THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 32 … Leaving Leningrad.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirty-second in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

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In St. Petersburg, there is a building originally constructed by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, For more than a century it has stood on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the stately Kazan Cathedral. An architectural landmark, it has survived revolution, bombardment and socialism.

During Soviet times the former Singer headquarters was known as Dom Knigi (House of Books), the USSR’s official state-run bookstore. For me and many others, the undisputed highlight of Dom Knigi was its poster shop.

Posters in all shapes and sizes were printed by the tens of millions in the USSR, comprising a sprawling graphic arts genre all its own, even if subject to denigration by Westerners as mere propaganda.

Most were, but it’s ironic that those visiting capitalists observed to laugh loudest usually waited until no one was looking, then snatched up propaganda posters by the dozen for the bargain price of pennies apiece, to be transported home and flaunted as exotic, chic décor in their dens and rec rooms.

I was not at all immune to this urge. In fact, I was completely overwhelmed and later even obsessed by it.

One of the posters I bought in 1985 celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Great Patriotic War’s victorious conclusion. Westerners know this bloody conflict as World War II, but whatever its name, the poster prompted a point constantly reinforced during our tour: The Soviet Union bore the brunt of human and material sacrifice in defeating Nazi Germany.

It is estimated that upwards of 20 million Soviet men, women and children lost their lives during the war. The city of Leningrad itself was a major battleground. For more than 900 days, it was besieged, starved and shelled by the Germans.

Down the street from Dom Knigi, a wartime inscription on a building’s wall had been preserved. It reminded citizens which side of the street was safer when the artillery rounds started falling. 1980s-era Leningrad was crowded with plaques and monuments to the war, as well as living reminders in the form of older men proudly wearing their service medals in public.

Leningrad never fell, but the cost was immense, as my tour group learned when were taken by bus to the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.

About 420,000 civilians and 50,000 soldiers of the Leningrad Front were buried in 186 mass graves. Near the entrance an eternal flame is located. A marble plate affirms that from September 4, 1941 to January 22, 1944 107,158 air bombs were dropped on the city, 148,478 shells were fired, 16,744 men died, 33,782 were wounded and 641,803 died of starvation.

These improbably precise yet grim numbers are sufficiently eloquent, but while visiting the cemetery on a Saturday afternoon, we were fortunate to witness an instance of remembrance’s unfeigned dignity.

A wedding party arrived in a convoy of Lada passenger cars, and the bride and groom were photographed with seemingly endless rows of mass graves as a backdrop to their special day. The Soviet government didn’t require them to do it. They just did.

Are they still, now?

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Looking back on it, Leningrad was a collage of surreal occurrences. I remember standing in the middle of the vast open space called Palace Square, with the huge green Winter Palace on one side and the even larger gold-painted Admiralty on the other, imagining the revolutionary crowds of 1917.

The Internationale was on heavy rotation in my head, along with scenes from Warren Beatty’s classic film Reds. These imaginings wore me out, and it was time for a break.

Near the closest wing of the Winter Palace were benches beneath shade trees, and what appeared to be a vending machine. Hesitantly, I walked toward the sooty gray box until I could make out a word stenciled in Cyrillic: Вода́.

Water … apparently drinking water.

There was a coin slot, and a posted price of one or two kopecks, at 100 kopecks to a ruble. Our tour escort Ari later explained that the two choices were still (uncarbonated) or sparkling water. Three public drinking glasses were available for use – merely select the cleanest, place it in the recess, deposit coins, push button, drink liquid and set the glass back on the ledge for the next user.

My water wasn’t fizzy. The glass was returned to its place. Now the remarkable absence of litter made sense.

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On Sunday morning, luggage and hangovers in equal measure were hauled to the motor coach for the return trip to Finland. It was a sunny summer’s day, but the mood on the bus was somber. In the end, perhaps the visceral experience of a world so very different from ours was more exhausting than we imagined.

Border controls on both sides were perfunctory, and most group members debarked in Helsinki, including Mark the Australian. He’d been a great pal, and so we embraced and promised to stay in touch.

So it goes. I’ve never seen him since.

A half dozen of us rode the bus an hour further to the Finnish port of Turku, where the overnight ferry was sailing back to Sweden. The sands in my hourglass were becoming scarce, and the highway segment from Leningrad was only the beginning of an epic three-day, non-stop public transit journey waged across six European nations, all the way back to Luxembourg.

