From Russia with Love

Some years ago I took a holiday in Russia. It was 1972. I remember the date clearly now.

With the advent of the new openness in the Eastern Block I plan to take another trip there and I wanted to write down my view of it as I remember it, 18 years ago, before a new vision clouds the old.

I bought a car partly with the trip in mind. It was a Fiat 128. (I chose that model because the Russians had just bought the Fiat 124 production line. I thought that if it breaks down there might just be a few spare parts available.) It was a K registration which made it a late '71. The next summer I drove it to Russia and back.

After much preparation I set out to the channel port (I can't remember which) to cross to the continent. I clearly remember going through Munich and then on to Vienna. My plan thereafter was to go through Hungary and Rumania and then cross into Russia near Kishinev. Then on to Odessa. Then I would turn north and go up through Kiev and Orel and onward to Moscow. From there I would continue north to Leningrad and then cross into Finland. From Helsinki by boat to Stockholm in Sweden then southwards through Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, then eastwards through the Netherlands and France; back across the channel and then back to work on Monday. I joke! The whole trip took several weeks. But I did have commitments and my bookings meant keeping to a schedule.

As I left Vienna I picked up a couple of hitch-hikers; two lovely girls 18 or 19 years old, English, from around Brighton. One was the daughter of a farmer and the other girl's father worked in the Ministry of Pensions in La Paz.

At one national border, I think it was crossing into Hungary, all my preparations with the visa came to nothing. The girls got their passports back in a few minutes but mine had got "lost'' in the system. Well to cut a long story short, after 4 hours of negotiating they "found'' it.

So onwards; we arrived that evening at Budapest on the Buda side of the river. A sparkling attractive waterfront bar caught our eye. We sat at a table outside in the balmy evening with thousands of other revellers. The lights of Pest, across the river, reflecting and shimmering in the water has emblazoned itself clearly upon my memory. It was magical. Go and see for yourself.

That evening I followed the signs to a camp site. That was a mistake. I had to surrender my passport. Next morning there was a queue to pay the bill and another queue to get the passport back. I thought I would not join the queue but let it subside. Later I came back only to find the queue longer. Eventually I joined it. I watched the clerk dealing with the queue. Each person took him exactly five minutes to process. He would go off and look things up. Consult reference books. Turn the papers over and then upside down. He fiddled about behind his little window just wasting time.

I suppose he was just following instructions. I had worked out that it would take till 4 o'clock in the afternoon to get to me. Well eventually 4 o'clock came and I paid for the campsite. And then I had to queue all over again to get my passport. A whole day wasted, because of a single little jumped-up bureaucratic... Words fail me. Anyway I was now a day behind my schedule. I crossed into Russia from Rumania. I left my lady friends by the roadside south of Vaslui at the junction to Husi. They went south and eventually to Greece.

The first thing I remember about Russia proper was of a lush green valley floor, almost devoid of people and habitation. A broad quiet road led through the greenness.

I eventually arrived at the border control. It was manned by some young men with guns, but the office contained a very pretty young woman. It was she who did all the talking and form filling. I was obliged to pay for the car's road tax and insurance because they didn't have a reciprocal agreement with the UK about cars. Then she got me to fill in a form saying how much money I had and in what currencies. Then she said they were going to search me and the car and any undeclared money would be confiscated.

Well by way of security I had lodged £200 in a very obscure place within the car (the money was for an airfare home in case of an emergency.) The prospect of losing £200 unnerved me so I extracted the money from its hiding place. The guard was amazed, "Did nobody else search you"? he asked. I suppose that he thought that every border control took every car apart and searched it thoroughly.

I changed a small part of my money into roubles, at I think, four to the pound, the official rate. Then I set off for Odessa. I had hoped to make up the day I had lost earlier but all that happened was that I got stuck late at night between campsites. It was the Dnester valley and torrential rain had turned all the side roads into mud baths. When finally I realised that I was not going to be able to catch up a day I planned to turn off the road and camp in a corner of a field. The main roads are all tarmaced but ONLY the main roads. One hundred metres off the road I was on a mud road. It was downhill and try as I might I could not turn around. All that happened was I slipped nearer to the side. The headlamps showed nothingness. I stopped, got out and looked into the nothingness', nothing. I slept fitfully in the car awakened intermittently by the showers of rain. When I awoke in the morning, much to my surprise I was within sight of a village, and perched upon a levee. The nothingness was a deep black drainage ditch.

