They don’t know how to do business here

This at least is the opinion of Fabrice, the hitchhiking Frenchman we met on the minibus to Tomsk. And he has a point here. Customer service is equal to zero. Their way of doing business mainly consists in trying to cheat tourists out of their money and with so much inflexibility that they even risk to lose their customers completely, see the example of the minibus in Novosibirsk trying to collect more passengers and in the process risking to lose the existing ones.
In restaurants it is not better. In Tomsk, we were trying to have dinner at Foodmaster, a hip place. When we arrived, there were no free tables, and instead of telling us to sit a moment and look for a table that was likely to be available soon, they looked at us as if saying “Why are you still standing around here? Can’t you see we’re full, leave already.” The very same happened to us at the Sushi place next door. And at “Mixer”, a fast food restaurant displaying a menu of hamburgers and cheeseburgers, they explained me that they didn’t have any hamburgers at all. No excuse me or obliging smiles either.
Another oddity of Russian transactions is the “pay now”. For many things, they expect payment before the service is performed (which might also reflect on the local payment morale). Hotels, room service, baggage room, etc.
The idea that accommodating the customer’s wishes would lead to better business opportunities somehow has not arrived here yet. Even if the service itself is performed impeccably, their way of dealing with the customers often strikes me as unfriendly. We were wondering whether the local business mentality is a remnant of the communist regime, but we’ve not yet found a good answer.

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Andrei

“Traveling through Russia is so depressing that you should bring a bottle of vodka with you”. This we were told before starting our trip, and no, this couldn’t be further away from truth. What is true, on the other hand, is that most of the fun on the train doesn’t come from the landscape (which still has its own beauty – at least during this season). What makes the journey interesting are mainly the people you meet. Some of those we met spoke English, most of them not. I’m only sorry my Russian is completely non-existent and I have to keep asking Susanne for translations. For the moment being, we always travelled in four-berth compartments, which inevitably creates some sort of intimacy with the other passengers. And they definitely like to chat. A children’s tale we were told goes as follows. A father and a son are travelling very far. The child is getting bored because he doesn’t know what to do and asks his dad to make the way shorter. To which he answers “this is not a problem: just start to tell a story and we will arrive earlier”. Which is of course true.

One of our encounters has been more special than the others. Well, I guess that special is not the right word. I should rather say surrealistic.

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