Entering the Side of Russia You Don’t Ever See 🇷🇺

Part one of a journey to Elista, which Harry describes as the only Buddhist capital in Europe and a place most Russians have never heard of. Getting there means an 18-hour third-class train from Moscow to Volgograd, and then hitchhiking across the steppe with no tickets and no backup.

He travels with the German creator Leon, and says plainly that taking a German to Stalingrad is half the point.

The honest part of the video is the hour at the roadside. Two cars stop in an hour, they are sworn at and given the finger, and Harry says on camera that his preconception about Russian coldness might be about to be confirmed. Then a man in a car with no back seat and no air conditioning drives them four hours to exactly where they were going.

Key moments

• [00:00] The goal, and the framing — no tickets, no backup plan.
• [00:47] Why leave Moscow at all: to understand Russia you have to.
• [01:23] KFC has been rebranded here as Rostic’s.
• [02:34] The passport number won’t go into the system because it contains letters.
• [02:34] Third class on purpose, because that’s where things happen.
• [04:44] Someone is in their seats, and a babushka reassigns them again shortly after.
• [05:20] The bunks: you fit across but not along.
• [05:20] No food is served on the train, and they eat their supplies in the first hour.
• [10:31] A fellow passenger shares cognac.
• [11:01] A long conversation conducted by typing into Google Translate, because there’s no signal for voice.
• [11:32] Told Leon has been to over 160 countries, he is unmoved; told they love Russia, he’s delighted.
• [13:46] The carriage is cleaned, has USB sockets, and is better than expected.
• [15:55] Foreigners can’t buy a local SIM card in Russia, so an eSIM is the only option (stated in the video’s sponsor segment).
• [18:12] The real reason for the trip: bringing a German to the city where the German army was beaten.
• [19:17] His view on YouTube titles, said against his own genre: this is exactly what he expected Russia to be like.
• [19:51] Lenin has more statues than anyone in the world — offered with the caveat that he’s been fact-checked on it.
• [20:23] Chicken Kiev at 400 rubles, about $5.
• [20:59] The price comparison: roughly £50 buys an hour from Birmingham to London, or 18 hours here — and this train left on time.
• [23:21] The observation the first half builds to: Russians keep to themselves, don’t smile, and have to be won over. He calls travelling here high difficulty and says that’s what makes it satisfying, against India where the friendliness is almost too easy.
• [25:03] Volgograd. Families meeting arrivals with flowers, because the work is in Moscow.
• [25:36] The city is beautiful and being left behind — young people are leaving over pay.
• [26:08] Stalingrad: two million killed, the deadliest battle in human history.
• [26:43] Why the city mattered — Hitler wanted the Volga supply line, and the Red Army encircled the Germans here.
• [27:17] The Motherland Calls, 85 metres, the tallest statue of a woman in Europe. The city was destroyed completely and rebuilt brick by brick.
• [27:17] Twinned with Coventry, which Harry is from.
• [27:52] 40,000 killed in the first week of bombing alone.
• [29:54] Bombing the previous night, and every flight cancelled — which is why they hitchhike.
• [30:28] The props: a Russian fur hat and a bottle of vodka.
• [31:02] A man at a bus stop, drunk at eleven in the morning, who lost his job when the oil refinery was destroyed. Harry keeps his face off camera to protect him.
• [31:36] What he’s told about the explosions: it was the air defence, everything gets shot down, and after two years nobody reacts.
• [32:48] Forty minutes in: one car that wasn’t going their way, and being sworn at and flipped off.
• [33:18] The second car that stops takes them the whole way.
• [34:00] Harry, plainly: his preconception was that Russians wouldn’t be nice, and he was wrong.
• [36:59] The lesson he draws from the car itself — the Range Rovers and the Mercedes drove past, and the man with the worst car stopped. People with the least give the most.
• [38:00] Four hours, no air conditioning, no back seat, and his verdict that even when things look bad they’re rarely as bad as they look.
• [40:05] Arrival in Elista, and everything changes but the landscape: the people look Mongolian, there are no Orthodox Russians, and the development level drops sharply.

Extracted pages

• Places: Volgograd, Elista
• Country: Russia
• Person: Leon
• Tips: Stick a thumb out, Judge a place for yourself