I have many russian (+ukrainian/kazakhstan etc.) friends and in fact they have a somewhat different attitude to food and restaurants as compared to europeans.
From my point of view they enjoy preparing food together, everyone brings something with them (salad, pickles, vodka… all of course self made), whereas in european countries I feel its more expected that the host provides the food already on the table or you go to a restaurant.
The largest tram system in the world looks a bit sad, my random german city with 1/10 the population of Melbourne has 30 Mio. more riders annually on its trams.
They really need more interconnections and maybe some ring routes.