Russian People- are they cold? Russians don't smile?

About Russian people-are they cold?

When talking to my friends about Russia, what I get 80% of the time was:
wow~Russia~they are cold, ~Russian people don’t smile~
Lol, I guess that’s just what 80% of us Taiwanese think about Russia (and how pretty they are of course!).

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內容目錄

Are Russian people really cold?

For the ones who are curious whether this is true or not, I don’t have an exact answer but why they are considered “cold” it’s due to the fact that they “don’t smile”.
“Wow~people really are smileless here” personally when in Moscow this never came up in my mind. To me Moscow just a regular big city in which people are busy with their own business, like every big city- Russian lifestyle, busy lifestyle. People just have their business in mind or either rushing to another place.
Though, I believe you will be amused by the conversation I had with my friends here.

You are always smiling…

I have a friend here in Moscow who works with my bf. We don’t chat long every time we see each other, but whenever she is free we could chat for at least an hour. Although we don’t get to talk much every time but whenever we see each other we smile, and wave~ a gesture of saying: Hi friend!

One day after greeting each other, she sat down and said:
👩🏻‍🦰You seem so happy every time I see you! You are always smiling!
🙎🏻‍♀️Haha, really? You seem happy as well! You are smiling also!

After we said bye that day, I was still puzzled by her question…don’t people smile while they are greeting, or am I smiling too big?🤔 So I asked my bf:
🙎🏻‍♀️”Am I smiling too often or too much? [Her name]Told me today that I am always smiling, does that make me a weirdo?”
👩🏻‍🦲”Don’t bother, it’s just that people don’t smile that much when they greet each other, maybe just by nodding their head or just a small grin, if you show too much passion it’s considered weird.”
🙎🏻‍♀️”ohh..”

read also:
Maslenitsa festival-The happiest week of the year in Russia

If you don’t speak Russian, what to expect in Moscow

Surprisingly saying, Moscow is not “that” foreigner-friendly in my opinion. Not many museums are fully translated into English(Check out St. Basil’s cathedral! It is!), many signs on the road are only in Russian, last but not least…I would say 75% of Russian don’t speak English.

Let me explain for myself first that I am not judging Moscow by its English ability, but the clerks in shops-their attitudes sometimes just really pisses me off. Don’t get me wrong again, I am not saying all clerks, I’ve met the good ones and the bad ones, and the amount of the bad ones just really makes me 🤬
Many of the clerks who don’t speak English are pretty friendly and they try their best to talk with you (although not in English), but there is also a not little amount of them who just acts terribly when they know you don’t speak their language. Either they ignore you when you are talking to them or they don’t even look at you. I can distinguish if they are just embarrassed that they don’t speak English, or they just don’t even bother to talk with someone who doesn’t speak their language…so…

To sum it up, in life you just meet both the good and the bad, be prepared and enjoy it😂

Today I have physical proof to show you that my Russian boyfriend is not cold at all!

We stayed at an Airbnb and we had a newcomer neighbor living downstairs which we said Hi maybe 5 times. One day, just a regular: “How are you?” chat, the woman mentioned that she was sick for a week. After 5 minutes back home my boyfriend sent me to ask her if she needed any food or medicine. So the 👆🏻 picture is him sharing his stock medicine with her.

Lol~anyway, when in Russia don’t bother yourself with “should I smile or not”, just be you like I do. The only suggestion I have for you is that don’t smile intentionally when you’re at Russia’s customs. It just seems fishy to them…just be..natural.