(excerpted from Doug Burton's trip diary)
Friday 3/16/79 Departure - Blacksburg, VA
We have just departed from Roanoke airport and the valley is beautiful. From my side of the plane I can see several lines of mountains. The sky is almost perfectly clear. Everyone is excited about the trip and you can tell that this is the first time many have been in a plane. When descending toward New Jersey, we started hitting some turbulence. As I write, the whole plane is shaking, but not badly - just enough to make you a little nervous. While coming in to land, we have a great view of New York City. I could see the Statue of Liberty, World Trade Center, and the Empire State Building. The bus trip from Newark to J. F. Kennedy airport was interesting. We saw all the “good” sections of New York: the slums, Chinatown. The shops were interesting; people had merchandise set up outside on sidewalks. The streets were filthy and we saw several neighborhoods where the backyards were piled with garbage, bricks, boards - no place for kids to play. So far it still hasn’t hit me that I’m actually flying to Russia. Maybe when we take off from here and I see the ocean I’ll start to believe it.
We just departed (8:00 p.m.) from New York on a DC-10. It is night and the city is beautiful with all the street lights and buildings. We are flying just off the coast, and occasionally I can see boats at sea below us. We are flying to Montreal first, then to Helsinki. The in-flight movie is “Somebody Killed Her Husband” with Jeff Bridges and Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Perhaps I can catch some sleep.
Saturday 3/17/79 Helsinki, Finland
I
awoke about 2:30 a.m. EST to a beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. The
sea was covered with ice, and just to the north we could see the mountains of
Iceland. At about 4:45 EST we reached the coast of Norway. We are to fly over
Trondheim and in another hour we’ll be at Helsinki. The fjords are beautiful,
covered with snow, and the whole countryside is lined with rivers and dotted
with frozen lakes. We’re approaching Helsinki now and I can see Finland below.
The pilot informed us that the temperature in Helsinki is -14°C; I’m glad I
brought my scarf!
We toured Helsinki for about two hours. We saw government buildings, the University of Helsinki, churches, the Olympic Stadium, and the downtown market area. The dorms at the Technical Institute were very impressive - better than ours. I was also impressed with the city, especially the parks and the sea which almost completely surrounds it. This time of the year the ice is about three feet thick. We saw cars driving across the river on the ice. The city is very clean.
The Soviet airline made a “scheduled change” in our flight to Leningrad; instead of leaving at 6:40 p.m. (Helsinki time), we’re leaving at 7:30. Finnair had sandwiches and drinks for us while we waited. The Aeroflot plane finally arrived, and we left Helsinki about 8:00 p.m. The plane trip was a little rough, but luckily it was short. When we landed, we were all scared and unsure of what to do but we got through customs all right except for Dr. Saric: his bag was inspected since he was the last of our group. Our tourist guide’s name is Tanya; she’s real nice, soft spoken, and kind of cute. She’d fit in perfectly at Tech. We all managed to squeeze on board the bus and headed toward the hotel. When we arrived, there was some trouble outside: some young people approached and offered to buy jeans from us. The hotel manager tried to chase them away but they came back. Finally the security guard chased them off but there was shouting and excitement for a while. Tanya said they were black marketeers.
The lobby of the hotel is nice but our rooms are “dumps.” We didn’t get here until after midnight so the hotel restaurant was closed. It doesn’t matter because most of us are too tired to eat after our long trip: 27½ hours from Blacksburg to Leningrad.
Sunday 3/18/79 Leningrad, Russia, USSR
First a correction to
yesterday’s notes. The security guard apparently arrested one of the young
people last night. I couldn’t see everything and I thought they had only
chased them off. There are other foreign students here at the hotel. We are
supposed to have a party with some of the Russians Tuesday night. We took a
quick tour of Leningrad
and this morning went to the bank to exchange money and visited St. Isaac’s
Cathedral and the Aurora. After lunch, we had the afternoon free, so a group of
us went shopping and sightseeing. You should have seen the strange stares we
received when one of us bought a quart of milk, and we all shared it out on the
sidewalk because none of us had had any milk since the flight across the
Atlantic. We took the Metro to a hard currency store. We also were approached by
two Russians who wanted to buy our jeans and two others about our age who wanted
chewing gum!
After
dinner, we went to the circus. They had some really impressive acts, especially
the balancing act and the jugglers, but the clown was the hit of the evening. He
was so funny we didn’t need to know what he was saying to enjoy him. The fun
really started when we left the circus. The bus had taken us over, but we had to
find our own way back. Tanya had given us directions but we got confused. So
when we saw Bus 23 ride by, we started running after it and almost got run down
by another bus. We finally caught Bus 23 and then got off four blocks too soon
and watched it stop directly in front of our hotel. Some of the group were tired
and went to bed, but a number stayed up and found a party with some visiting
Finnish students. I joined them just as the liquor ran out, but we were invited
back tomorrow after the ballet for a bigger party.
