i lived in volgograd for a summer and got a masters degree in russian studies. i found it depressing. the food was quite bad, the people are nice, but odd, and i felt everything was overcommercialized, which is strange to say, coming from the us. i went to a karaoke night with some friends and felt like a celebrity since it was mostly english songs. some drunk guy pulled me aside and said if i ever need a podiatrist to give him a call lol.

my impression is that a lot of the men i knew were overly macho and annoying and a lot of the women were very superficial. of course, the country isn't a monolith. I visited SPB and Moscow and had very different impressions than volgograd, but i didn't spend enough time in either place to feel authoritative. A friend from my program lived in Siberia for an extended period of time (like a year or two from what I remember) and he apparently had a blast. The Far East has the same kind of mentality as the American West, people are much more individualistic and anti-government / authority, for better or worse. I still want to travel across the Transiberian Railroad one day, but idk, i think it would get tedious pretty fast