As it transpired, two fellow tour members were to be my shipmates to Stockholm. I’ve long forgotten their real names, so for the purpose of this narrative, they’ll be known as Jeff and Robert, who were 1985 high school graduates from Somewhereville, Mississippi, both 18 years of age and bound that autumn for some variety of collegiate military school to be trained as cannon fodder.

But seriously: Jeff and Robert looked, spoke and acted the part of future soldiers, personality traits fully evident in the USSR, where we’d aired opposing points of view on more than one occasion. Mark had been openly disdainful amid their frequent references to the glories of the Bible and Reaganism. I tended to agree with the Aussie.

Periodic prayers testified to Jeff’s and Robert’s fundamentalist upbringing, and any mention of Soviet history produced a rote response, as though Pavlov himself had trained these two super-patriots to salivate and squawk “dirty stinking Commie” upon activation of the electrodes. Even the provocative Swiss schoolteacher Phil had quickly grown weary of their ideological edge.

“It’s hard enough fighting the Communist disinformation without having to fight the anti-Communist disinformation, too.”

But it hadn’t stopped these youthful Falangists from buying armloads of posters at Dom Knigi, and no matter how heated the discussion, Jeff and Robert kept coming back for more. I’ve never understood this. Maybe they wanted to “save” me.

As we waited by the docks in Turku for the gangplank chain to fall, they plied me with questions. Having flown directly into Helsinki for the Leningrad tour, this would be their first ever ferry ride.

It was a teaching opportunity, so I sketched the boating routine, which immediately sent Jeff and Robert running to the nearby train station. They hadn’t bothered activating their Eurail passes, and the cardinal rule of passage is that one must have a ticket.

I told them that unless there was a deck passengers’ padded lounge on this vessel (it turns out there wasn’t), we’d all be looking for a place on the floor to nap during the nighttime hours.

As for food, I noted the existence of a duty-free shop, a less expensive cafeteria-style eatery, and the Silja Line’s wonderful, reasonably priced seafood buffet in the ship’s ritzier restaurant. I explained my methodology of bringing a plastic “doggie” bag for the next day’s breakfast.

Jeff and Robert were intrigued by the seafood, but hesitant. Would it be too much for their burger and fries upbringing? Would they feel out of place in a nice space? Would Jesus have approved?

Would I go to dinner with them, just to make sure – their treat?

Yes, it would be my pleasure. I can tolerate almost anything for a free meal, even teenaged militaristic evangelicals from the Deep South. That night, at the seafood buffet, we were nearing the end of the meal when Jeff and Robert each produced huge plastic bags of the sort used to wrap booze at the duty-free, and began animatedly filling them with food.

Before I had the chance to helpfully suggest that discretion is an integral part of any pilferage equation, they had been spotted, and shortly a restaurant worker appeared. As the dressing-down commenced. I shrugged. After all, everyone knows that carry-outs aren't allowed at a buffet.

Soon Jeff and Robert were marched off to the cash register to settle their tabs and pay a fine for intemperance. I’d been entirely forgotten, and the whole dining room’s attention was centered on them, so I shrugged again and filled my own freezer bag with selected morsels for morning, secreted it in my coat, and left the scene.

On the way out, I thanked Jeff and Robert for their generosity. They were very unhappy, but I felt pretty good. It may have taken three months, but at least I’d learned some of the many budget travel ropes.

The last time I ever saw Jeff and Robert was on Monday morning in the subway station near the Silja mooring in Stockholm. They were standing forlornly by the turnstiles, crumpled dollars in hand, unable to determine how they’d be able to get the Swedish kroner necessary to buy tickets to the central station.

Having passed through Sweden a week earlier, I’d reserved a handful of coins for just such a contingency. There was enough for the three of us. It was the least I could do for a morning’s delicious smoked salmon.

---

Previously:

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

_

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 31 … Leningrad in three vignettes.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirty-first in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

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Leningrad, August 1 – more than a month past the peak nocturnal glow of northern lights, but with ample illumination to occupy roughly 70 hours in the USSR’s hero city.

Upon arrival the group was issued rudimentary maps, fed a brown bag snack and taken back aboard the bus for an orientation drive. We weren’t compelled to remain there. As adults, there were no restrictions on our activities, apart from remaining within city limits and refraining from illegality.

Consequently, as soon as opportunity came, Mark and I left the tour bus. By early evening, we were exploring the general vicinity of Nevsky Prospekt, Leningrad’s major downtown street.

