Adygea

In some ways, Krasnodar is a bit like my home city of Ottawa in Canada. One of those ways is that across the river is another region of Russia: the Republic of Adygea. This tiny republic is enclosed inside of Krasnodar Krai and one of the borders happens to be the Kuban River.

Taken from the wikipedia page

Across the river from the city of Krasnodar is the village of Новая Адыгея (New Adygea) which from what I've seen during my first visit is just basically a bunch of stores, car dealerships, and where the IKEA is for the region (not including the places of people who actually live there). If there's anything of cultural interest I'd want to see I'd have to go to the capital of Maykop, which is pretty far away.

IKEA is one of the anchors in a chain of megamalls spread across the country called MEGA (specifically the one for the area is called Adygea-Kuban, Kuban being a regional area that includes Krasnodar). I mostly go to idea for the food though. One of the things the IKEA had on their menu at the restaurant was Chicken Kiev so there are some things that are found in regional IKEAs (ones back home don't sell alcoholic beverages, 0.1% is considered non-alcoholic). Besides IKEA there is AuChan (Ашан) the French supermarket (which is also in Krasnodar) and a bunch of high end clothing stores. That's pretty much all I got to say about the place.

The not-so-Swedish meal at IKEA. While the Julmust is a Swedish beverage it was made at one of their food plants in Germany.

As for how to get there, there are marshrutki that go there. You're lucky if you live on one of those routes because it costs 18 rubles per trip (for the ones issued by the mall. Not sure about the ones that are from Krasnodar that go there) compared to some marshrutki which go to malls that cost 19 rubles.

I tried to get some pictures proving that I was in there since there wasn't much to take pictures of. Apparently the marshrutka minibus needed a wash. Adygea's flag is green with some stars and arrows technically.

I tried to capture the flag but all I got was a dirty window

Подкова apparently means 'horseshoe' which you can see in between the flags

Crossing the Kuban River. Again dirty window