My newest video just dropped titled "Russia's Shocking Future Exposed by One Insightful Formula", it's already one of the most viewed on this channel: ruclips.net/video/2AP5yFf8SY0/видео.html Would love to hear your thoughts about this controversial topic!
This story reminds me of the time I visited Ukraine after the Soviet Union broke up. I went to visit the beautiful city of Odessa and they had very few foreign tourists. As soon as I spoke to Ukrainians in English it was like I came from a different planet. They were so inquisitive and interested and wanted to know what it was really like in the west. If I went to a restaurant or bar and they knew we were westerners they treated us like Gods. Really nice experience.
Lovely story Elvira, wow you met a real American!!! 😂It's great to hear these stories, breaks down the imagined barriers between peoples, I always had a fascination and fondness for the Russian people. It started in the 70's. We had only one TV channel here then in Ireland, they broadcast a series called "The Unknown War", narrated by Burt Lancaster. It told of the Great Patriotic War and left a lasting impression on me to this day. Thank you and well done 🤗
@@GerFarrell-tm2ee just like us. My parents had only one TV channel, and my generation had two, then three. The third one totally deserves a separate video.
It was a very interesting experience, and missionaries are usually the brave souls to venture into unknown territories, so it's not surprising that I met them.
In the USSR anyone expressing an interest in foreign travel was automatically guilty of the crime of Anti Soviet Agitation and could expect to be arrested.
Thanks for the story. So many of us grew up praying for the Soviet Union that a few would eventually commit to serving as missionaries. However, cross-cultural training was poor to put it mildly. Many of us may have heard from missionaries who ate whatever their tribal hosts put before them, but I think few would have thought that would apply to them in the house of a “modern” babushka!
I was in Kazakhstan in the early 1990s, where I taught German at a university. At that time there were only a handful of Germans there! No one believed what I had to say about the West. Then I had a visionary thought: How nice it would be if everyone here could buy a handy device with a screen to receive texts and images from all over the world! Then they could easily check what I said.
The RUclips algorithm finally recommended one of your videos to me in Charlotte NC USA and I just subscribed to your channel. I am looking forward to listening to more interesting stories like the one that you told here. Thank you for all the work that you put into your channel.
Elvira said "Bless her heart"about the American girl 😅 Wondering if that phrase has the multi layered meaning as the American South😉 So glad your subscriber level is steadily climbing...
‘Oh, Bless your heart, deary!’ can be a double-edged sword. 1) You stopped watching the game on TV and helped mom bring in the groceries AND made her supper… all without asking ~ that’s a GOOD “Oh, Bless your heart..” Good job, boy! 2) Your Aunty Beth asks you to help her put on her coat, and you politely mention she might ought to get a bigger coat now, as you sort struggle to get her fat arms into the sleeves. “Oh Bless your heart, deary!” Which is bad. That actually translates to something like “You dirty rotten bastard ain’t got no shine on me, shut yer trap! No one ya asked you nothin’ bout nothin’! “
I've met loads of US Americans here in Germany in my time. Some were a bit weird, mostly preacher types, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses and such. But most were great people, a lot of fun to be with.
@@wdd3141 Typical bible basher, making up Bible stories instead of actually reading up on what it really says in the Bible. No, nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say that. I was brought up a Catholic and we were taught not to go out to preach to people. We were taught that preaching belongs exclusively in churches and if anyone wants to listen to a preacher he has to visit a church. That's how real Christians practise their faith, my friend.
I feel sad for Olya's Grandma 😕 I hope Olya found some replacement sausages for her. I enjoy your insightful vignettes, thank you, Elvira. The stunningly good RUclips algorithm is recommending me your videos, perhaps because I watch Yeah Russia & Depressed Russian
The car salesman joke is actually true, not the plumber part, of course. Even those who could afford a car at that time (and there were very few) had to wait years for one to be delivered.
