Join the girl guides or whatever they call them in the US. Hopefully they will teach you some rudimentary survival skills - it's a shame really that a simple thing like a lack of a dryer can render a person helpless.
It's not that I don't know how to hang dry (or hand wash) but hang drying is not recommended for a lot of clothes. It stretches the fabric out and makes it feel rough. And plus dryers are so much more practical. 40 minutes and all your clothes is dry. You can wash and dry a winter coat in a couple hours. And you can dry shoes. Anddd you can use the dryer to do dry cleaning, which is really covenient. It's like a microwave, you can certainly do with out it but it makes things so much easier when you're in a hurry.

At the risk of starting another 10 pages of hysteria (), I am 99% certain that this statement is factually incorrect (if by 'more than everyone' you mean something > 70% .. I'd guess it's much less than 50%).
Yea I'm probably off on that one, but lets say everyone I know in St. Petersburg had one.

That's interesting. I'll check in the local stores next time I'm out shopping. I suppose they're much less common here than in the West now, but I'd be amazed if you actually couldn't find one.
Thanks! I'm pretty sure they do exist in Russia, because they had them at the laundry place. I think they're just not very popular yet.