Have you been to Moscow or any part of the Russian Federation ?

[steve2470]

I have, in 1989. I'd like to compare experiences, please.

Спасибо, как всегда. Spasiba.

Steve

[mnhtnbb]

1. Going to St. Petersburg end of this month.

But will be accompanied by tour guide and other tourists at all times.

[steve2470]

2. Don't be surprised if the tour guide or someone else is FSB

Maybe they aren't as paranoid as they used to be. Have a great time !

[mnhtnbb]

3. We're coming off a cruise ship for all excursions

so they would handle our visas. I imagine we'll be pretty closely watched.

[hobbit709]

5. Nothing's changed, just the letters of the organization.

[Jesus Malverde]

14. .

[Rhiannon12866]

38. St. Petersburg has to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world

I loved it there, such history! Have a wonderful time!

[hobbit709]

4. Russia, no

But went to the former Yugoslavia, former Czechoslovakia, and Hungary back in '67.

Thinking about it, I've been to several countries that no longer exist today in their original form from back then.

[hack89]

6. Vladivostok in the late 90's

Crumbling splendor and beautiful women.

[kairos12]

7. I was in Moscow and climbed mountains in the

Caucaus region in 1983. This was at the height of the Ray-Gun evil empire speech.

[Brickbat]

8. Studied there twice, lived there once, for almost two years.

[LNM]

9. I took a river cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow last fall.

I agree that the happy people are the young people. The people weren't unfriendly, they just seemed to stick to there own business. I felt that the young people were happy because they don't remember the bad times. Since we were with a tour most of the time we didn't spend much time with the general population. The guide admitted that Russians are serious people, but she said they have a good sense of humor. They have to, to get by. Here's a joke she told:

Someone asked Stalin if he collected anything. He replied that he collected jokes. "Oh, how many jokes do you have?" Stalin replied "Three concentration camps full". Not really funny, but she made her point.

[canoeist52]

10. In 1977, took a six-week road trip

starting from Austria, went through Hungary, Romania, crossed the border of the USSR into Moldavia, then drove through Ukraine bordering the Black Sea to the Caucasus and the city of Tblisi in Georgia, drove north to Moscow then east through Belarus, and crossed the border into Poland. This was a mostly camping trip where we met Soviet natives who purposely came to the campgrounds to meet Americans (many for the first time) and practice their English language skills. These local people knew we would be there because we needed to have a written-in-stone itinerary posted with their government before the trip.

It was an eerie feeling - at one point, we pulled off the main route on to a dirt side road to have a picnic lunch, within 15 minutes the police were there asking us what our plans were and to make sure we ended up at the campground where we expected to be that night. We were a small enough group (five) where we weren't required to have a guide so we depended on some very sketchy maps.

It was truly the trip of a lifetime.

[EX500rider]

11. lets see....

Well all up and down Yugoslavia by sailboat in the late 1960's..loved it.....also my family and I were the 1st US flagged vessel into the Black Sea since WWII (according to the Embassy staff in Istanbul who though we were nuts) when we were on the way to Russia but got taken by gunpoint via PT boat into Bulgaria instead in 1968, thought we were some kind of spies...and 2005 I was in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and also the old Soviet air base outside of Karsi Uzbekistan. That was kind of neat since they had large dirt/grass covered blast shelters for bombers to protect them from US nuclear strikes.. btw, NEVER fly Air Uzbekistan in country unless you like 1970's vintage Aeroflot castoffs with bald tires and no seatbelts... Tashkent had that definite Soviet feel with lots of very ugly monolithic grey buildings and really wide boulevards....but the hotel Meridian in Tashkent was cool, over 200 years old and a indoor pool. The bartender looked at me weird when i didn't want pepper in my vodka though. I made the mistake of going cheap with a local vodka that turned out to be a lot like Everclear..ouch..the civilian airport in Karsi was weird too, vast and empty and somehow colder then the outside...with those lovely hole in the ground toilets with a old lady selling squares of TP in the mens room....I will say the about $.70 for some hot tea and caviar on toast in the airport snack bar was nice though! Well nice till I got the Uzbek Revenge....lol

[bettyellen]

12. yes, Moscow, Novgorod and St Petersburg a few years back.

