Saturday, August 06, 2011

The Kremlin Must Wait

Whew, between a vodka tasting the night before last and a beer garden near where the boat docked yesterday there wasn't much posting going on. But the gentle rocking of the boat does make for nice napping. Now we are on our way to St. Petersburg and somewhat in the middle of nowhere so the internet connection is spotty, at best. My posting about the Kremlin will have to wait until another day because uploading pictures is next to impossible.

We had a little talk about life in Russia and it was fairly interesting. No housing crash here. If you can get a mortgage at all the interest rates are around 15% and the length of the mortgage is only for three to five years. People actually save up to buy what they need. What an interesting concept. Russia also has the lowest national debt of any G20 country, 151.3 billion dollars or 6.8% of their Gross Domestic Product. The United States' is over 14 trillion, as by now just about everyone knows, and this is 98% of our GDP.

Okay, that is it for now. Time to go see a DVD of the high-lights of our trip so far. And I am sure it will be offered for sale. We never buy these, preferring our own distorted memories which are usually much better than reality. And, unlike the DVD, our memories just get better over time. In fact we are now starting to remember trips we have never been on.

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