The local population travel to and from work on the backs of open lorries. My predicament was obvious; the skid marks and gouges I had made the previous night told a story of near misses. In a jiffy they were down off the lorry and pushing the car out of the mud and turning it around. Once back on the hard stones I was OK. I Drove back to the main road and called out a "Thank You'' in my newly learnt language.

I trundled down to Odessa and found the campsite. I was late.

All my reservations had been released. You would have thought I had robbed a bank the way they treated me. I had booked and paid for a tent for three nights. All gone! I was not really bothered because I had my own tent. So all I needed was a tent site. This was allocated, surprisingly with no extra charge. I was later to find out that half the tents were empty. My bookings entitled me to three tours. But because I was late I was only given two tickets. These tickets are like money and entitle one to the services of an Intourist guide. The guides are very conscientious in acquiring the tickets when they have done their bit.

The Odessa I saw, was a holiday resort. I drove to the beach and parked in a residential road that was just like Frinton-on-Sea. Big old spacious houses stood in wooded gardens. But unlike Frinton I was able to park my car. I walked around and about. I looked and learned and remembered. You would not know it from any other beach resort. I had a lovely time just enjoying the sun and feeling that I had arrived at my goal. I bought an ice cream and ambled about some more. As I strolled back to the car down the tree-lined avenue I was yelled at by a semi-official looking chap who stood at the entrance to the beach. The message was that I was to put my shirt on. I put it on. It's strange; the petty rules that are so avidly enforced.

Between the big towns the roads are giant highways. Strangely there is little development on them. Log houses adorn the roadside. The one in the picture is between Kiev and Orel. It's an idyllic setting except for the thundering roar of lorries.

There is a shocking lack of private cars in Russia. I had stopped at a very pretty riverside area in the middle of nowhere. The only way to get here was by car. I had a swim and a picnic, and got into conversation with a

group of people who had stopped, (there is great merit in travelling by oneself; it really forces one to talk to other people.) The man was a "professor'' at a University. He owned a car. It had cost three years income to purchase. It was a modest four-door saloon. There had been a waiting list for the car. He was lucky to have one. We talked about many things. He was particularly interested in the computers that I worked on. It was an IBM 360 model 40 which in 1972 was the leading edge of business systems.

Buying food is a ghastly experience. In fact buying anything is fairly difficult. The food shops are barren. One has first of all to pay for whatever you want and then go and queue for it. If you don't like the look of the streaky bacon for instance (al1 streak and no bacon) then that's too bad.

Anything that can be bruised or damaged, will be. Quality, choice, friendly shop assistants; there is no such concept in Russia.

Before leaving Russia I wanted to buy a furry hat, so typical of the Russian Caricature. But could I find one to buy? I eventually bought my hat in Helsinki. The area around the Finnish border is a miracle of prosperity compared to the rest of Russia. This is the bit of territory taken from the Finns in the last war. At the border control I had to account for all the money that I had brought into the country.

The final accounting showed that I had travelled for five weeks on virtually no money.

The border control had an add-list mechanical adding machine. Nothing unusual for those years, but they did not have a roll of paper to put in it. So before all my adding up etc. they had to cut up a strip of paper to load the machine. Such silly shortages are normal.

After my full search at the border, I set off for Finland. As I approached the border proper I could see a great gouged up area in the land. Wire fences lined each side of the damaged ground. The ground in between was ploughed and loose. It stretched to the horizon in both directions. It was very like motorway earth-works in the building stage. I remember now the M25 being built and the way the earthworks ripped holes in the Surrey woodland, leaving on either side half sliced forests. Every so often there were towers, which had it been a motorway would have been cranes building a bridge.

But these towers were for watching; to see that no one crossed the area. The road I travelled on in this area was narrow and on each side was a margin of loose gravel. I could see giant holes in the gravel where vehicles had pulled off the hard road surface and nearly fallen over. This was to stop one wandering into the border area. As I came into sight of the Finnish border control I was stopped by two Russian gun-carrying guards. They were very pleasant and indicated that I should open the boot. Having established that there was only me in the car they waved me on. And so I left Russia. And returned back into civilisation.

I stopped at the first shop I found in Finland. I arranged for, and paid the shopkeeper to give the next Russian bound traveller a till-roll for the adding machine at the border control. No shortages here.

The Russia I remember was poor and badly organised. I shall go again and see if a real revolution has happened.