Sunday 8 March 2009

where the money goes

I spent the last days on trips in central Russia and the north western part.
two as sad as typical stories people told me there.

- a local surgeon told me, that her cities is on of the mongorod's, where basically one factory owns the city and employees all people. This doctors got for 2009 a budget to buy equipment of 3.000 euro.
Never mind, when the "natzalniki" (management) from Moscow visited they build an VIP toilet for 20.000 Euro

- my taxi driver in SPB had the luck to get a one million rubel subsidization for this outrageous expensive flats. However, to get this subsidization you have to fulfill so many ridiculous rules that you have to use some local agencies (controlled by the sames people who set up the subsidization).
So, from the social support of 1 mio Rbl he lost 600.000 rubles to this agencies.

:(

About this blog

This blog is a close up on Russia and the CIS. I am not giving you the big picture.
I would anyway fail. I am too long here. So beauty & decay,
education & corruption, high culture & kafka-style administration are meanwhile normal for me.
So this blog is like a painting from from Roy Lichtenstein... when you are with your nose on it :) You will just see the dots, not gaining any understanding of the whole.

Most things will look strange in this blog. But you can be sure, I would not live here, if there would not be a lot of great things here. Unfortunately, the weired stories are more interesting to tell & read.
Don’t judge Russia on this blog, if you want to know the country, come over and take a look by your own.

Gilles