Traveling in Russia

For twenty years, I traveled, as the cliche goes, “extensively.” At least one big trip a year, often to Europe and once each to China and Thailand. Now I wonder what all those journeys meant.

Traveling with a group has advantages: I don’t have to cope with luggage (a big deal!), and I get to see interesting places. Looking at a photograph of a church is not the same as stepping onto the cold stone floor of a cathedral and looking up at light streaming through 12th Century stained glass. But on organized tours with other Americans I was insulated from ordinary people.

It takes effort to “get the feel” of a place. People told me how beautiful St. Petersburg is. Didn’t they see all those gray apartment buildings with broken windows and crumbling balconies? Surely I learned more than the woman who went into East Berlin and thought she had been to Russia.

I’ve been to Russia twice. On the first trip, on a bus, I bumped over pot holes on a two-lane “highway” between Moscow and St. Petersburg. At the only “rest stop,” our guide said, “The last time I was here a woman went into the privy, and the floor boards collapsed under her. I suggest that you ladies follow me into the woods this way, and the gentlemen follow our driver into the woods the other way.”

That was seeing Russia from the ground up. We passed dismal villages with log houses and no shops, not even one gas station on the entire trip. In Moscow subway stations I saw statues and murals. I also saw a line of women trying to sell their clothes for money to buy food. Russia has a long way to go to give her people a lifestyle comparable to ours in the U.S.

That trip left me wanting to see more of one thing: the paintings in the Hermitage. To avoid the miserable hotels I took a river cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow. My cabin mate was a sweet lady from Albuquerque. Before the trip the tour director told me, “You’ll love her.” Each time our ship docked, she got off and bought postcards. She did not like the Hermitage. She said, “I don’t like looking at pictures.”

Why do people travel? Some Americans I met on my trips seemed to travel only for opportunities to shop. Or maybe they just want to “Get away from it all.” The prizes on Wheel of Fortune are often to resorts in Mexico, the Caribbean, or even more distant places. All those resorts look alike. I stayed at such a place in Thailand and enjoyed my luxurious room with balcony overlooking an enormous swimming pool and tropical gardens.

That trip was an Elderhostel. While staying at that resort, my fellow Americans and I were taken to a mountain village where I met a family who lived in a hut with a dirt floor, a few wooden benches, and a “kitchen” which consisted of a small fire surrounded by stones to support an iron pot.