Grace Cuddihy


Grace is a translator and editor with a degree in History and Russian from Trinity College Dublin. After winning a scholarship to Moscow State University, she lived and worked in Ukraine and in Russia’s Mari-El Republic. She has worked as a governess for Russian families, as an English teacher in a Moscow school, and for three years as an editor at The Moscow Times newspaper. She was a frontline editor and translator at the 2016 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Grace has worked as a consultant on the Russian education market, and has run translation workshops for the Russian Central Bank. She still works as a freelancer for Skoltech, the Strelka Institute, and the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has completed an M.A. in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies.
Travel Tip 

If you’re lucky enough to be invited into a Russian home, you should remember three things - take off your shoes upon arrival, bring a small gift, and make sure not to eat for several hours beforehand! Russian hospitality is (rightly!) world-renowned and you’ll need to make sure you have plenty of room for all the delicious food your hosts have prepared.
Memorable Experience

My most memorable travel experience in Russia was the summer I spent working as a teacher in Yoshkar-Ola. A truly unusual city in the centre of Russia featuring a brand-new Kremlin, a European-style riverbank that looks more like the Netherlands than Russia, and a statue of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, there’s nowhere else in Russia quite like it! The region itself - the Republic of Mari-El - is full of fairytale lakes and forests, and it’s well worth a visit for the more adventurous traveller who wants to venture beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg.

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Culture Smart! guide(s):

Russia