This place is HUGE

This place is huge.    Absolutely gigantic.  The largest country in the world (by a factor or two).  There are many mind boggling statistics (Russia has 11 time zones, a total area of over 6 million square miles, and covers more than a ninth of the Earth’s land area).   It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe. Look at a map or Google Earth and consider this: Russia borders Japan in the East and Poland in the West, it reaches the Arctic circle in the North and China in the South.

Russia is 1.8 times the size of the United States (and almost bigger than the United States and Canada combined).  It is so incredibly large, that if it was populated with even the modest population density of my hometown Thousand Oaks, CA (which itself is a fairly low-density town, with more than 1/3 of the land permanent open space, and a lot of large spread out parcels) Russia would have a population of 14 Billion people!!   Consider that, and the fact that there's there's actually only 140 million people inhabiting Russia - meaning they are at an average of 1/100^th of a typical low density american town.  Wow.

It takes a whopping 10 hours in the skies to fly from Moscow to Vladivostok, Russia's port in the Pacific.   If you are going by train (lord help you) it will take you about 6 days.   My favorite part is that the sun truly and literally never sets on Russia: when Moscow or St Petersburg is sitting down for dinner in the evening, its already tomorrow morning on eastern Russia’s pacific shores, and people are getting ready for work.  When they finish their work day and get home for dinner at night, it is morning again in Moscow. 

Being so large, it is no surprise that Russia consists of many different geologic zones - broad plains with low hills west of the Ural Mountains; of course the vast coniferous forests and tundra terrain over in Siberia; and uplands and mountain regions along southern border.  Russia’s Mount El'brus is Europe's tallest peak.  51% of the country’s land is absolute virgin territory (completely untouched by any man made activity) and much of that, along with Siberia’s forest, is why Russia is often referred to as the lungs of europe and the earth.   The earth’s beautiful and vast lungs.