It was during the heat wave that ended up causing brush fires outside the cities. Men walked around shirtless in the city center, because temps were in the high 80s. Moscow was fun, but very much about money and politics. Many people I talked to were shocked to see an American wandering around by themselves, and not part of a tour group or in the oil business.
There were busloads of dressed up teenagers coming in from the country to spend a day in the big city - at first I thought it was a prom thing- the kids wearing evening wear during the day, and getting their pics at landmarks. They explained it was a spring ritual for kids to take the trip into the big city and run around posing. Bridal parties would do the same. I saw them everywhere. I helped them out by taking lots of pics, LOL.

Novgorod has some of the oldest churches in Russia. Just beautiful.
I got in a fight with a babushka in a toilet in Novogorod, and had to drop her and run for my bus to avoid a big shakedown for breaking a toilet. Ooops.

St Petersburg was more interesting and pretty from a cultural standpoint. In both cities, I found people to be very friendly and mostly have some English. They love having deep conversation about who you are and what you love about your life. Soul to soul, people explained to me, was their way. I enjoyed that a great deal. I loved the extra longs days, gosh I barely slept the whole two weeks and never felt tired.

[DFW]

13. Moscow and Zagorsk

In the dead of winter--a mere 23° below. One of our best friends was station chief for German News Radio, and was begging us to come visit before his time there was up. I spoke the language, though my wife does not. I got a LOT of funny looks, though, as my language training had all come from literature. My Russian came across to them as Victorian English would in L.A.--they thought I was Rip Van Winkle's Russian cousin.

The first words of Russian I heard when we got off the plane was when we approached the escalator to go down to immigration were from a smiling, pretty female officer: не работает (it doesn't work), which turned out to be a metaphor for pretty much everything in Russia.

Still, as our German friend had been living there for five years, he knew his way around, and the rules of how things worked there. We got to see a LOT, spent our fool heads off at the flea market, ate at a fabulous Uzbek restaurant, went to parties for Russian and local ex-pat intelligentsia, bought a balalaika (I could already play one, just wanted a good one), and probably experienced more in three days than most visitors do in three weeks.

[steve2470]

15. I will never forget two incidents

1- We went to a privately owned Russian restaurant in Moscow, and the food and service were superb. The food and service at our state-run hotel (the Hotel Ukraina featured in The Russia House ) was not so good. When it came time to pay the bill, my "ugly American-ish" father (god bless your soul, Dad, love ya) tried to pay the bill with American currency. He went into a back room of the restaurant to discuss the matter. Apparently one of the men present implied that was against the law in 1989. My father got the hint pretty fast (because he was a lawyer), and he paid in rubles as was the law then.

2- We got lost driving back to the hotel from the restaurant. I forget exactly who was driving. At any rate, the Moscow police stopped us. Decades of anti-Russian/anti-Communist propaganda flooded through my mind and I was absolutely terrified. The cops asked us a few questions, said to turn around, and let us go. Hey, they are human too ! As I said on DU earlier, you can't understand the place unless you've been there. The Russian people are GREAT. The government, not so much. Kinda just like our country.

I could dredge up a few more incidents, but that's enough for now. Oh yea, the Russia House was being filmed while we were at the hotel. I saw Sean Connery from about 5 feet away, and I tried to talk to Michelle Pfeiffer. She looked right through me and said not one thing. I guess she was tired, I'll be charitable.

Hotel Ukraina

[DFW]

16. I think if I saw Michelle Pfeiffer in 1989

Last edited Fri May 9, 2014, 11:38 AM - Edit history (1)

My wife would have had to restrain me with a leash, and she is pretty amazing in her own right.

[steve2470]

17. I did the typical fan thing with her

It was cold and she was lying down on a lounger. Ignored me completely. Ok, life goes on.

[DFW]

18. Closest I ever came

I once sat behind Lee Remick in an airplane around 1980. She must have been in her 40s by then, but was still gorgeous. Just to make sure, I asked her if she was who I thought who I thought she was. She said yes, and I just said I was a big fan. She smiled and said thanks, and I took my seat. That was about it.

