Loving the passive aggressive half-arsed argumentative tone of this discussion. I can't see many people here smiling at strangers. Or friends... Or anyone.

Your German friend wants to see some miserable Russians? - go to the most expensive places in Western Europe - and those are the rich Russians. The others are just miserable by habit and because being non-miserable was bad style during the Soviet years. And yes, that probably applies to most of the Slavic nations (boo, generalisation, boo)...