Russian cursive writing

is mighty unusual and difficult to make sense for most foreigners who encounter it. We Russians grow up without paying much attention to the fact that the Russian language that lives in the books, magazines, blogs and other printed media is expressed using different (sometimes strikingly so) letters and symbols than when we pick a pen and actually write something down on a piece of paper. Effectively, we have two alphabets and we learn them in our first year in school. One is for reading and another is for writing. Here's an example: Phrase in cursive

Looks like this in print:
 
СЪЕШЬ ЖЕ ЕЩЁ
ЭТИХ МЯГКИХ
ФРАНЦУЗСКИХ БУЛОК
ДА ВЫПЕЙ ЧАЮ!

Quite a difference. And this is not even the most famous example of Russian cursive. Here's a beautiful and well known picture from the Russian blogosphere:

It looks like      Д Ы Ш И Ш Ь in print and it means (you're) breathing.

So, if you ever decide to learn Russian, stay away from handwriting! ;-)