Mark regaled me with tales of his travels. He’d bartended his way across the English-speaking world before diving headlong into continental Europe. In return, I spoke to him of Russian history. Ironically, we decided against finding beer, and set off for ice cream.

Ice cream was acclaimed as one item the Soviets invariably got right. We found some at a curbside kiosk, tucked away on a side street. It was very quiet, and two Russian women roughly our age were in the mid-sized queue next to us.

Waiting afforded the garrulous Australian an opportunity to chat with them, a task only slightly complicated by their limited English skills and his non-existent Russian.

This comical cross-cultural conversation continued as the four of us ate our ice cream. My friend’s ultimate aim was obvious, though it struck me as far too surreal to ponder.

There was a pause. Mark proposed a drink, and quickly took me aside, whispering: The petite brunette was his, the taller redhead mine, and the petty details – time, place, requisite small gift – all could be arranged quite easily once matters progressed a bit further.

Glancing over my shoulder, I could see a similar conversation taking place. The brunette doing was doing most of the talking, and I was flabbergasted. In a scant 30 minutes, after only three hours in an utterly unfamiliar city, Mark had pole-vaulted the language barrier to achieve instantaneous hook-up results. He was a handsome charmer, but this was beyond amazing.

Unfortunately, nothing about this carnal Communist four-poster of an ice cream-laden windfall appealed to me. I wasn’t a prude, but merely favored prudence.

“Let’s get to know each other” seemed solid advice any time, much less in a totalitarian country. Earlier in the summer, there had been an evening in Athens with the girl from Switzerland. We’d met at the hostel in Delphi, hiked to the ruins together, and shared seats on the train. She spoke English. We talked while she knitted. Pell-mell is not my default speed.

In Leningrad, Mark’s dazzling improvisation seemed like a transaction. I feared my disinterest would be a deal-breaker, except that in truth, my intended partner looked almost as unenthused. Perhaps she had come to the ice cream kiosk to eat ice cream, and not be randomly assigned a date.

The Australian was surprisingly conciliatory. It wouldn’t be a problem, he said. They left in search of alcohol, and I walked back to the hotel, viewing Leningrad in the gloaming, off the beaten path.

On Friday the story was told. The redhead went home to her children, and the brunette took Mark to meet her husband, who thoughtfully watched television in the main room of their flat, discretely drinking the bottle of vodka brought to him from hard currency shop, as she earned 20 dollars American … a week’s salary.

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The Peter and Paul Fortress occupies an island in the Neva River. It is the birthplace of St. Petersburg from 1703, as commissioned by Peter the Great. Inside the fortress, the Peter and Paul Cathedral is one of Russia’s most important Eastern Orthodox churches, a landmark housing the mortal remains of numerous Tsars.

On Friday, two accredited Intourist functionaries accompanied the group for sightseeing. The ranking guide was a woman in her late fifties, and her assistant was a younger woman who served as English interpreter.

Among us was a quartet of Swiss high school history teachers, two men and two women. One of them looked rather like Phil Collins, 30-something and balding, and already his barbed asides had marked him as a man of considerable wit.

In short, Phil crisply supplemented the guide’s talking points with revisionist commentary of his own. Already that morning at the Winter Palace, he’d been overheard loudly correcting the official historical record, and consequently was a marked man.

There’s one in every capitalist crowd.

Now, inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, our guide spoke about the Romanov imperial dynasty, scrolling through a list of kingly burials. Each was repeated by the interpreter: Nicholas I is buried there; Alexander II is interred here, and so on.

Are there questions?

Phil raised his hand. He was ignored. Two pairs of eyes darted left and right, hoping someone else would speak instead. No one did, and at last, Phil was allowed to make his inquiry.

“Can you tell us where the last Tsar is buried?”

It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that Phil took the Leningrad tour for the sole reason of asking this most politically incorrect of questions.

You see, while any Communist tour guide was happy to explain the symbolic necessity of deposing the imperial order as a prerequisite for social justice, in 1985 the Soviets had yet to come clean about the last Tsar’s messy personal end.

Nicholas II, his wife and their children were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918, their bodies thrown into a pit near Ekaterinburg, perhaps 1,500 miles from St. Petersburg, subsequently renamed for V.I. Lenin, who gave the orders for the killings.

Amateur Russian sleuths apparently located the Tsar’s gravesite around 1979, but positive identification of the victims had to wait until after the USSR’s own demise.

