Moscow Ranked Third-Rudest City

Nicole Shevlin
Tourist Rank Moscow as Third-Rudest City
The Moscow Times: www.moscowtimes.com
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2008/03/14/003.html
Article Chosen: March 13th, 2008
I.Summary:
This article is about how Moscow, Russia is ranked the third-rudest city in the world. Many travelers say that hotel employees are unhelpful, the services are slow and insufficient, and the hotels themselves are extremely un-luxurious. Many employees (in all stores) don’t even say a simple thank you, either to a stay in their hotel or even a purchase of goods. Not only in hotels, but people on the streets show very unfriendly qualities also; people don’t help foreigners around the city if they are lost; but if they do, it certainly isn’t in a polite manner. This is not something evident, according to Dmitry Shultsev, a spokesman for the city government's tourism committee, who has "never seen such a sort". Although the amount of travelers that went to Moscow have continually sky-rocketed, many say it could increase at a much higher rate if people showed some type of manners.

II.
A) This article relates to the AP Theme of the Development and Interaction of cultures because when foreigners come into the city of Moscow, they are a different ethnicity and possibly a different religion. There could possibly be racism going on and discrimination on a certain type of traveler. The interaction of cultures does not seem to be working out well based on this article in Moscow, and this could possibly for several reasons.
B) There is a lot of past history that can apply to the fact that travelers aren’t being treated with respect. If the traveler was from the US, maybe the civilian from Moscow still had/has grief over the Cold Wars, which was fought until the 1900’s between the US and Russia(Soviet Union)(Moscow-city in Russia). Both of these strong societies at this point in time had different ideas on certain topics, which therefore could possibly cause tensions between one another.
C) The person who is writing this article is definitely not a citizen of Moscow. He constantly promotes that Moscow is full of rude and inconsiderate people, and says very few to no things positive about Moscow civilians. I think this person is an outsider because this person didn’t seem to ahve have a personal experience with someone from Moscow or seem to have witnessed this behavior with his very own eyes.
D) Although there are few aspects of this article defending the fact that Moscow is not the 3rd rudest city in the world, it is written in the perspective as if it is the rudest. It constantly says negative things about the people living in the city: how they are extremely unhelpful, how they show no manners to customers/guests, and how they are just not nice people in general. Although it doesn’t say it, this article is defiantly implying that Moscow isn’t the best place to go, therefore most likely reducing the amout of travelers that will now go there.
E) The voice that I would like to hear from is the people from Moscow who actually interact with the travelers. We constantly hear from the foreigners and a little from high class people of the Moscow society, but not once from the people who the travelers are actually dealing with. We hear from the tourist, who think Moscow civilians are rude, We hear from highly respected Moscow civilians, who believe that none of this is true (which could be false information because of what they will lose is traveling rate increases) (money). It would be helpful to hear from them because maybe the travelers are giving them attitude; or maybe they really juts couldn’t understand what they were saying because of the differences in languages. This would really help me gain a full understanding on the topic and have a great grasp on the entire story; not just a half of it.
F) Although I have never been to Moscow, I can understand why travelers feel the way they feel. Many times people who don’t understand you right away don’t give you the time of day. Also, I have dealt with many experiences when people really just don’t care about one another, which could have been the case. I also feel however, that we don’t know what was going on in these Moscow civilian lives. I have to wonder if they weren’t the only people rude, but possibly the travelers as well.