Things have been working out well in spite of the -17°C weather. My hands would get so cold just in the minute it takes to snap a picture that my fingers stung.
Monday 3/19/79 Leningrad, Russia, USSR
Right after breakfast this morning a group of us went to the milk and pastry stores, because breakfast was pretty bad (cabbage and fatty meat). We then went on a tour of a museum and I was especially impressed by the early icons and the nineteenth century exhibits. The gilded furniture was beautiful. The afternoon was free and a group of us went downtown to a bookstore and to purchase some vodka. We met a group of Russians who spoke almost perfect English. Earlier, Jill had given some youngsters chewing gum on our way out of the hotel and when we returned the same children were there waiting for us. Persistent!
After
dinner we went to the ballet. We saw “Zhizel” performed by the Mali
Kirov Opera and Ballet Company. After the performance, we had to find our
own way home and while on the bus, Bill Daily got to be “really close friends”
with a drunk Russian. I’m not sure Bill was too thrilled about it. After
returning to the hotel we went looking for the party, but the Finns hadn’t
returned. There was some drinking later and eventually we went to bed.
Tuesday 3/20/79 Leningrad, Russia, USSR
This
morning I woke up feeling a little strange but soon got over it. Several didn’t
make it to breakfast. But after breakfast we all toured the Peter and Paul
fortress and while we were there, they fired the noon cannon. Mom (Carol Saric)
practically jumped into Jack’s arms. Tanya showed us where the Walrus Club
took their dips in the river during the middle of the winter.
After lunch, which wasn’t very good, we drove out to the Summer Palace of Paul and Mary. On the way, our driver was pulled over for speeding (90 km per hour in a 60 km zone). All through the palace were pictures of the damage done during World War II. The statues, furniture, and paintings were removed to the Ural Mountains, but the palace was badly damaged. The restoration was remarkable. On the way back I sat up front to talk with Tanya. She told me a little about her family life and we talked some about the community life in my home town.
After supper we attended a reception with some Russian students. It started off with a small concert by the Friendship Club whose lead singer was a little boy about 10 or 11 years old. Then one of their group played two selections on a folk guitar. Mike LeClere played a classical piece, “Blackbird,” and “Stairway to Heaven” for them. Dr. Saric led us all in “Dixie” (which was really bad) and then the rock group performed while the groups mixed. After a slow start of exchanging gifts, we finally managed to establish a rapport. Several of our group got friendly with individual Russian students and I met a young librarian named Luda and through a mixture of Russian, German, and a little English we managed to converse. I showed her some pictures of home and we hit it off quite well. She got a big kick out of the “Love An Engineer” button I gave her and she gave me a wooden spoon as a souvenir.
Wednesday 3/21/79 Leningrad, Russia, USSR
In
the morning we had a tour of the Institute of Leningrad. The visit began with
speeches by some of their faculty and some remarks by Dr. Saric. The Institute
consists of 3,000 students, with the major emphasis on ship engineering and
economics of ship building. Only the out-of-town students live at the dorms. We
told them a little about our University and gave them some literature about
Tech. They have a research towing tank 100m x 6m x 3m with a wave making machine
capable of creating waves 1/3 meter high. There is a cage across the trough
which runs on tracks from which you can suspend models of ships to test them.
They took us for a ride in it and it builds up to a right good speed! We were
also shown the War Memorial commemorating the Institute’s students who died
during the siege of Leningrad and in the war.
In
the afternoon we went to see the Hermitage and the Winter Palace. The Hermitage
is that part reserved for the art collection, while the Winter Palace is the
residence. The floors were absolutely beautiful and in one hall there were
paintings in the corner between the floor and the ceiling of statues that were
so well done they fooled you into thinking they were real. Most of the rooms are
dedicated to non-Russian art, such as French impressionists and 18th century
Spanish.
After dinner we had quite a bit of free time so a group of us went downtown one last time before our train trip to Moscow. We picked up some wine for the trip, then stopped by the shop for ice cream. Just outside the store I ran into some really friendly Russians and I spoke German with one who was attempting to trade his black caviar (half a kilogram) for American dollars or cigarettes. I would have liked to trade but I didn’t have any dollars, just traveler's checks.
Everyone was excited about the train trip to Moscow since we planned on partying early in the evening. We took the bus to the station but still had at least a quarter-mile walk to the train. After a great deal of shuffling, we settled down for some singing and I finally went to bed about 1:30 a.m. Before closing, I want to report on a couple of the adventures others had in Leningrad. Dan and a group went out and spent $30 each on champagne, wine, and caviar and then caught a cab back to the hotel for seven sticks of gum. Nancy went home with a young Russian woman we met at the bake shop and they talked and had coffee in her apartment. The last day was absolutely beautiful with the temperature getting above 0°C. The sun was bright and warm and everybody was shedding coats to enjoy “the heat wave.”