Of course, the whole world always knew the truth. Phil’s question turned the interpreter’s face white and very hard. She turned to the guide and spoke Russian. The guide’s face became just as stony. Briefly, they both glared. There was a pause, and a collective shrug.

“He is not buried here.”

“I see,” said Phil. “Thank you for answering.”

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It isn’t that Leningrad’s inhabitants didn’t dine out. Many received their main meal at lunchtime, as served at their workplaces, and they also took quick bites at any number of “people’s” or “worker’s” cafeterias, many serving soup, potatoes and dumplings.

As a guidebook colorfully stated, these eateries were “dirt cheap and dirty,” and in later years, I became enamored of their conceptual cousins in Eastern Europe. Parts is parts, sausage never scared me, and the cafeterias in Hungary punched far above their weight for the price.

Soviet “sit-down” restaurants comparable to the sort Americans were accustomed to seeing by the half-dozen at every interstate interchange were regarded by ordinary Russians as places for special occasions, like weddings and anniversaries.

Above a certain classification, formal restaurants had the reputation and appearance of being inaccessible to normal human beings. In essence, all their seats were reserved, always.

There’d be a sign stating the restaurant was entirely booked, even though a glance through the window showed most (sometimes all) seats empty. A doorman would guard the door as though he defended the vaults at Ft. Knox.

Only later did I learn the key to breaking the code, because in fact, anyone could phone the restaurant or visit earlier in the day and make a reservation. It was that simple. However, in the beginning this wasn’t evident. The game was all about bribing one’s way inside.

Hence the value of western cigarettes and toothpaste.

Saturday, August 3, 1985 was my 25th birthday, and when Mark found out, he couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. A splurge was merited, and my meal was his treat. We’d heard about Baku, an Azerbaijani restaurant on Sadovaya Street, close to Nevsky Prospekt, and arrived there hopeful of somehow gaining entry.

Mark took the lead and was rebuffed by the doorman. He failed a second time, bruising the worldly Australian’s machismo. At this moment we were approached by two English-speaking Russian men (brothers, they said), who offered to help resolve the impasse.

I was wary, but a few words later and all four of us were inside Baku. Our new friends sat with us. They denied ulterior motives, and said eating was their only objective. It would be a rare treat to break bread with foreigners.

To this day, I’ve never had a clear understanding of who they were. No black market transactions were requested. We weren’t fleeced. The two men made no advances of any sort. Rather, there was wide-ranging and bracingly frank conversation over our meals and bottomless vodka – at least until the bottom fell out for Mark.

I recall the food as being fairly exotic, with actual green salads made from strange indigenous stalks, weeds and veggies, and a garlicky chicken dish as the main course.

The drinks list at Soviet restaurants tended to be slim; perhaps juice, mineral water, sparkling wine and vodka, though seldom beer. Vodka was the choice, leading to my first experience with timeless travel wisdom.

Attention: Do not try to keep pace with Russians drinking vodka.

You might die in the attempt.

They’ve been doing it since they were babies, via tubes inserted through their swaddling. That night at Baku, I watched as Mark ignored this axiom. He paid dearly.

Seeing the direction we were traveling, I resolved to keep a clear head. It wasn’t hard to do. At that stage of my drinking career, straight liquor of any sort was a touch too much for me.

In the end, Mark dissolved into an Aussie puddle of vodka-infused goo. Fortunately, our chivalrous Russian partners took nonchalant control of the situation, helping settle the bill accurately, getting Mark into the street for the necessary vomiting, then hailing a taxi to get us safely to our hotel.

Did these exemplary strangers really come with us to Mark’s room for a nightcap, or am I dreaming?

They simply had to be KGB. There is no other explanation.

Next time: Buses, boats, trains and the road back to Luxembourg.

---

Previously:

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

_

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Euro ’85, Part 30 … Or, as it was called at the time, Leningrad.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

(Thirtieth in a series chronicling my travel year 1985)

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In my early twenties, I was gripped by an interest in all things Russian. Significantly, this evolving infatuation was primarily bookish, not to be directly linked to the usual cultural suspects, like potent vodka, Slavic women, winter sports or taboo Communism.

Both hard liquor and girls were intimidating, and what’s more, they could be a dangerous temptation for an overly shy guy perpetually in search of liquid courage. This I'd learned the hard way. As for ice, snow, and frozen tundra, moderation is key; once in a while suffices, not six solid months. Small wonder the Russians drank so much.

