Some of the most astonishing and revealing moments of my year abroad were no more than people's passing comments, which varied from the particularly astute to the hilariously misinformed. One of the more astute ones, however, and one that sums up a lot of what Russia is about, comes from a communications expert who was sent to Switzerland for a few months. He came back and said: "I loved Switzerland, but there, nobody has any time. In Russia we have as much time as you could ever wish for." And this makes me wonder, does our future really lie in struggling to stand out, to succeed and to be promoted, as it does in this country at the moment? Russia seemed fundamentally much less enthralled in striving for personal gain. Never having objected to a bit of give and take, I came back realising all the more that that is still an acceptable way to live your life.

There is, of course, the argument that Russia would never have ended up in the pickle it is in at the moment, had it bothered to get a serious attitude to life, and in particular, work. The point is that Russians are exceptionally good at surviving, at doing the bare minimum to get by, and especially at helping each other and others; but what they find hard to sympathise with is our constant desire to do that proverbial little bit extra. I remember talking to a pair of vast body-builders. Bizarrely, we started comparing our respective education systems, and I couldn't help expressing my view that, to me, university in Russia seemed more like my idea of school, in that students were still being forced to learn, rather than showing any kind of active interest in what they were doing. Fair enough, really, when you realise that Russian degrees can be readily purchased for money. For example, one member of staff at my Russian university told his tutor group that, if they expected decent marks in their exams, it was recommended they buy him a new CD-ROM drive for his computer. There, genuine ability sadly counted for little. Hardly surprising, then, that my weight-lifting friends found it utterly incomprehensible that I might in any way enjoy my studies. Higher education in Russia seemed to me to be something you should do if you were capable of doing so, not something you consciously chose to become a part of.

And it was in this way that I ended up teaching English at the Ulyanovsk State Technical University. I was positioned at a desk, and soon enough a young man appeared with an exercise book and proceeded to recite a text about London. "London is the capital of England. It has four main areas: the East End, the West End..." at this point my friend clearly ran out of inspiration. He glanced down at his notes to refresh his memory, and continued as if I had not noticed this little indiscretion: "...Westminster and the City. In the City you will see businessmen wearing bowler hats and carrying umbrellas..." (another glance at notes). As the glances at the notes became more and more frequent, so that by the end he was effectively just reading out a pitifully outdated text of which he understood not a word, I asked who he thought he was trying to kid. To this he had no answer other than that he was meant to have learnt the text but hadn't.

What I hope to demonstrate is that in Russia, it is the norm to push your luck as far as it will go. Even in the more prestigious schools and institutions, the most enthusiastic student would never, ever, do more than was strictly required, or go beyond the call of duty. He would, however, actively pursue the goal of achieving as little as possible without suffering for it. This is reminiscent of one Soviet system of paying labourers, which works as follows: the rate of work of the best worker in a factory is measured, that rate is set as the norm, and everyone else's salary is set proportionally lower than that, according to how much slower they work. By definition you have no chance of standing out or shining: you can do no more than hope to equal the best. Thank goodness, then, for Britain's beautifully positive system of marking GCSE's, allowing even F-grade students the opportunity to feel they have achieved something. Annoyingly progressive though this system may seem, at least it's along the right lines: nobody, be he student or professor or manual labourer, is ever going to want to achieve if he is being constantly told he is not good enough.

The Russians' commendable unwillingness to compromise is another reason to go and visit their country. It makes for unending excitement, and gives some insight into what is good and bad about our respective cultures. It comes into religion, where you are either an atheist or fantastically devout; war, where you are either the glorious victor or tragic loser; politics, where you are either a fanatical politician or an uninterested member of society. The Russians are highly aware of our British stiff-upperlippedness, our general seriousness and, frankly, our complete softness. A foreigner constantly feels he is being tested, that someone is always trying to prove Russia is tougher. Techniques include: smashing vodka bottles over their own heads; telling tales of 9-day fasts and nude swimming at -30°C, asking how much it costs to have a man killed in England (in Moscow that'll be £20), and other such daunting shock tactics. The most frightening part is that, more often than not, I was left feeling utterly pathetic. And even, at times, feeling that I come from a country full of wimps. Russia does not have war memorials as such. It has Victory Monuments: towering statues showing scenes of glory and pride, all accompanied by solemn music and a symbolic eternal flame. It is not our place to say whether this self-glorifying approach is right or wrong, because our losses in World War II are, thankfully, not comparable with theirs. Twenty million Russians were killed or died in the Great Fatherland War 1941-45. In comparison, Britain's (and in particular the British Press' ) long-standing obsession with the events 1933-45 seems slightly unwarranted. Needless to say, the brash Russians also have few qualms about holding forth on this subject, despite their state-enforced ignorance of the roles of the other countries in World War II. Rather than dwelling on this subject, I would prefer just to point out that, over the past year in Russia and in this country, I have heard more unfounded comments concerning the Second World War than I would ever wish upon anyone. All I can conclude, with no one country in mind, is that far too much is automatically traced back to our pasts, and that since my year abroad I have become acutely more careful in making sweeping generalisations about what is best not mentioned.