Your narration is absolutely fantastic. You have a clear passion for the art of storytelling and it's infectious. My father was one of those Indian foreigners you mention at the beginning - only, we were escaping the collapse of a certain central African failed state, and the UK graciously accepted us as migrants. My father had a similar experience with being invited over by the locals, to be generously served food that... he would decline, because by his religion he couldn't eat pork. Regardless, he was repeatedly invited back. I wish I could edit your audio - it's a little trebly. The room needs some sound-dampening. Perhaps recording in a smaller space would aid this, but the backdrop of your current recording space is perfect. I'm using studio/monitor headphones for recording music so I could be wrong. The timbre of your voice is one that holds audiences - like a professional audiobook narrator. I've a fair belief that you'll be working with studio equipment before long!
Thank you for your support and suggestions about the audio. The audio issue should be fixed in the next few videos, keep an eye out and let me know if it's better.
I would love to hear all the off-camera cursing, swearing and grumbling 😂❤ But seriously, I follow a couple of other Russians on RUclips including Roman at NKFRZ. He charts his course from leaving Chelyabinsk (which I had heard of thanks to the PHENOMENAL meteor strike there!!!) via Georgia - and, when the shit started hitting the fan there too - an onwards move to Lisbon. His vibe is skateboarder/computer nerd albeit, like you, he has fabulous English - but unlike you - so calm, so practical, so dignified - he delivers his video snippets of tales from the USSR, life philosophy, his childhood, his present difficulties as a stateless person etc like a cross between a slightly over stimulated puppy and a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown 😂😂 There is, nonetheless, a common "Russianness" though, which I can notice across the board: I already overdid this word but I come back to it again and again - Russians are just so lugubrious 😂❤ Really, tales like the one you told prove it. If it had been set in England instead, Granny, you and your schoolfriend would all have had yummy sausages for tea!!! Not the bitter-sweet-gloominess of "haha, the sausages? They ended up in the kyet"😂😂😂 ❤❤❤ So SO Russian!!
Thanks for the tip about NKFRZ and Roman. I'll definitely check it out. Never heard lugubrious used before in a sentence - such a fancy word, have to remember it. :)
Agreed regarding religion. It has never ceased to amaze me how little most Russians grasp the spirituality of Tolstoy, let alone American preachers. When you're a frog at the treatment-plant ponds of Marxism, who needs fresh water?
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing! We Americans have to put up with religious people too. Because we have freedom of religion, there are hundreds of religions. And they all have different beliefs. Some think they are the only true religion. Because they all can't be true, and because of hypocrisy, church attendance is slowly falling in America. Most young people see through the smokescreen. That does not mean that we are turning into atheists. I for instance consider myself a spiritual person, and I believe that there is a God and an afterlife. But I have came to conclude that all organized religions were invented by men, and that the Bible was written by men who claimed they spoke for God. But God has had nothing to do with creating religions and the Bible.
I've also heard that young generations are moving away from organized religion. I just hope that they can find the sense of community religion used to bring for older generations somewhere else.
Correction: Gorky was not a closed city because of military industry factories, but because of pervasive paranoia of soviet leadership and obsession to control the populace to prevent any type of upheaval. Almost all of the USSR was closed and 'military objects' were just an excuse. That was a horrible anti-human system.
Not yet, but it's definitely on the list of countries I'd love to visit. Ireland looks like a green paradise in videos :) What's the best time of the year to visit Ireland?
@ I’m living in Kerry, I took landscape photos yesterday and today on my iPhone and shared them with my cousins in Limerick and they think they are spectacular. Honestly it’s hard to say when is the best time, there is no bad time, you can just be lucky with the weather. It seems the thing visitors like the best is meeting the people. We get about twice as many visitors per capita as France, which has the highest in the world in absolute numbers. Ten miles from my home is a town with a population of less than 15,000 named Killarney and it gets over a million visitors every year. I hope that helps.
