LIVING IN MOSCOW IN THE ’00s TURNED ME INTO CITY-GUIDE GIRL, for better or for worse. It was due to pity, basically. If there’s any destination more forbidding or user-unfriendly than Russia, I have yet to find it.

Without insider knowledge, a traveler to Russia usually can’t even accomplish simple tasks like crossing the street. (Look for the blue man-walking signs that mark underground pedestrian tunnels.)

The uninitiated will eat some of the world’s worst foods at some of its highest prices. They will discover the abomination that is microwaved lettuce. They will hike endless mega-highways while choking on exhaust fumes, waiting in vain for a yellow cab. They will view icons and icons and more icons, regardless of their enthusiasm level for icons.

All of this is true to a lesser extent in St. Petersburg and true to a terrifying extent in the regions.

As a Russophile and lover of both Moscow and St. Petersburg, I always felt it was my duty to make sure people saw the wild, exciting, exotic city that I did. I made elaborate itineraries for friends-of-friends. I had a stock pre-trip e-mail with advice on what to pack, how to navigate the highly opaque visa situation, how not to panic when the immigration form is printed only in Russian. And so on.

All of this is a roundabout way to introduce my new website, Virtual GDBK (“guidebook” in txt-ese), which has current food, hotel and culture recommendations that might be of interest to fellow Read Russia! weirdos planning to travel to Moscow or St. Petersburg.

The site attempts to corral all the good English-language resources out there on Moscow and Piter.

There are lots of my own personal recommendations, plus links for all the local blogs, English-lanugage papers and recent travel magazine stories, and a ticker of the latest cultural commentary such as slideshows from Read Russia! or a takedown of the contemporary art scene in Art Forum. It’s a cheat-sheet for the resources you’d have if you were an educated expat living in the city (The website has content for eight other non-Russia destinations as well). GDBK is there for that moment when the traveler arrives at last in their hotel room, realizes they are hungry, looks in despair at Where? magazine, then boots up the WiFi and crankily types in “Moscow restaurants,” knowing already that it’s a bad search term.

Of course, it’s the confounding-ness of Russia that makes it so addictive to a certain type of personality. Some of us fall in love only after we get hopelessly lost, have the metro turnstile slam painfully shut on our knees, wander, sniffling, out to the street in search of chocolate and end up with something in a mysterious foil wrapper that turns out to be…. a gloriously sweet, dense, chilled, chocolate-wrapped cheesecake.

That would be Cyrok. If you haven’t yet, I really recommend you try one.