Travel Notes

For the first time since the

fall of the Iron Curtain, the number of tourists coming to Russia exceeded the number of Russians traveling abroad, Goskomstat reported. Last year, over 18.5 million foreigners visited Russia, including three million tourists (a 200,000 increase from 1998). Japan, Germany, Italy and Southeast Asian countries were cited as increasingly important sources of inbound tourism. The only country which sent fewer tourists to Russia in 1999 than in 1998 was the US.