I'm a native-born U.S. citizen, and speak English, French, and Spanish. I know just a few words in Russian, not enough to hold an intelligent conversation. Sorry. My physician is Russian, and we have interesting conversations. It sounds so strange to me that at that early stage in life you describe in this video you'd never encountered anybody from other countries; I live in northeast United States, and it's common to meet people of various ethnic groups and other countries here. My own family is descended from French Canadian immigrants. The Soviet Union was quite large geographically and included many cultures; the written language of Georgia is not in Cyrillic alphabet, I understand. So it appeared likely that you'd encountered ethnic diversity within your own territory. Were there travel restrictions that discouraged such exposure?
Thank you for your comment. Different nationalities that lived in the USSR were not considered foreigners, but rather fellow Soviet citizens of various republics. They were free to travel around the USSR, but to live lawfully in a major city, like Moscow or Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) they needed a special permission called "propiska". "Propiska" was actually needed for any Soviet citizen (not just non-ethnic Russians) to live in cities they weren't born in.
Yes. Originally it was Nizhny Novgorod, but during the Soviet times the city got renamed to Gorky in honor of Maxim Gorky, the writer. Multiple cities in the Soviet Union got renamed this way and then got renamed back to their originals in the 90s: Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Stalingrad (Volgograd), Kuybyshev (Samara)
Hia, I'm an American and I believe your country is justified in self-preservation based on the broken promises of Western leaders (regarding the spread of NATO) and the Maidan coup in 2014. I'm tired of my country pulling regime changes and creating chaos around the world so we can suck up other countries' recourses. I wish everyone anywhere without power or control over their situation to be as happy and safe as possible. Between my government and Israel, I'm truly disgusted with their actions.
My newest video just dropped titled "Russia's Shocking Future Exposed by One Insightful Formula", it's already one of the most viewed on this channel: ruclips.net/video/2AP5yFf8SY0/видео.html
Would love to hear your thoughts about this controversial topic!
You're having fun and it shows. Hard to find genuine people on social media, but you are one.
If you would like to meet another American, please come to Taiwan. I live here now, and I am not a vegetarian! Bring your sausages!
Highly illuminating must-view !!! 🤔
This story reminds me of the time I visited Ukraine after the Soviet Union broke up. I went to visit the beautiful city of Odessa and they had very few foreign tourists. As soon as I spoke to Ukrainians in English it was like I came from a different planet. They were so inquisitive and interested and wanted to know what it was really like in the west. If I went to a restaurant or bar and they knew we were westerners they treated us like Gods. Really nice experience.
I think you have to be brave to venture out to a country that just opened to the outside world. I'm glad you had a good experience!
Heart warming
Very happy to help raise you from the ashes, Elvira, you have great spirit and can teach us alot. Plus brighten up our day, bless you.
Great story! Too bad about the sausages. Well - I'm sure the cat enjoyed them.
Lovely story Elvira, wow you met a real American!!! 😂It's great to hear these stories, breaks down the imagined barriers between peoples, I always had a fascination and fondness for the Russian people. It started in the 70's. We had only one TV channel here then in Ireland, they broadcast a series called "The Unknown War", narrated by Burt Lancaster. It told of the Great Patriotic War and left a lasting impression on me to this day. Thank you and well done 🤗
@@GerFarrell-tm2ee just like us. My parents had only one TV channel, and my generation had two, then three. The third one totally deserves a separate video.
Cat ate the sausages...hilarious.
You're a great story teller.
Thank you for watching!
Yes, your story definitely put a smile on my face. Thank you!
I'm sorry that the first Americans you met were missionaries. We also have people who listen, as well as talk.
It was a very interesting experience, and missionaries are usually the brave souls to venture into unknown territories, so it's not surprising that I met them.
Doesn't sound like you ever listened to a missionary.
@@martijnb5887 Yes, this one my first experience with a one. I've met plenty since then, mostly here, in US.