Everything I saw in Russia reflected the frenzy of change that has been going on there for the last eight years, but the media are as good an example as any by which to illustrate the drop in moral standards which has unarguably gripped the country since the collapse of the USSR. The quality press has filled up with soft porn, the state television channel has been taken over by fifteen minutes per hour of astonishingly basic advertisements, and people are, in this age of instability, willing to pick up on the first new idea they are given and hold onto it until it destroys them. Unfortunately, their way of dealing with adverts has not yet reached the West's kind of sophisticated cynicism, which allows us to take the claims made on television with a pinch of salt. For Russians, commercial TV is an outrage: a way of "legally conning" the people. The aggressive marketing of, for example, miracle weight loss programs, is gladly received by all types of apparently intelligent women. I was asked endlessly whether a certain herbal remedy was worth taking, and was horrified by the seriousness with which its alleged benefits were being lapped up by potential buyers. In a country where a pack of western tablets like Neurofen costs a pensioner her entire monthly pension, such dubious "medicines" are unlikely to improve anyone's quality of life, but rather to deepen their debts.

If the media could in some way focus on pointing out the problems in society instead of happily fuelling the people's recent obsession with all that is foreign, the country might become more immune to the barrage of Western temptation that is being greedily offered in its direction. Sadly, they choose to condone black magic, superstition and violence. There is a newspaper in Russia devoted to gleeful, fully illustrated reports of sick crimes that have been committed in the past month. And people read it. I found it very difficult to grasp that educated people could speak the absurdities that they did with such straight faces: such as how, if you poured yourself out a glass of water on 19th January and left it, that water would remain eternally pure. Others bowed religiously to horoscopes, and immediately asked your star sign when they met you. Coming from about the most stable country in the world, I found it hard to sympathise with this frantic search for gratification. At times it made me love the British people, as it seemed that they were far more willing to stop and think about what they do; but at other times I could do nothing but admire this incredible, irrational search for something new and exciting. I could never claim to understand this people, since they are so proud of the fact that they find themselves inexplicable. The uncompromising chaos that has emerged since 1991, despite all its horrors, seems to provide them with a quiet satisfaction, by confirming to them that Russia is not your run-of-the-mill sort of country. On leaving there after nearly a year I was far less sure of my chances of ever comprehending the Russians than I had been at the start.

And this is the great paradox that was troubling me for the entirety of my stay: I craved the predictability of home, but knew that somehow, in Britain, I was missing out. There is a wild exhilaration in knowing, on waking up each morning, that what will happen to you that day cannot be planned and, if it were planned, that it will almost certainly not happen. I have been called to do a radio interview at ten minutes' notice, spent nights in far-off villages with no more than half an hour's warning, and turned up at an office mid-morning to discover a raucous party in progress, which I was immediately invited to join. This lifestyle could never truly satisfy me - I have, after all, been brought up to expect security and reliability - but it has turned around how I look at our visions of the future. The danger with creating a firm picture in one's mind of what the future holds is that firstly, it limits the possibilities that you open up to yourself, and secondly, it more often than not ends in disappointment. The emotional insecurity that troubles almost every Western child is much less widespread in Russia, where there is no pressure to stand out and shine in the eyes of society: the super-successful are despised, not admired. If you come out of it morally sound and alive, then you have done the best you can. Although it is the pressures of Russian society that force these attitudes, there is still something for us to learn in this: children need praising, just as much for who they are as for their concrete achievements.

I lived in a hostel that cost three pounds for one month's accommodation. The facilities were not up to Western standards, but it provided an extraordinary opportunity for a foreigner to gain an insight into life in Russia. Especially revealing was the way that the students there reacted to me, sincefor most of them this was their first contact with a foreigner. The so-called gangsters saw me as a potential source of cash, but most of the others were simply desperate to find out if their twisted view of the West was anything like the truth. Thus I was plagued by an incessant stream of questions, which I had little choice but to answer. Favourites varied from the obvious "You like Russian girls?" to the equally obvious "Ah! Manchester United! Eric Cantona?", but despite the utter lack of originality of the questions, they succeeded in making me happy every time; in Britain we are depressingly blasé about anything new. It is frowned upon to show any interest in the unknown, since this would class as keenness. We are appallingly bad at welcoming people from other countries, because that would look like we were actually trying. Which would certainly not impress. In Russia, however, they want to know. We have been a closed book to them for seventy-four years of this century, which no doubt helps to make us more interesting, but even then I feel I can generalise and say that, in Russia, it is okay to be interested.