Last December at the White House, everyone was fawning over some young woman who was nice-looking enough, but I didn't recognize her at all. My brother and I were talking to her and her husband for a while, and I confessed to having no idea who she was, even though everyone else seemed to know. She said she was an actress, and that it was perfectly fine that I didn't know who she was. She had her husband seemed nice enough, but I must have made a fool of myself when I asked her what her name was. It came out like "Journey," and I was sure I hadn't heard correctly. I asked two more times, but she kept saying "Journey." Well, it turns out her name really is "Jurnee," and I was the only one in the building who had no clue who she was. Talk about cultural deprivation! I later told the guys in Dallas, and they said in awe, "you were chatting with HER???" Sort of like the reaction I would have had if you told me Michelle Pfeiffer had invited you to dinner to discuss Pushkin, or something.

[steve2470]

19. who is Jurnee ? lol....google to the rescue....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurnee_Smollett

I guess that's her ?

[DFW]

20. You didn't know either?

Man, is THAT reassuring!! Here I was, fifty or more people coming up and interrupting our conversation asking for an autograph, and I hadn't the slightest clue why.

[steve2470]

21. nope, i'm pretty hollywood ignorant by American standards

I only know the really big names.

[DFW]

22. Ah, I stand not alone

She at least wasn't at all insulted that I didn't recognize her. I've met celebs who think that anyone who doesn't recognize them must be from another galaxy, or brain-damaged. She was definitely not one of them.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

23. I've never heard of her either - attractive woman

[DFW]

28. Yep, that's her alright. n/t

[steve2470]

24. another incident

We had just gotten off our plane from New York at the tourist-friendly Moscow airport. I think it was Sheremetyevo. Anyway, my dad and I were both jet-lagged from a 8 hour-ish flight. It was around 7 AM in Moscow.

I took a suit with me for more formal things like a nice dinner. It was in a carrying bag. While in the terminal, I laid it down to do something. Then my dad and I had to move along to catch a cab and go to the hotel. I'm pretty forgetful even in my rested state, so I left the bag on the seat in the airport.

About 15 seconds after we started walking, two Russian girls caught up with us and got our attention. They had my suit bag. They gave it to me with sign language, giggled, and walked off. That's always stuck with me. Of course, they could have easily kept it and sold it or given it to a friend. Nope, they made a special effort to catch up to the horrible American tourist and give it to me. The Russians are nice people just like us. Thanks again girls, 25 years later, for being so nice and honest to a forgetful American tourist.

[DFW]

27. I had a strange thing like that happen to me in what was Yugoslavia in 1973

I was taking a flight from Titograd (now Podgorica) tp Zagreb on JAT. The Titograd airport was about as low tech as you can get. I could make out some Serbian, but not when it came over a loudspeaker so garbled as to surpass that of the NY Bus Terminal at 41st street. I checked in my bag and sat down.

Something came over the loudspeaker, but I didn't know what. It sounded like "Trxebzqw dwlxcthrrwv orqwxblget platschwlmbrt zrk!" I may not have the spelling exactly right. Whatever it was, a bunch of people suddenly raced for an exit where an airport guy shoved us through the door out to a plane. Open seating. So I sat down somewhere. The plane started rolling, and finally an announcement came on. This time the speakers were working fine--well enough so I got the bad news.

They had put me on a plane to Beograd, not Zagreb. I called over one of the stewards and showed him my boarding pass, which clearly said Zagreb. He looked at it and said "Mistake." How perceptive, but I just nodded. He said when we got to Beograd, check at counter 12. I did. At counter 12, the woman looked at my boarding pass again and said "Mistake." I agreed once more. She filled out some paper and told me to go to counter 4. I went to counter 4. They looked at what she had written, and said "Mistake." They certainly had an accurate assessment of my situation, but so far all that had done was give me a tour of the Beograd airport and imparted to me how "mistake" is pronounced with a Serbian accent. However, after the "Mistake" acknowledgement, the woman at counter 4 gave me another paper and said go to gate whatever and my plane to Zagreb was already boarding. I figured I could kiss my bag goodbye, but at least I would get to Zagreb.

After all this, I arrived in Zagreb all of one hour late, and my luggage was waiting for me undisturbed at the Zagreb baggage claim. I wouldn't want to bet on this happening today, but I had a delightful chat with an obviously politically indoctrinated (she spoke fluent Russian, which most Yugoslavs do not) but very pretty young Croatian woman on the flight from Beograd to Zagreb, and left with a pretty good impression of the place. It was difficult for me to reconcile this image of a loose, friendly country with the massacres they performed upon themselves less than 20 years later.