In the USSR anyone expressing an interest in foreign travel was automatically guilty of the crime of Anti Soviet Agitation and could expect to be arrested.
It was always a status symbol.
Thanks for the story. So many of us grew up praying for the Soviet Union that a few would eventually commit to serving as missionaries. However, cross-cultural training was poor to put it mildly. Many of us may have heard from missionaries who ate whatever their tribal hosts put before them, but I think few would have thought that would apply to them in the house of a “modern” babushka!
I was in Kazakhstan in the early 1990s, where I taught German at a university. At that time there were only a handful of Germans there! No one believed what I had to say about the West. Then I had a visionary thought: How nice it would be if everyone here could buy a handy device with a screen to receive texts and images from all over the world! Then they could easily check what I said.
The RUclips algorithm finally recommended one of your videos to me in Charlotte NC USA and I just subscribed to your channel. I am looking forward to listening to more interesting stories like the one that you told here. Thank you for all the work that you put into your channel.
Thanks so much for your support, I hope you'll enjoy the upcoming content, I have lots of interesting things in the works! :)
I enjoy your eloquent insights.
Thank you!
You are an articulate and helpful observer! With a nicely decorated home!
The family cat made out real good that day :)
Thanks!🙂
Thank you for your support! Please let me know if there are other topics you'd like me to cover in future videos.
Elvira said "Bless her heart"about the American girl 😅 Wondering if that phrase has the multi layered meaning as the American South😉 So glad your subscriber level is steadily climbing...
Oh, she knows....
@@sail4life Did I say something wrong? I need to google it. I thought it was just a humorous expression.
@@elvirabary No, it was spot on! Some people might think it was just a kind expression but it comes with a bucket load of cynicism.
@@elvirabary I'm from the American South. You haven't done anything wrong. It can be used as a humorous expression and usually is in my experience.
‘Oh, Bless your heart, deary!’ can be a double-edged sword.
1) You stopped watching the game on TV and helped mom bring in the groceries AND made her supper… all without asking ~ that’s a GOOD “Oh, Bless your heart..” Good job, boy!
2) Your Aunty Beth asks you to help her put on her coat, and you politely mention she might ought to get a bigger coat now, as you sort struggle to get her fat arms into the sleeves.
“Oh Bless your heart, deary!” Which is bad. That actually translates to something like “You dirty rotten bastard ain’t got no shine on me, shut yer trap! No one ya asked you nothin’ bout nothin’! “
I've met loads of US Americans here in Germany in my time. Some were a bit weird, mostly preacher types, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses and such. But most were great people, a lot of fun to be with.
It's proof that their religion is fake, because true religion do not coming to you to preach you, you as guided one come without someone chasing you.
@@YamadaSena That sounds strange, as Jesus is alleged to have said to his friends, "Go forth and teach all nations."
@@wdd3141 Typical bible basher, making up Bible stories instead of actually reading up on what it really says in the Bible.
No, nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say that. I was brought up a Catholic and we were taught not to go out to preach to people. We were taught that preaching belongs exclusively in churches and if anyone wants to listen to a preacher he has to visit a church. That's how real Christians practise their faith, my friend.
Your videos are a balm to the soul. Thank you.
Even without vodka. Ваше здоровье!
Thank you !
It would be missionaries that got there first. My apologies, they do that kind of thing.
You made me smile. Great details.
Thank you!
I feel sad for Olya's Grandma 😕 I hope Olya found some replacement sausages for her.
I enjoy your insightful vignettes, thank you, Elvira.
The stunningly good RUclips algorithm is recommending me your videos, perhaps because I watch Yeah Russia & Depressed Russian
Thank you for your support and channel recommendations, I will definitely check them out!
You made me laugh.
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan used to tell jokes from the Soviet Union. Some of them show up on RUclips.
The car salesman joke is actually true, not the plumber part, of course. Even those who could afford a car at that time (and there were very few) had to wait years for one to be delivered.
