RW love the sea?

[Roark]

What's the deal with the sea?  It seems like 90% of the personals I've looked at say "I love the sea" or "Hobbies: Swimming in the ocean."  I've looked at a map, and Russia looks like a damn big land mass just like the US, except with even less coastline that's far enough south to make a nice beach.  

Do Russian women in Moscow, for example, routinely travel several hundred miles to enjoy the sea?  Is it that she's been there once, thought it was great, and is hoping to find a guy in a coastal city overseas?  Is she trying to subliminally suggest that she'll look great in a bikini?  Or is it one of those things that's not clear in translation?

I live about the same distance from the Gulf of Mexico as Russia is from the Black Sea, and no-one around here gets to the ocean very often.  (I've been once.)  I'm just a few miles from the Mississippi River, though, so if big aquatic landmarks are the key, I should be okay. :-)

[jrm]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

Because, the ice is prevalent, and the water is too dam cold to swim most of the time, they love to swim, because they can't.

[jrm]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

Because, the ice is prevalent, and the water is too dam cold to swim most of the time, they love to swim, because they can't.

[Haroshij]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

My Russian wife also loves the sea. She likes to swim in the Norwegian sea, and the temperature hardly goes above 15 degrees Celcius. She also likes fishing and walking on the beach looking at the sunset and in summer the midnight sun. She loves to observe the birds and the animals swimming in the sea (seals, whales and otters). Not strange Russian women like the sea. Not to me. I love it too, and couldn't even think about to move away from it.

Haroshij

[MarkInTx]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

Well, you know, Peter the Great loved the sea, and when he started his Czarship, they didn't even have a reasonable sea port in his kingdom... part of why he fought his way across the continent and founded St. Petersburg...

But, anyway... I can't say about Russian Women. But my wife is from Kherson, the city between two seas, and she spent EVERY summer at the sea.

The one things she tells me she misses the most is the ocean (more even than Kurd in her verinakies, and that's saying something!) I took her to San Diego once, and she ran down to the beach just to smell the air.

She has many friends here. One is from Sevastapol, and she has commented several times that she misses the sea. Some of her Russian friends actually spent summers on the Black Sea in Ukraine!

So... yeah, I would say they really DO love the sea.

Oh... and, yeah, your subliminal image is right, too! They DO look great in their bikinis...  :-)

[Jack]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

Many Russian ladies love the beach, no matter if it on a river, sea or ocean.

The entire coast of the Black Sea, the Crimea, are very popular with Russian ladies in July, August and September. In fact August is still ofter referred to as the Month of Vacation, a throw back from the Soviet times.

I think there is a common denominiator in many ladies from St. Pete, Odessa, Rostov, Sevastopol, Sochi. These ladies are used to the ocean, they love the ocean, are used to the osean, the sea, the beach's. It's part of there life. I am sure many ladies from these regions adjust quite well to a new life not close to the sea, but I think many would prefer not to make such adjustment.

[Zink]

... in response to RW love the sea?..daaaaa, posted by Jack on Mar 23, 2004

Don't forget to add Primorye in the far east. The people there love the sea too. The north east Pacific just isn't as gentle as the Black Sea. It's a powerful attraction that even this prairie boy started to understand after I lived on the coast for awhile. My wife's giving it up but says that she'll miss the sea very much. There's some very nice beaches around Vladivostok and the water is crystal clear, except for where they park all the ships.

My advice for Roark. Try not to focus too much on what the ads say. Many of them are just generic things that they wrote to fill space. A lot of RWs don't like to talk about themselves and it isn't easy to write a detailed ad. I understand your concerns about the rural/city and coastal/prairie differences. Put a lot of thought into it myself. But the most important thing is to find a lady with the character traits you can live with and who wants you. Only the woman knows if she be able to give up walks along the beaches for a life with you. Pick a few ladies(if you haven't already) jump in and see where the coorespondence takes you.

[Roark]

... in response to Re: RW love the sea?..daaaaa, posted by Zink on Mar 23, 2004

Zink said: "Pick a few ladies(if you haven't already)"

That might be the toughest part. There are so many to choose from. :-)  I got interested in this whole idea a month or so ago.  It was a Friday, and I was reading the War Nerd's articles at exile.ru.  They had a link to bride.ru there, so I started browsing through the profiles, and was struck by how beautiful so many of the women were.  It seemed like each one was more striking than the last.  Then I got to looking around at a bunch of the other sites as well.  At first it was just kind of a lark, but the more I read about it, especially from happy AM/RW couples, the more I started thinking maybe it wasn't so crazy.

