Irina Nesterenko loves to travel and see the world. At present she is living in
the beautiful country, Montenegro but home is still Moscow, Russia.

She often travels into the UK and other parts of Europe. Irina is fluent
in a variety of languages including Russian, English and French. She has friends
from all cultures and countries.

With so many different friends and experiences Irina’s a cultural ambassador.
Read about her musings on the different countries she’s visited and life in general.

About Irina

South Africa
by Irina Nesterenko

South Africa is an absolutely amazing country. I don’t think there is any other place on Earth with as high concentration of natural beauty and human insult and destruction. And yet, which amazes me most, people seem to have assimilated the devastation, learnt to live in harmony with it, having accepted it as an act of God, rather than something within their human control. Crime doesn’t seem to be an obscenity any more, that’s part of daily life. That’s something you grow up with and learn to accept almost as unconditionally as you accept the love of your parents, or sunset, or stars in the sky… which are aplenty here. One of the most magnificent skies I’ve ever seen. It is not close to you, but it’s so much in tune with the ocean, that you can’t tell the horizon. They all form a harmonious unity: sea, sky, and …surprisingly enough, people –those who I was lucky to meet here. Most amazing people ever: so open, so genuine, so real..and it’s so incomprehensible how they can remain that way with all the violence of this country.
  If you want contrast, you should come to South Africa.
  Instead of hundred year old castles you’ll find here n-million year old caves, instead of social smiles and politeness you‘ll find genuine warmth and family-like acceptance instead of European safety you’ll find here complete insecurity.
  Do not forget your driving license, coz if you do so –you are really fucked. It’s the country of homo-drivus compared to homo erectus).
There’s so much sun in this country that if you distributed it equally between other, far less fortunate in this respect countries, it might almost oust the winter away.
  This country, naturally, has got so many silver linings, it’s so stunningly beautiful, that God, creating it, must have at first forgotten about the cloud… and then, remembering that one almost doesn’t make sense without the other, brought the “human” cloud, and made it as extreme and strikingly pronounced as its silver lining is.