Every country has a flag and a coat of arms. The Netherlands has a lion, France has a rooster, New Zealand has a kiwi, and the United States has a bald eagle. In Russia, it’s an eagle with two heads and three crowns, and a man on a horse who has just killed a dragon with a spear.

When you see the current Russian flag, it’s easy to also think of the Dutch one. This puts you immediately on the right track about the origin of the Russian tricolor: the white-blue-red of the Russian Federation directly stems from the red-white-blue of the Netherlands.

85 meters tall – if you count the sword, and why wouldn’t you? But even without the weapon, The Motherland Calls! still stands a respectable and awe-inspiring 52 meters tall. Its location (since 1967) is Volgograd ( Волгоград, formerly Stalingrad), where else?

Admittedly, God Save the Queen is not bad. And our own Wilhelmus could have become something, if at least that German blood and Spanish king had been left out. But the national anthem with the most grandeur is, of course, the Russian one. And to quote the closing words (так было, так есть и так будет всегда): so it was, so it is, and so it will always be.