Before long, I got tired of clicking and waiting for pages to load, so I wrote a little program to download all the profiles from a few of the big sites (freepersonals.ru and 1x1love.info, mainly) and just save the ones that met my ideal criteria (age, weight, etc.) with their photos to my computer where I could quickly browse through them.  I basically spent a weekend at it, and now I've got a few hundred who match everything I'm looking for (as far as can be determined by their profiles) and are gorgeous to boot.  

So I keep hoping to find a way to narrow them down some more.  You're right, though, at some point I just need to bite the bullet and start writing to some favorites, and get my own information out there, and see what happens.

[SteveM]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

Many Russian women have had childhood (or older) vacations to the Crimea or other resort areas.  Also, remember that Turkish and Spanish beaches are among the most popular foreign trips (and a week there often costs less than a day or two would for us!).

In my case, that led to a great interest in going to the beach the first summer after we were married.  Once we found a place that we liked to stay, Ocean City (MD) has become a must-visit every summer since, preferably twice if we can work it in.

Steve M.

[AllenB]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

I see you are new to posting to this board and therefore I say welcome.

To answer your question, first you must understand that to the rest of the world, having a swimming pool is reserved for the very, very wealthy and therefore most people swim in lakes, ponds, rivers, stream, etc. but a sea or ocean is like nothing else because it is salt water which is bouyant (sp) and also is very good for your skin.  Any man who wants a woman knows that they have very soft smooth skin but experience a woman who bathes often in salt water can tell you that it is the best for them and therefore us.

My wife, Anna, from Ukraine and I live in the Chicago suburbs so we have access to Lake Michigan, the Mississippi, Lake Geneva, etc. but every summer we travel back to ukraine to the Crimea and swim in the Black Sea.  Here is the other fascination.  No other sea in the world is completely devoid of sharks!  The only predator you have to worry about is the jelly fish which are most prevelant in mid to late September into October and November.

Any other questions, I would be happy to answer if I can and I know there is a wealth of knowledge on this board.

Good Luck!

[Roark]

... in response to Re: RW love the sea?, posted by AllenB on Mar 22, 2004

Thanks for the welcome and the info.  I'm in Illinois too, right where it bulges out the furthest west.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of reading RW's personals.  I found a site that gave a list of the common mis-translations -- communicable does not mean she has a disease, for example -- and that helped.  It's not that unlike reading American women's personals; in both cases you have to figure out what they really mean, but in one case it's because of the language barrier and in the other case it's because they're not terribly honest.

I've also gradually located some of the smaller agencies in smaller cities, which seem to give a lot more information about the girls than the big glitzy sites do.  Since I live in the country far from any big cities, if I get serious enough about this to start contacting women, I'll be focusing on agencies in the smallest possible towns and most rural areas anyway.

[tfcrew]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

My wife lived a 15 minute walk from the Black Sea.
She is from Odessa.
My first visit was in late January...I, (a Texan) nearly froze out there on that beach, thermals and all!

[Yorkman]

... in response to RW love the sea?, posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

warmth thing.  They are mostly all living in very cold places.  So just like people from Minnesota dream of going to Florida, these ladies dream of going south somewhere to the beach.

And, yes, the Russian people do travel a lot more to the Black Sea area than we in the USA travel to our southern beaches.  They used to travel even more under the communist system where vacation trips were heavily subsidized as a reward to those who were 'docile' and performed their jobs in a semi-satisfactory manner.  

They can still get package deals a lot less than we can to fly to Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Tunisia, etc.  Often times they are booked into lodgings for group tours that we wouldn't necessarily want to stay at.

Also, keep in mind that saving for the future is not part of the Russian mentality.  There, the history is of confiscation of money by authorities or loss of money from collapse of the financial system.

So, they think nothing of using every last ruble they can scrape up to spend $300-400 to go on one of these group tours to the warmer med areas.  They will have zero rubles anywhere when they get back home; but so what, this is the standard life for about 90-95% of them.  This is why many of the RW have travelled a lot more than you or any of your American girlfriends.

[Roark]

... in response to It's just partly the , posted by Yorkman on Mar 22, 2004

Thanks for the info; that all makes sense.  I have a similar question about how so many of them list travelling among their favorite things to do, often mentioning world travel.  I'm not sure if they really mean they're looking for a guy who will do that, or if they're just trying to make it clear that they're willing to travel to be with the right guy.

[Yorkman]

... in response to Re: It's just partly the , posted by Roark on Mar 22, 2004

Living conditions are not all that great.  For persons in that situation, in any country of the world, the grass just looks a lot greener elsewhere.  So they dream of escape through travel.