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Category: Reviews
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The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the press that visa free travel between Russia and Israel will be possible starting from the 20th of September 2008.

The agreement was signed earlier this year, however, both parties had to update some local laws in order for this agreement to be implemented.


Category: Thoughts
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For today's football game between Russia and Spain we prepared a useful phrasebook, which will allow you to express yourself to the full extent.

User's Manual:
Spanish (Russian transliteration) - Russian (English transliteration) - English

Hijo de puta (ихо де пута) - сукин сын (sukin syn) - son of a bitch

Cabron (каброн) - козел (kozel) - asshole

Maricon (марикон) - пидарас (pidaras) - faggot

Mierda (мьерда) - гавно (gavno) - shit

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Category: Thoughts
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Sports results are important for our vulnerable national feeling. You see, being Russian is tough: in order to be happy, you have to feel better than the others all the time, it is simply in our nature. Commonly we use great national sports results to feel satisfied with ourselves instead of focusing on personal achievements. However, we've never been proud of our soccer results: even though this sport is perhaps the most popular in Russia, we never succeeded in any significant tournament.

Moscow celebrating footbal victory
2008 © photo by The Pioneer (Detkov) @ FlickR

That's why when everybody noticed that Russia had chances at the tournament, people went crazy: over 500 000 went on the streets in Moscow alone. They'd celebrate the victory until 8am in the morning, hug and kiss each other on the street. The atmosphere was pervaded with the feeling of total love and unity: something Russia needs really badly right now.

Football fans crowds in Moscow
2008 © photo by The Pioneer (Detkov) @ FlickR

It was not about the victory itself but more about an excuse to shed off all the problems and aggression and start smiling to strangers and just feel happy.

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Category: Places
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The new resource www.gdeetotdom.ru allows you to find a photo of almost any house in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

A very useful tool if you're thinking about renting or buying a flat or just want to make sure that you will be able to find the house you need easily.

Gde etot dom

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Category: Reviews
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Russia presented the new olympic games uniform. The designs are reminiscent of the 1950s, and the hats remind the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev's style.

увеличить фото ...
Коммерсантъ. Издательский дом
view more photos...

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Category: Reviews
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Back in the Soviet union we used to have this popular TV program by Anatoly Kashpirovsky where he was hypnotizing the whole country through TV. You could see people falling into trance, sleepwalking, raising their hands when Kashpirowski told them to...

Kashpirovsky had this heavy gaze and used to count slowly and tell people that "everything is good", "your headache is gone", "you feel light and happy"... Imagine all this was happening at the end of 80s, when the Soviet union was collapsing and some people didn't have much to eat. The best of escapist TV ever!




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Category: Thoughts
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Have you ever wondered what catches people's attention first, when they see a map of the world, election bulletin, your family photograph, or the Google website?

Well, now there's a tool called Feng GUI, which allows you to do exactly that: upload any picture and create a "heatmap" of it. The points on the heatmap show the main focal points and areas of attention on the picture.

While the tool can be very interesting for web designers, who can test prototypes of their websites, as well as photographers, and video makers (yes, they've got a video version of it as well – see a trailer at the end of the post – exciting!), we at Way to Russia were really concerned about the impact of Feng GUI on our motherland, that is Russia.

The first thing that came in mind, was to scan the recent 2008 President Election Bulletin, and look what we found:

2008 Russia election bulletin heatmap

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