From Russia with Disdain
I recently travelled through Sweden, Finland and Russia with my wife and 14-year-old son on a trip with his junior college orchestra.
Sweden was beautiful, the people thin, and curious of strangers (and travelers) the streets were clean and recycling was evident everywhere. Getting a beer cost approximately 5 U.S. dollars as the tax on alchohol is extremely high. But Sweden was such a nice place, the urge to drink wasn’t that great.
Russia, however, was quite different. Someone really needs to introduce air conditioning to the trains of Russia. On the train into Russia from Finland we boiled while waiting 1 hour through customs. Not only was it hot, but they kept the windows rolled up within 3 inches from the top (so no one could escape) and they locked the bathrooms. With 150 kids on tour, there are always a few who have to use the bathroom. So with sweat sliding down our faces, we boiled in our own pee. But no one escaped into Russia. (whew!)
Once in Russia, none of the hotels had air conditioning (except in the lobbys). So sleepless nights were spent laying on top of a soft mattress in a wet T-shirt. The people of Russia were dour, and grim. No one smiled. No one seemed to care if we returned to Russia ever again. So much for the customer always being right. So much for any sense of marketing.
If Russia could hire Las Vegas’s marketing people to help their image, there might be hope. If they can make people want to go to Las Vegas, they could probably come up with a jingle that would work for Russia.
But for now it is a giant relic, lost in the past, lost with smells that I’ve never smelled before on any of my travels through China, Mexico, or any third-world country. We stayed in a room at the St. Petersburg hotel that had been built during the launch of Sputnik. It had never been remodeled since, nor had the carpet ever been cleaned, the baseboard smelled of toe jam from the Soviet era. If you opened the windows at night, you were quickly eaten by hordes of misquitos. So you kept them closed and sweltered with the tiny 8” fan blowing up the ancient dust and mold from this 1952 era carpet, while you stared at the names carved on the wooden dresser and bed stands, and wondered about their stay in this pit.
However, drink one Russian beer and suddenly you entered another conciousness. A “Russian frame of mind” where you no longer cared that the people treated you like crap, that you were paying a large sum to stay in a crappy hotel where the water ran black from your sink. Suddenly you were transformed to a time when Russia was a great world power, not just “Tiajuana with nukes” like it is now.
I can understand why Russians like to drink.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:58 am
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