Tour with a kind fairy: how the National Centre RUSSIA guide Yelena Novolokina inspires guests to travel across the country

Yelena Novolokina is one of the youngest guides at the National Centre RUSSIA. Her special talent is the ability to turn a standard tour into a living journey: she complements the official programme with personal stories from her own travels, and creates a fairytale atmosphere that is especially appreciated by children.

On the route through the "Journey Across Russia" exposition, the guide shares impressions of places she has visited herself: "When we get to Kabardino-Balkaria, I always think back to the city of Nalchik, the open-hearted people, the delicious cuisine, and the nature that astonishes visitors with its beauty all twelve months of the year. In the Kaliningrad region zone, I talk about the Dancing Forest, the Baltics, and that feeling when you scoop a handful of live amber straight from the sand. I see smiles appearing on people's faces: they immediately imagine themselves having that experience and start thinking how wonderful it would be to go there."

According to Yelena Novolokina, thanks to her philological background and love of reading, she knows how to select key facts, structure large amounts of information, and find what will be interesting for different age groups within the exposition. "Since my childhood, I have read a lot in Russian and English. It seems to me that without a broad reading foundation, it's difficult to build yourself both as a person and as a storyteller. It's the foundation, the base upon which everything else is built.".

Photo: Press Office of the National Centre RUSSIA

With teenagers, the guide establishes a special format of communication: she listens carefully to their manner of speech, encourages discussion – and as a result, achieves deep audience engagement. Yelena notes that many consider teenagers a difficult audience, but if you manage to interest them, they immerse themselves in the tour particularly deeply: they ask questions, argue, and discuss what they've seen for a long time.

Adult visitors may sometimes view a young guide with slight distrust due to her age. In such cases, Yelena says she doesn't try to prove anything, but simply does her job at a high professional level. She emphasises that a guide's authority is based on knowledge, but without gentleness, charm, and the ability to win people over, it's impossible to succeed in this profession.

One of the touching moments in the guide's career was a review from a little girl who called Yelena a "kind fairy". The guide herself admits that this is exactly the image she strives to create: "It was incredibly pleasant, because I really do want to create a fairytale atmosphere for the guests."

Yelena has a professional dream: to conduct a tour for the writer Tatyana Mastryukova. "I adore her books with Slavic horror elements. Thanks to her, I learned a lot about Russian folklore and traditions, and I often use this knowledge in my work. It would be very interesting to give her a tour. Although I think she would probably tell me as much as I tell her."

According to the guide, a tour is always a living dialogue, where facts coexist with emotions, and a route can easily transform into a personal story. She believes the most interesting part begins where knowledge combines with personal impressions. After her tours, guests don't just gain new knowledge – they start dreaming of their own journeys across Russia.