only as a serious, respectable, and young businessman and politician), is negotiating his ticket through Space Adventures, the company that brokers deals between potential space tourists and the Russian space agency.

The lucky tourist will be delivered to the International Space Station, but there are no reports of scheduled activities beyond that.