To be fair, Communism was a demonstrable aspect of the attraction, albeit in a strictly voyeuristic sense, best assayed from afar, and not to be confused with any desire to live it. The Scandinavian socialist model struck me as a viable alternative. Just the same, I wanted to be able to say that I’d been there and seen the other kind. Professor Thackeray’s lectures on history had found a sweet spot, indeed. I was hooked.

What was it about the Tsarist Russia that managed to produce Lenin, Stalin and seven decades of so-called dialectical materialism, when even the Marxist revolutionaries themselves had been schooled to reject the possibility of it happening in such a backward place?

Yet, for all the poverty and reactionary tendencies, Tsarist times also gave the world Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky and Borodin; many were the nights I struggled drunkenly through passages of obscure Russian literature (in translation) while playing and replaying Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture.

Then came the biggest question of all: After Russia’s catastrophe in the Great War – society’s meltdown, the Tsar’s murder, the bloody creation of the USSR – how did the country survive Stalin’s famines, purges and gulags, and still rally to bludgeon the Nazi dragon?

This was my father’s constant fascination, and I came to share it.

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These many years later, it is impossible to point to a single epiphany, that one moment when the bulb was illuminated and the possibility of dipping behind the Iron Curtain as a tourist first took hold.

It took two years to save enough money to visit Europe, allowing plenty of time to plan, so it’s probably the same old story: I must have read about it somewhere.

Given that one of my essential texts was Let’s Go: Europe, a quick glance at the 1984 edition reveals a reference to the Travela agency in the chapter on Helsinki. That’s surely it, as Travela was highly recommended as an organizer of budget youth and student tours to Leningrad, the once and future St. Petersburg. I dimly recall sending for the brochure and pricing.

If memory serves, there were several longer guided Travela jaunts planned for 1985. There wouldn’t be enough time and money for any of those, and Moscow, Kiev and the Trans-Siberian railway would have to wait. However, one of several Leningrad motor coach excursions looked to fit my projected summer’s itinerary.

Thursday 1 August: Helsinki to Leningrad

Friday 2 August: Leningrad

Saturday 3 August: Leningrad

Sunday 4 August: Leningrad to Helsinki

It cost a scandalous $195, and would leave me with a very long haul from Helsinki back to Luxembourg for the flight home on the morning of the 8th. But, verily, I might not ever pass so close again. A few extra shifts at the liquor store was all it took to pre-pay my trip to Leningrad, and the wait began.

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The only firm memories I have of Helsinki on the morning of departure involve all-consuming nervous apprehension. Tour documents listed the meeting place at Travela’s office in downtown Helsinki, easily reached by public transportation from the youth hostel. I got there early, and gradually, my fellow travelers trickled in.

It galls me to remember so little about them. Names and addresses from 1985 were lost forever in 1987, when the little blue book tumbled from my pocket in Vienna. Only broad outlines remain.

There were around 25 of us on the tour, which was expressly designered to be for English speakers. Many were Americans, but not all. The Finnish tour guide’s name was Ari. He was blonde, urbane and multi-lingual. I recall being surprised that a Mexican family was with us. Dad was a corporate executive on the cheap, just like the rest of us. They were charming.

A balding Swiss schoolteacher soon would have his star turn at the Peter & Paul Fortress. An Australian my age named Mark, who had been away from home for a year and a half, working his way across the globe, tried mightily to get me into trouble throughout our stay -- and almost succeeded.

The bus eventually loaded, and away we went. I experienced a thinly suppressed panic, borne of too many Cold War movies, upon arrival at the Finno-Soviet border, where several uniformed guards came aboard to examine passports and visas. The latter were procured by Travela, this being a prime selling point of such a tour; otherwise, the process was said to be exhausting.

Several pieces of luggage were removed and searched, but overall, it was slightly less of a hassle than I’d expected, although within eyesight was a VW van with West German license plates. It was parked over what looked like a grease pit, and seemingly was being disassembled bolt by bolt.

We made good time until the outskirts of Leningrad. Few cars were using the highway, and the landscape was rural and wooded, reminiscent of Michigan. There was a rest stop in the middle of a dreary town by the main road near Vyborg, in a region that once belonged to Finland before being extracted by Uncle Joe in WWII.

