Not so long ago a new tendency appeared in tourism: instead of having a rest in a noisy crowd at a hot beach people seek quietness and isolation, seek those few places on the planet where mobile phones do not work, where there are no artificially created things, and where no one can draw you away from enjoying wild nature.

Looking and behaving like a pure Muscovite can be useful when visiting Moscow. It partially reduces the risk of being robbed and can allow to buy tickets to some museums and other cultural and entertainment establishments at a lower price, due to many of them set higher prices for foreigners.

Amongst the advantages of Moscow the tourists mainly mention two: plenty of seductive prostitutes with a wide spectrum of prices on their services and the intense cultural life of the city. In this way Moscow does not appear on the list of the most boring European cities that includes, for instance, Brussels, Zurich, and Warsaw.

Wild Western Festival 2008 will take place on the territory of the horseracing-tourist base Avanpost in Mozhaisk town near Moscow on the 14th of June 2008. For the first time Wild Western Festival took place in Russia in autumn 2007 and caused high interest in people of different ages, horseracing professionals and amateurs, historians and re-enactors.

It is possible to find spa resorts all around Russia: in Moscow and the Moscow Region, in the Caucasus, in Altai and Ural. However, the most popular spa resorts of Russia are the cities of the Caucasus Mineral Waters: Pyatigorsk, Kislovodsk, and Essentuki, and also spa resorts at the Black Sea: in Anapa, Sochi, Gelendzhik, and Tuapse.

For 8 years already fellows of the Buryat State University organize specialized ecological tours to the Republic of Buryatia. Hundreds of tourists from different corners of the world are ready to cross thousands of kilometres for only seeing the birds, animals and insects or just to enjoy the view of beautiful nature.

Russia is a multi-confessional state where several world religions co-exist. The main confessions in Russia are Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Catholicism. Such bright palette of various faiths has given a number of unique architectural and cultural monuments.

Attending a dolphinarium can become a memorable entertainment during a trip to Russia. There are dolphinariums in many Russian cities; the majority of them are branches of the Utrish Dolphinarium LTD – the largest enterprise of this kind in Russia and one of the largest in Europe.

There are those who love Moscow and those who hate it. On the whole Moscow has many minuses but some people consider them pluses.

Lake Baikal has perfect conditions for mirages formation. The number of days with mirages at Baikal normally varies from 2 to 16; while seeing them is a great luck for tourists, the local fishermen often tell about ancient castles, old ships and trains, and even UFO witnessed above Baikal.

The ski resort Krasnaya Polyana is located at a height of 550 metres above sea level, 45 kilometres distant from Adler. It is quite a new and rapidly developing resort that has skiing slopes of various difficulty categories which can cause interest in both ski beginners and professionals.

Virgin Galactic appears a serious competitor for the Russian Space Agency and it is up to space tourists to decide what looks more interesting: watching the northern lights for $US 200.000 or flying around the colourless Moon for $US 100 million.

The year 2007 appears to be successful regarding tourism development. This optimistic statement of the head of the Federal Tourism Agency Vladimir Strzhalkovsky opened the yesterday’s press-conference that was organized to sum up and discuss the results of the travel industry in Russia in 2007.

What else can make the heart beat faster and more excitedly if not space travel? The Centre of Cosmonauts Training named after Yuri Gagarin on the territory of Star City gives brave and desperate tourists an opportunity to overcome the space acceleration, try hydrospace and real zero-gravity, and to pilot space aircraft simulators.

The number of foreign celebrities who have not visited Moscow decreases with every week. Russian musical promoters tell us about the way the western celebrities see Moscow including myths and stereotypes they have concerning the Russian capital.

Veterans of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Office say that in the Soviet times they daily caught at least 100 pickpockets at GUM Department Store in Moscow – the only store of the country with a goods flow. Nowadays the Russian capital still teems with thieves. A 47-year-old professional pickpocket Pavel Kroshkin (surname changed) enjoys freedom for the last 8 years although he has been caught several times during this period.

If believe the official numbers, nearly 2 million of Muslims live in Moscow. There are over 40 Muslim communities in different districts of the city. The majority of them are small groups united by business interests, but there are also some bigger groups whose ambitions lay beyond creation of a car service network or a couple of sales outlets in Moscow.

Despite the high prices, the Northern capital of Russia remains attractive for travellers. According to the Investments and Strategic Projects Committee of St. Petersburg administration, 4.5 million tourists visited the city in 2006; 2.5 million of them came from abroad, which is 10% more than in 2005.

By the end of the 19th century there had been several vegetarian communities in Russia which, however, were banned by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution of 1917. Penetration of the Soviet ideology into all spheres of social life and monopolization of the scientific thought led to proclaiming the vegetarian principles bourgeois and pseudoscientific.

Moscow again faces a “breakthrough to the past”. On October 19-22 the only in Russia and the largest in Eastern Europe specialized exhibition of oldtimers (vintage cars) Ilya Sorokin`s X Oldtimer-Gallery takes place at the international exhibition centre Crocus Expo.