The Paris Hilton of Russia

http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/just-dreaming/articlemc.aspx?cp-documentid=17406149&gt1=32001


Katia Verber is running late. That's not unusual for an It girl in Moscow, where the Soviet-built streets are choked with traffic. Not helping matters is that the 24-year-old socialite's It car - her mother's chauffeured gold Bentley — has just broken down. "I'm so stressed!" sighs the feathery voice on the other end of the line when I call to check in. "I'll be there in 20!"

Two-and-a-half hours later, Katia flies into the Starbucks on the storied Old Arbat Street. I can't help but ask: If you shell out $250,000 for a car, it should work, right? "Oh, no. No, no, no," she says in crisp English, with the patience of a kindergarten teacher. "Bentleys break down all the time."

Before I can respond, her $7000 luxury titanium Vertu cell phone is beep-beep-beeping. Loudly. "Ugh, I hate this ring," she says, raking through the contents of her studded Balenciaga bag with both hands. "It lets everyone know you have a Vertu. It's so embarrassing!" The phone keeps on beeping. Finally she finds it and answers with a perky "Ah-loh?"

Katia, a dark-haired heiress with piercing eyes and perfect teeth, is like one of the Hilton sisters here. She's the daughter of Alla Verber, who helps run Russia's biggest luxury retailer, Mercury, which brought Dolce, Gucci, and Prada to Russia in the mid-1990s. Katia works as a buyer at Mercury, but she spends much of her time posing for Russian glossies and deciding which party invitations to accept.

This is not the Moscow of yesteryear, when the waiting list for a clunky Volga sedan was often five years. Soaring oil prices transformed this one-time capital of communism with dizzying speed. Even today, Moscow still boasts 73 billionaires (compared with New York's 70), and the number of Russian millionaires shot up last year to 136,000. But the gap between the rich and poor is growing, too: The average wage is still a measly 16,253 rubles, or $686 a month, and 18.9 million Russians subsist below the poverty line on monthly wages averaging less than $170.

There are two Russias, as Katia says: One hobbles along, while the other races forward, spending its oil cash with the sort of careless abandon that you could find only in a country where toilet paper was once considered a luxury good.

I've come to see how Katia's half lives.

 

Oh God, I hate new money in Russia. These spoilt rich kids are bad enough in the West but I think the level of arrogance that the Russian ones have is just something else.
One of the things I'm dreading about when I go to Russia is meeting these people. To be fair though, I doubt my broke ass is going to get anywhere near them, haha.

Also, I love the guy's face on the right in the picture. He looks like he'd be a barrel of laughs at a party

 

There is a girl Ksenia Sobchak, who's always being called Russian Paris Hilton. she's rich famous, blonde, but in contrust to Paris, she is VERY smart..

 

That girl thinks she's Catherine The Great.

 

That's exactly how Russian women say Ah-loh (Hello)

RW are the best

 

Damn, she SHITS on paris hilton.

 

She is hot.

 

I Co-sign this

 

word

 

Here's an interesting article about the night life for the rich in Moscow.



By Clarissa Ward

From Miami to London to Beirut, I have been awed by $3,000 magnums of champagne served with fireworks, but only in decadent Moscow can one easily blow through $40,000 in one night.


Moscow's decadent nightlife a playground for billionaires

http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/04/moscows_decaden.php

 

As Paris Hilton herself would say: "That's hot".

 

aww thanks

 

they call her a horse. lol

 

or "that's sexy" lol

 

Remember DI I am speaking from experience not fantasy...

 

I sure do remember! Because it was you, who was supporting Nate and telling that Russia is not the worst and dangerous place in the world to visit. lol

 

Da! But my wife is Russian as well, hence I'm speaking from experience not fantasy...

 

Do you have any "Intel" on Russian women and Russia you could share? I want a black man's perspective on this because I've always wanted to visit the USSR as child and now Russia of course as an adult.

 

Search on my name and find my posts, if that's not enough ask again and I'll answer any questions you may have...

 

All right, I am beginning now. It should make an interesting read.

Thanks