"The Society Impressed Me Most": African Explorer's Journey Across Russia Dismantles Stereotypes

"A couple of decades ago and so on, there was always this yearning. To get here and to see for myself because I know there's a certain image that is portrayed in the Western world about Russian people, but I didn't know if that was correct. I had to come here for myself, and I had to come and look and experience, and you cannot experience Russia by just only visiting one or two places like Moscow, St. Petersburg, or even some of the cities on the other side of the Urals. You had to do a road trip [...]. The amazing thing for me was to find out how much alike we were. The people of Russia are very much like we are in South Africa and many other parts of Africa. We laugh at things that are funny. We get sad if there's something that disturbs us. To a certain extent, we were made to believe that the Russians are different, that they operate on a different level. And it was such a wonderful experience to find out that the Russians are very much the same as what we are [...]. So to a certain extent, when I set out to do the journey, I thought it would be like going into outer space. But once you get there, you realize that it's not [...]. I think that if there's anything that I would like to inspire people to do, it's just to go out and see for themselves. Don't be influenced. By the media, don't be influenced by perceptions," Badenhorst narrated.