Russian Women Guide: Unravel mystery

Place: At the computer, in a dark bedroom, in the middle of a quiet American neighborhood Time: After midnight, close to sunrise Mission: Spice up your monotonous suburban life with some international intrigue.

Photo by Anna Nazarova

You are burning the midnight oil, swilling imported beer while dispatching electronic love letters across the lonely void to some Olga, Anna or Natasha. Eventually, things start to overload in this virtual relationship and you decide it's time to take the wired romance to a more advanced level. So you unplug yourself, board a jet plane to Moscow, and meet your Russian soul mate in the warm flesh and blood.

Welcome, cowboy, to the Motherland, the legendary land of milk and honey. So what should a wide-eyed westerner expect from a Russian female? Well, first you must be absolutely willing to leave your big bag of stereotypes at the border. They won’t help you here.

Russia, despite the advances that have been made in the field of communications, still gets its international media coverage courtesy of a cracked funhouse mirror at the local amusement park. Indeed, the stereotypes are so deeply etched into our mental hardware that even when we come face-to-face with the cool reality we fail to fully recognize or appreciate it. And so it is with that delightfully mystifying creature known as the Russian female.