R U S S I A
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St Petersburg has been dubbed the Venice of the North for its palace-lined waterways. It managed to escape the architectural incursions of Stalinism and its grandiose relics of tsarist days are largely intact. Sculpted by islands and the sinuous Neva River, the city is a vista of geometric elegance.
Within St Petersburg's geometry is a dust-devil of influences and styles and a bewitching vortex of life's extremes. It's breathtakingly gorgeous, it's ruefully falling apart; it's viscerally sensual, it's crude and vulgar; its very essence gets under your skin, but remains forever outside your grasp.
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Moscow is the barometer and nucleus of the changes sweeping through Russia. Nowhere are Russia's contrasts more apparent than here - ancient monasteries and ultra-modern monoliths stand side by side, and 'New Russian' millionaires and poverty-stricken pensioners walk the same streets.
Moscovites now prefer international name brands to monolithic department stores, and the beautiful churches vandalised or abandoned during the Soviet era of hardline atheism are being lovingly restored. But the real flavour of this city is in its nooks and crannies, each of them unique.
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