A like and a sub from a New Zealand vegetarian. Hope the cat was ok.
Thank you!
I've been to Votkinsk, that was a closed city too. Good times a while ago before all the troubles.
Yes, good times!
Your narration is absolutely fantastic. You have a clear passion for the art of storytelling and it's infectious. My father was one of those Indian foreigners you mention at the beginning - only, we were escaping the collapse of a certain central African failed state, and the UK graciously accepted us as migrants.
My father had a similar experience with being invited over by the locals, to be generously served food that... he would decline, because by his religion he couldn't eat pork. Regardless, he was repeatedly invited back.
I wish I could edit your audio - it's a little trebly. The room needs some sound-dampening. Perhaps recording in a smaller space would aid this, but the backdrop of your current recording space is perfect. I'm using studio/monitor headphones for recording music so I could be wrong.
The timbre of your voice is one that holds audiences - like a professional audiobook narrator. I've a fair belief that you'll be working with studio equipment before long!
Thank you for your support and suggestions about the audio. The audio issue should be fixed in the next few videos, keep an eye out and let me know if it's better.
Uganda, one of the many African failed states.
I would love to hear all the off-camera cursing, swearing and grumbling 😂❤ But seriously, I follow a couple of other Russians on RUclips including Roman at NKFRZ. He charts his course from leaving Chelyabinsk (which I had heard of thanks to the PHENOMENAL meteor strike there!!!) via Georgia - and, when the shit started hitting the fan there too - an onwards move to Lisbon. His vibe is skateboarder/computer nerd albeit, like you, he has fabulous English - but unlike you - so calm, so practical, so dignified - he delivers his video snippets of tales from the USSR, life philosophy, his childhood, his present difficulties as a stateless person etc like a cross between a slightly over stimulated puppy and a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown 😂😂
There is, nonetheless, a common "Russianness" though, which I can notice across the board: I already overdid this word but I come back to it again and again - Russians are just so lugubrious 😂❤ Really, tales like the one you told prove it. If it had been set in England instead, Granny, you and your schoolfriend would all have had yummy sausages for tea!!! Not the bitter-sweet-gloominess of "haha, the sausages? They ended up in the kyet"😂😂😂 ❤❤❤ So SO Russian!!
Thanks for the tip about NKFRZ and Roman. I'll definitely check it out. Never heard lugubrious used before in a sentence - such a fancy word, have to remember it. :)
Agreed regarding religion. It has never ceased to amaze me how little most Russians grasp the spirituality of Tolstoy, let alone American preachers. When you're a frog at the treatment-plant ponds of Marxism, who needs fresh water?
I hope the cats appreciated the sausage.
The cat did the "cat" thing, and didn't care much either way.
Love your stories here in New Zealand!
Thank you. New Zealand and Australia are definitely on my list to visit!
Ha Ha Ha! She said she was a vegetarian.
Funny!
👍🙂
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing! We Americans have to put up with religious people too. Because we have freedom of religion, there are hundreds of religions. And they all have different beliefs. Some think they are the only true religion. Because they all can't be true, and because of hypocrisy, church attendance is slowly falling in America. Most young people see through the smokescreen. That does not mean that we are turning into atheists. I for instance consider myself a spiritual person, and I believe that there is a God and an afterlife. But I have came to conclude that all organized religions were invented by men, and that the Bible was written by men who claimed they spoke for God. But God has had nothing to do with creating religions and the Bible.
I've also heard that young generations are moving away from organized religion. I just hope that they can find the sense of community religion used to bring for older generations somewhere else.
The Ten Commandments are greatly beneficial. Marxism breaks almost of those if not all and the countries are pest-holes.
Yes 🖐️💯 it was funny
Thank you!
