Imagine travelling to a foreign land and meeting interesting people from all walks of life. Imagine you go back 10 years later to catch up, see how their lives have changed, and how they've stayed the same. Then imagine you go back 10 years later. This is the premise of Lisa DIckey's travelogue.
The author set out in 1995 to explore the Russian landscape and more important, its people. She went back in 2005, and then again in 2015, and this book recounts her meetings and re-meetings with the same people she had met beforehand, tracking their changing lives, growth, joys and sorrows.

The title refers to what Russians imagine Americans think of Russia. "Those Americans," they say, "they all think there are bears in the streets in Russia." This amusing expression, which Dickey hears all over her travels, implies that Americans have no idea of the actual Russia as it is. But in a sense, it also illustrates the ignorance that Russians have about Americans, as we don't really say any such thing. This misunderstanding, really a misunderstanding about a misunderstanding, serves as the jumping off point for Dickey's search for actual and varied human beings who inhabit a strange land.

Dickey's travels take her to a Jewish Community in Birobidzhan, Lake Biakhal, Novosibirsk, to Chita in Eastern Siberia, etc. She really pushed the limits of travel, and met people who were at once exactly like us and as foreign as they come. The interest in her travels comes from discovering that these people live lives totally different from ours, but at the same time that these are people who could be your mother, your brother, your cousin. Their views on life, their values, their loves and dislikes, these are the interests Dickey seeks to uncover. In so doing, she gives us a picture of people who have fierce opinions on everything from their own country and president, to our own in the US, and everything in between.

This travel diary offers the best of both worlds for me: reading, and traveling. We get to know the people intimately, as well as hear Dickey's own opinions about those opinions she encounters. This is complicated by Dickey's fear of revealing herself as gay to the people she meets, a fear that is at times substantiated but mostly proven false.

Thank you to the author and publishers for a review copy. ( )

The author first sets off in 1995, shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union, with photojournalist Gary Motoso. A three month journey that encompasses a cross section of this huge country, talking to a wide range of people, chronicling how their lives are going now that the Soviet Union has collapsed. She will repeat this same journey, meeting the same people, at least those that she can find, those still alive and lastly again in 2015.

What sets this book apart is the wide range of areas and people she talks to learning the changing status of their lives. She visits the Jewish Community in Birobidzhan, talking to their rabbi and others. She goes to Chita, in Eastern Siberia talking to the small business trying to seize opportunities to increase their fortune. Galtai, where she talk to the Buryat farmers who still slaughter sheep in the way taught by Genghis Khan. Will admit to skimming this part as it is quite graphic. She repeats an expedition of Lake Biakhal and visits the gay scene in Novosibirsk. Gay herself, something she was hesitant to mention in this country, and learns if the viewpoint on homosexuality is becoming more accepting. Regular people, regular lives, so interesting to learn of these vast differences and how they are viewed.

The views of these Russians on not only their own country but on Putin, American /Russian relations, what they believe, how they see their country progressing. The fold they eat, how they celebrate and yes much alcohol. Well written, plainly, easy to follow, including pictures of the various people thirty years apart, this is the very best of armchair travel.

ARC from Netgalley. ( )