Our stopover offered a first glimpse at the bizarre institution of the Beriozka shop, albeit a poorly stocked example compared with the ones about to be plundered in Leningrad. At the Beriozka, only foreign currency was legal tender. Rubles weren’t accepted at all.

The reason we’d been discouraged from indulging in black market currency transactions on the street wasn’t so much their illegality (small-scale trading posed far greater dangers for Soviets than foreigners) as the plain fact that having amassed a fortune in rubles, there’d be absolutely nothing of quality upon which to spend them.

By designer, the quality goods went to the Beriozka, because the hard currency spent in the Beriozka went straight to the government, without grubby middlemen – capitalists, and all that.

When departing the USSR, you were not allowed to cash rubles back into hard currency without a receipt (which black market traders obviously didn’t give), and it wasn’t legal to export rubles.

This is the reason why foreigners indulging in black market currency swaps inevitably wound up splurging at better restaurants. At least there one could eat, drink and be exceedingly sloppy – and invite half the tour group along for the ride for what it would cost (in dollars) to dine at McDonald’s back home.

Whatever this place near Vyborg was called, it was a thoroughly depressing locale. Older buildings were chipped and faded, and newer ones built with pre-fabricated concrete sections that looked nothing like similar structures in Western Europe. It was my first good look at the “rabbit hutches,” as the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel described these ubiquitous housing towers.

There weren’t many people on the street, and the ones I saw didn’t hustle and bustle. They drooped and shuffled. My memory isn’t a perfect snapshot, but it’s a reliable recollection of moroseness. It was a shock.

However, there’s an important corollary, because these people surely were flesh and blood humans like us, not the ideological automatons depicted by the hardcore patriots back home. This counted for something, didn't it?

On the outskirts of Leningrad, the rabbit hutches began multiplying, appearing like M.C. Escher mazes viewed from afar. Near the waterway, industrial complexes squatted, their messy dishevelment punctuated by clusters of heavy work cranes.

Impenetrable propaganda displays appeared on billboards and buildings. Eventually, I’d learn the Cyrillic alphabet. In the interim, many of us aboard the bus practiced simple words and phrases: Please, thank you, beer and toilet.

Perhaps seven hours after leaving Helskini, maybe a bit longer, the bus finally stopped at the Hotel Sovetskaya. I found a more recent description of the hotel, which still exists under a different name.

The Sovetskaya Hotel is located on the south edge of the historical center of St. Petersburg, near the intersection of Lermontovsky Prospekt and the Fontanka River. Rooms on the upper floors of the hotel feature fantastic views of the city center with the domes of St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Trinity Cathedral and St. Nicholas' Cathedral dominating the skyline.

The hotel was reasonably modern, of 1960s vintage, and from the window of Room 1031 (exactly how did I merit a single room?), there was indeed a commanding view of downtown. St. Isaac’s Cathedral’s gold dome looked so close as to be just up the block, but as my feet were about to learn, it was two-to-three miles away by foot, as was Nevsky Prospekt and the other main historic sites.

The room was musty and bedraggled. Well, I’d seen worse. An old radio occupied much of a worn tabletop. It had two knobs, one to turn it on and off, and the other to adjust the volume. The radio dial was tuned to a single frequency. The channel could not be changed.

I clicked the button. Knowledge of Russian was not required to glean that these two men were talking about Lenin, primarily because after every couple dozen words, “V.I. Lenin” would be repeated. It was like listening to the Communist Gospel Hour, hypnotizing and metronomic.

There it was. I’d finally crossed a border too far, and was being brainwashed right there, in my hotel room. Would I become part of a secret cell, whispering passwords?

What if I wasn’t even allowed to leave the USSR?

Was my room phone bugged?

It didn’t matter. I never learned how to use the damn thing, anyway.

---

Previously:

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 29 … Helsinki beneath my feet, but Leningrad on my mind.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 28 … A Finnish detour to Tampere for beer and sausages.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 27 … Stockholm's blonde ambition, with or without mead-balls.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 26 … The Hansa brewery tour, and a farewell to Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 25 … Frantic pickled Norway.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 24 … An aspiring “beer hunter” amid Carlsberg’s considerable charms.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 23 … A fleeting first glimpse of Copenhagen.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 22 … It's how the tulips were relegated.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 21 … A long day in Normandy, though not "The Longest Day."

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 20 … War stories, from neutral Ireland to Omaha Beach.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 19 … Sligo, Knocknarea, Guinness and Freddie.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 18 … Irish history with a musical chaser.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 17 ... A first glimpse of Ireland.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 16 … Lizard King in the City of Light.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 15 … The traveler at 55, and a strange interlude.