Correction: Gorky was not a closed city because of military industry factories, but because of pervasive paranoia of soviet leadership and obsession to control the populace to prevent any type of upheaval. Almost all of the USSR was closed and 'military objects' were just an excuse. That was a horrible anti-human system.
What a lovely lady you are :) good look, John uk
😀
Shame about the sausages, Elvira . I think the woman should have eaten them out of respect to the hosts,
Have you and your husband visited any other countries Elvira?
@@XiOjala yes, we traveled around the world as tourists and I did some research in Argentina and China for my historical novels.
@@elvirabaryhave you ever been to Ireland?
Warm greetings from the west coast of the Emerald Isle.
Not yet, but it's definitely on the list of countries I'd love to visit. Ireland looks like a green paradise in videos :) What's the best time of the year to visit Ireland?
@ I’m living in Kerry, I took landscape photos yesterday and today on my iPhone and shared them with my cousins in Limerick and they think they are spectacular.
Honestly it’s hard to say when is the best time, there is no bad time, you can just be lucky with the weather.
It seems the thing visitors like the best is meeting the people.
We get about twice as many visitors per capita as France, which has the highest in the world in absolute numbers. Ten miles from my home is a town with a population of less than 15,000 named Killarney and it gets over a million visitors every year.
I hope that helps.
@@elvirabary Wow. I'm impressed.
I love you ❤
😂😂😂
I'm a native-born U.S. citizen, and speak English, French, and Spanish. I know just a few words in Russian, not enough to hold an intelligent conversation. Sorry.
My physician is Russian, and we have interesting conversations. It sounds so strange to me that at that early stage in life you describe in this video you'd never encountered anybody from other countries; I live in northeast United States, and it's common to meet people of various ethnic groups and other countries here. My own family is descended from French Canadian immigrants. The Soviet Union was quite large geographically and included many cultures; the written language of Georgia is not in Cyrillic alphabet, I understand. So it appeared likely that you'd encountered ethnic diversity within your own territory. Were there travel restrictions that discouraged such exposure?
Thank you for your comment. Different nationalities that lived in the USSR were not considered foreigners, but rather fellow Soviet citizens of various republics. They were free to travel around the USSR, but to live lawfully in a major city, like Moscow or Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) they needed a special permission called "propiska". "Propiska" was actually needed for any Soviet citizen (not just non-ethnic Russians) to live in cities they weren't born in.
The USSR had an internal passport. Mr. John Wayne Cheeseburger discusses this on his channel.
A vegetarian xD
Another r in your surname and you’d be named after Ireland’s favourite tea.
And an Irish-Norman.
My accent would betray me.
@ there’s an estimated 100,000,000 people with Irish ethnicity in the world.
Most obviously don’t speak with an Irish accent.
why did they change the name from Gorky?? I understand changing Leningrad and Stalingrad but Gorky??
The name changed back to Nizhny Novgorod from Gorky in 1990.
@@elvirabaryWas the city of Gorky named after a man called Maxim Gorky?
Yes. Originally it was Nizhny Novgorod, but during the Soviet times the city got renamed to Gorky in honor of Maxim Gorky, the writer. Multiple cities in the Soviet Union got renamed this way and then got renamed back to their originals in the 90s: Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Stalingrad (Volgograd), Kuybyshev (Samara)
@@elvirabary Thanks!
Hia, I'm an American and I believe your country is justified in self-preservation based on the broken promises of Western leaders (regarding the spread of NATO) and the Maidan coup in 2014. I'm tired of my country pulling regime changes and creating chaos around the world so we can suck up other countries' recourses.
I wish everyone anywhere without power or control over their situation to be as happy and safe as possible. Between my government and Israel, I'm truly disgusted with their actions.
There was no coup in Ukraine in 2014. Yanukovych fled to Russia when he was charged with corruption and abuse of power.
WHAT?
Great story. Though I think had Melissa been really really polite, she would have eaten the sausages anyway.
To be fair to Melissa, I don't think she understood the importance and rarity of that sausage :)