Map of Beeline's cellphone coverage area in Krasnodar Krai

2. I learned how to “program” the treadmill at Orange fitness to display miles and miles per hour instead of kilometers. Although I have come to think in kilometers, sometimes it’s just nice to use the system you know best and not have to hink about it. The funny thing is that every time I “reprogram” the treadmill I need to press about 27 buttons and the staff thinks that I am another dumb foreigner who can’t figure out the treadmill. Too bad my Russian is not yet good enough to explain to them that now I can reprogram the machine (something which none of them can do), so I have moved up to the “graduate level.”

3. My friend Aram helped me buy a DVD player which is “region free.” See, every country has a regional code assigned to it in an effort to block people from buying disks at a low cost in one country and then bringing them back home and using them. Therefore, the disks we had bought for our kids in the U.S. (think Elmo and Princesses) wouldn’t play on Russian DVD players. Now that I have a “region free” player me (and Dasha too) can watch any disk we want. I think I will start with my friend Vladimir’s recommendation of “Hotel Babylon”.

If you have any “small victories” (or sightings of real powdered cane sugar in Russia) please share them with us in the comments!

Timothy Post, a native of Boston, Massachussets and an MBA graduate of Babson College, is a real estate developer in Krasnodar Krai. You can read the original post on Tim's blog, Inside Krasnodar. If you have more questions about doing business in Krasnodar, you can email him at email@timothypost.com.