roulishollandais - You are right about Valentina Tereschkova being a European. I studied Russian in Yaroslavl, not far from her home village.
On occasion I would make some remark about how things were done "in Europe" (ie in Western Europe) and was always politely reminded that the part of Russia I was staying in (well West of the Urals) was also in Europe.
Mind you, half the British contributors to PPRuNe don't even consider the UK to be part of Europe