The downside to Russia's attitude to foreigners is its harsh treatment of ethnic minorities. Whilst it is considered all right to look up to the successful yet untouchable West, it is very much the norm to sneer down at the rest. Trained to be outraged by the slightest racist allusion, I was utterly stunned by the disdain held for ethnic minorities. For example, the mere mention of the word Chuvash, the name of a tiny ethnic group whose territory lay very close to my place of residence, caused immediate hilarity. Even the most intelligent, educated people I met were capable of making extraordinarily ignorant comments on this subject. The Russians make constant references to foreign countries, their peoples and cultures, but are often mistaken, having always had little genuine information on the subject of nationalities. The West, however, with its unlimited access to any aspect of world culture, thinks it knows everything, and is not particularly willing to change its views. When considering how to react to foreigners, Russia and Britain can learn from each other.

In the Russian family, traditional stereotypes still reign supreme. I used to pay regular visits to a charming couple in my town, who made my visits a complete pleasure. There were just a few things that reminded me I was not at home. Igor was only a few years older than myself, but seemed to have immediately slotted comfortably into the role of stubborn middle-aged husband. He would politely offer me another cup of tea, and when I accepted, would command his wife to go to the kitchen and fetch me one. I was left feeling a little uncomfortable in these situations, as I could just have easily have stood up myself and made my own tea. In fact, since Igor had offered me the tea, it would really have been reasonable for him to get it for me. With time, it became clear to me that neither of those other options would have been feasible. The Russian wife, brought up to ask no questions, and the husband, brought up to encourage her not to, go together to create the ultimate one-way marriage. On the one hand, the role of the woman, as it was described to me, is to love her husband and to give up all that she has for him. The husband, on the other hand, is responsible for issuing the orders. That attitude to marriage differs so wildly from ours that it took me a long time to work out why they bother carrying on the tradition at all. However, I concluded that their aims are essentially not all that different from ours: it's just that the conditions do not allow for a beautiful, romantic vision of marriage. Practical considerations come into play far more, as everyone is living so near the breadline. One girl was telling me her reaction to the attitude that love is the only thing worth living for: it is only possible to live for love, she said, if you have something to give up, something to sacrifice. As she said, in Russia they do not have anything spare, so it is difficult to make those sacrifices. One girl was explaining how she chose her boyfriend because he lived closer than the other possible candidates, and that would mean she would have to spend less on bus-fares. While we have the happy option of doing anything we like, such as carrying on a dream romance in Rio or visiting lovers in Paris at the weekends if that is what we want, in Russia people have learnt to make the best of what is available.

There is no clear way out of the current economic crisis (which was starting just as I was leaving Russia), and since arriving home, I sometimes cannot help but be shocked by the wastefulness in this country: the traditional Russian snack of salted pig's fat was at first a surprise for me, and I expressed my bemusement. I was then asked what exactly we use pig fat for in my country, and it occurred to me that I had no idea. I had to admit, to general disapproval, that more likely than not it was just thrown away. Now, a country like Russia is always going to be more careful about waste than we are, because, for example, handing back a bottle for 5p to the shop you got it from is going to be more worth doing for a Russian than it would be for us; but the efficiency with which materials are recycled there is quite extraordinary. A typical Russian kitchen creates a milk-carton-full of waste over the course of a few days, while my family's kitchen can produce up to a whole pedalbin-full a day. Although I agree that it is due to circumstance that we have the option of being wasteful and other countries do not, I totally support the mentality of economising on mundane items (incidentally, Russian cuisine is much tastier than ours anyway) and splashing out on fun things. Russian parties are, after all, unforgettable... which brings me back to my original thought on the subject of time and how to spend it. In The West, we find it hard to relax, to switch ourselves from all that is around us, and this stems from the constant knowledge that there is some kind of higher goal to strive for; that perhaps this, whatever it may be, isn't what we should be doing with our time. The Russians tend to be brutally honest with themselves, and do not pretend that things are going to get any better. They live for the moment, and in many ways that is a beautiful thing.

I do not presume to be able to suggest what is needed in Russia, as it is certainly not my place to do so. However, with my good British upbringing, I did, during my time in Russia, occasionally wish that someone would take a little more responsibility for people's well-being. For example, and as I mentioned, the press could do much to change people's perceptions on moral issues. Also, if I had money to spend on long-term change in Russia, I would start by looking at the education system (as if I haven't spent long enough looking at it already...), and try to promote it as an appealing option, rather than a duty. Attitudes to work do need to be altered in some ways, since few businesses seem to have discovered the benefits of offering a superior service. Wandering round the shops in a Russian town will reveal much of what I mean: shoppers still just choose one shop over another because of its proximity to their house: each shop is just as bad as any other, so which one you go to is irrelevant. It appears to me that this view could be altered by some kind of training for businesses. However, all the ideas that I might come up with assume that Russia has money besides that which goes into the immediate business of saving lives, so I will not continue any further with my hypothesising.

I would like to conclude by saying that living abroad has, as I am sure it would have wherever I chose to go, made me look at my own country in a quite different way. It has made me fonder of it, and at the same time more critical. If I had gone to another country, I would have come back loving and criticising other aspects of our culture from the ones I do now. And that, I believe, is why people must travel.