I research ALL THE THINGS! Also don't write a lot of missions *coughs* But there is more reason than just I like nomming languages that I research things - and then, yeah, there is the trick of sliding things into the fic so it doesn't look like I'm showing that reasearch and sounding like a wikipedia article. And I also try not to exotic-fy places, either - that's slightly very much uncool, and I know how much it sucks when people do it to Australia, so I try not to do it to anyone else. We can be slightly more classy than Old School Bond *g*

I'm Australian and have lived in or around one city my entire life (Canberra). Took one overseas trip yeeeeeears ago (Russia, Estonia, briefly Vienna) but that was just a holiday. It's ended up with I'm like the only person on the planet who prefers Moscow to St Petersburg, though, and I forget how those cities are in general Russian view (Natasha was born and raised in neither - and her RR was an old prince's palace the KGB took over in the middle of nowhere, which I still have to work out roughly where it is) and so what Natasha would think of them.

But I crawl around the internet a lot and read descriptions and pick up travelogue-books and then...cross my fingers and try and write things. But, as I've mentioned, I've got an AU where Natasha isn't RR at all, and so for Brooklyn things I'm freaking out. And should go and ask some online friends for help.

(My Budapest is set almost entirely in a made-up hotel, so I'm cheating there <.< )