[noir_lord]

> I've heard people refer to "Moscow face" (though oddly, not "New York face"), where people's expressions are blandly neutral, tending towards negative - it's a way of adjusting to living in a large urban center.

There is a cultural aspect here though as well, many Russians only smile amongst people they know, they think that people who smile at strangers are either simple or up to something, I once asked a Russian about this and he said that you pretty much never smile except with friends and it's a different kind of smile, he also said it was one of the things he liked about England in that we are fairly close to Russians in that regard.

http://www.russianlife.com/blog/why-dont-russians-smile/

[pavel_lishin]

I grew up there until I was ten. My mom used to joke that if a stranger is smiling at you in the street, they've already got your wallet.

[noir_lord]

haha.

Yeah the Russian I knew told me a story about if you where walking past a queue you joined it, didn't matter if you knew what was at the other end whatever it was could be bartered.

They where incredibly innovative in how they dealt with the lack of resources, bit like Cuba and keeping 60 year old cars on the road I guess, needs must when the devil drives.

[pavel_lishin]

I was trying to remember an old joke about waiting in line, and obviously went to Wikipedia.

Amusingly, both the Russian Jokes page and the Russian Political Jokes page appear to have no Russian translations...