[steve2470]

29. "I wouldn't want to bet on this happening today"

I guess I'm a tad confused about that. Can you explain please ? Thanks.

[DFW]

30. The old Yugoslavia was a place pretty content with itself

These days, with the breakup, the new economic uncertainty and the people displaced by the war(s), professional bands of thieves roam most of the Balkans (I hear Slovenia is still OK, but I haven't been back there since), and the social fabric that made it OK to have your bag lie around at an unsecured baggage claim for an hour completely unguarded and unprotected has come apart long ago.

I used to hang around "Marshal Tito Square" in Zagreb, and even in the 1970s, the young people there were more interested in learning English and German than Russian. I was with a guitar-playing group of college students my age (21 at the time) and one guy with hair down to his waist jokingly told me the others were kind enough to tolerate him, since he was a Serb. Back then, it was about as dangerous as someone at a gathering of youth in New Hampshire admitting he was from Vermont. Twenty years later, that was no joke--it was cause to shoot him down in the street like a rabid dog.

[steve2470]

31. such interesting anecdotes thanks ! nt

[DFW]

32. I never was able to sit in one place for very long.

I get around, but it'll probably kill me before I'm 70.

In Zagreb, I mentioned to the people my age how much I loved their folk music, that I had learned how to play a tambouritsa and played it with other students at my university in Pennsylvania. They, on the other hand, only wanted to discuss Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie, and thought I was completely insane to have any interest whatsoever in their folk music.

[steve2470]

33. you've had a pretty interesting life

One day I'll get off my ass and start travelling again. Time, money, a companion all factors, but mostly the companion one. One nice trip a year and I'd be satisfied. My next trip is to Germany with no doubt. After that, hmm.... Japan ? I almost went to Japan with my son but decided not to.

[DFW]

34. Let me know if you hit the Rheinland

Since my wife is German, my companion issue was resolved about 40 years ago.

[steve2470]

35. will do ! nt

[Jenoch]

25. I have never been to Moscow or Russia.

I did spend two weeks in Moldova in 1999. Moldova was, of course, independent by then but it was part of the Soviet Union prior to the breakup in 1991.

My grandmother travelled back to her home village in 1970 using a false passport. She was the first person from her village to return after emigrating to the west. She left in 1922.

[IronGate]

26. 1995 in Moscow.

Exchange program where Moscow Firefighters came to an American Fire Dept and vise versa.
Really opened my eyes on how much more sophisticated the American Fire Service is compared to the Russian Fire Service.

[kwassa]

36. Moscow, five days, 2002.

Surprises.

The first thing I saw outside the Moscow airport was a big IKEA.

At this time, there were 60 McDonalds in Moscow, and their signs looked quite interesting in the Cyrillic alphabet. Later in the trip I encountered a TGIFridays, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Sbarros pizza on the city streets. There are also a lot of alcoholic homeless people.

Other impressions: Red Square is really small, as is Lenin's Tomb, to which no one appeared to be paying any attention. Lenin faced the other side of the mall, that great Victorian-style edifice that used to be the Gum department store, but now contained a Hugo Boss store and Yves St. Laurent. You could tell who won that battle.

The famous cathedral at the end of the square is also quite small. There are other much more impressive cathedrals, several in the Kremlin itself, which the Soviets has the wisdom to not destroy, not that they had much wisdom.

We were honored guests, among others, who ended up at the high-end Cafe Pushkin in a banquet in the basement. We got to see some very tough middle-aged guys with very young girlfriends also at this restaurant, fitting the bill as gangsters. I heard a great argument in English between an idealistic young Russian woman and a senior and cynical manager type about the future of Russia. Apparently, a few miles outside Moscow exist villages that have never been electrified, for starters.

other impressions, that I will write about later ... the subways are quite amazing.

[Rhiannon12866]

37. Yes, back in 1986, joined my grandmother's peace group

On an initial visit to their "sister city," Krasnaya Polyana, also spent time in Moscow, Tbilisi, Sochi and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). It was a wonderful trip and eye-opening for me, since I was a child of the Cold War. People couldn't have been nicer.

[Blue_In_AK]

39. I can see Russia from my house.