The PC: We pause Euro '85 to remember the Mathäser Bierstadt in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 14 … Beers and breakfast in Munich.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 13 … Tears of overdue joy at Salzburg's Augustiner.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 12 … Stefan Zweig and his world of yesterday.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 11: My Franz Ferdinand obsession takes root.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 10: Habsburgs, history and sausages in Vienna.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 9 … Milan, Venice and a farewell to Northern Italy.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 8 … Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 7 … An eventful detour to Pecetto.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 6 … When in Rome, critical mass.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 5 … From Istanbul to Rome, with Greece in between.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 4 … With Hassan in Pithion.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 3 … Growing up in Greece.

The PC: Euro '85, Part 2 ... Hitting the ground crawling in Luxembourg.

The PC: Euro ’85, Part 1 … Where it all began.

_

These requests from abroad, Vol. 6: "I wish you prosperity and development!"

If you own a brewery or work for one, you've probably fielded numerous e-mail inquiries from overseas asking for beer labels, crown caps and the like, as destined to become the cherished keepsakes of private collectors who've somehow heard of your portfolio, even in far-off Montenegro or Macao.

To me, there is something compelling and yet haunting about these foreign requests, which tend most often to come from Central/Eastern European locales, places of longtime personal interest to me historically and geographically. They speak to my inner melancholic.

Lately, I've been pasting their addresses into Google Map and seeing what their places of residence look like. After all, they can look at my business, and it seems only fair for me to see where they live, so very far away. In this spirit of introductions, meet Pavel from St. Petersburg, Russia

"Good day! Ladies and gentlemen, may I ask you a favor? I am interested in beer coasters/beer mats from around the world."

The last time I visited St. Petersburg, it was called Leningrad, and that was in 1987. Two years before, in 1985, my introduction to the Russian capital of old ... a real-life figment of Peter the Great's imagination ... came aboard a bus from Helsinki with a group of youthful tourists just like me, and it seems so much like a dream now. It was still the USSR, fully Communist, and Mikhail Gorbachev had been the head cheese for only a few scant months.

Leningrad was a big city even then, and the industrial suburbs coming in seemed endless, but in the historic city center, near the Winter Palace and other historic sites lifted directly from all the damn books I read in college, seemingly in preparation for those three slim days on the ground, it was so quiet you could hear a crown cap drop. Nevski Prospekt, the main shopping street, seemed perpetually deserted apart from the street cars, which cost the equivalent of about five cents to ride.

Forlorn vending machines dispensed still or fizzy water into communal glasses -- not paper, not plastic, but glass; two or three might be lined up atop the contraption, with a "sanitizer" function that occasionally worked. I celebrated my 25th birthday at a Central Asian joint, in the company of an entertaining Aussie named Mark, who regaled me with tales of the Smiths.

Leningrad was punished severely at the hands of the invading Germans during World War II (the Great Patriotic War, in regional usage). There was a 900-day-long siege, and the city bent but didn't break. A half-million people died, most of them civilians, and among the sites my tour group visited was the Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery. At the time, it was a favored pilgrimage spot for newlyweds. Sure enough, upon arrival, we saw a bride and groom posing for photos with the cemetery as backdrop. Somewhere I have a slide to prove it.

My point in recounting all this is that in all likelihood, Pavel hadn't yet been born when I was there. His apartment block on Turistskaya, which appears quite new, looks to be roughly 8-10 miles away from where I spent most of my time 29 years ago, which is labeled "Tsentralny" on the map above.

At least he has a nice shopping mall right across the street.

I wonder if there is beer for sale there?

Finding пиво in Leningrad, 1987.

In Russian, the word for beer is пиво, and in the first photo, the пиво truck is refilling the kiosk's пиво tank early in the morning of July 2, 1987. The city is Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.

In the second photo, at a different пиво kiosk later on the same day, Nick (the bearded one) has queued for a short, cool one. We both waited patiently in line for a good while, paid a few kopecks, and received our golden lagers.

Because the glasses (all three of them) were for sharing, we chugged the beers rather quickly and moved along, lest the queue become boisterous.

It was good vodka, I think.

Circa July 4 or 5, 1987, canalside in Leningrad with Kim Wiesener, Allan Gamborg and Barrie Ottersbach. The photo was taken around 1:00 a.m.