Funeral in Berlin

I am glad you could display a photo of the bottles. I drank a few of those in the old days. It brings back good memories of times when one had little money, but lots of good will and energy. Who needs Moet Chandon when one has those things?

L. Sprague de Camp had a scene in Lest Darkness Fall in which the main character, Martin Padway (sent back in time by a lightning bolt to Rome as Justinian is about to invade Italy), gets caught up in a barstool argument with various Christian sects over the nature of Christ.  He identifies as a Unitarian, which he tells each disputant is the closest thing his society (someplace distant; he never details exactly what the difference is) had to theirs.

Moscow 1985

It took eleven years to get back to Moscow after my 1974 visit. I can recall, very vividly, several things about the latter trip.

I was on one of my round-the-world business trips during the late summer or early fall. On this stage, I flew from London to Moscow In those days, when going through customs in Moscow, one had to declare what currency one was carrying into and out of the Soviet Union. Since I had visited a number of different countries during my trip, I had something like seven or eight different types of money with me. I carried these in a special leather wallet which had a number of separate sections in which one could segregate the various currencies.

As the reader may recall from my earlier story, Soviet citizens were not known for their joviality, and this especially applied to Soviet bureaucrats like customs officials. There are however exceptions. I can remember the lady who was checking the currency form which I filled out. She was noting each currency and finally laughing out loud as my list kept going. She even smiled at me as I showed her my wallet.

It was good that I had started my visit to Moscow with such a happy occurrence as a series of mishaps followed.

When I went to pickup my luggage, it turned out that it had not arrived. I probably spent an hour waiting to make sure this was really the case, and then had to fill out the necessary claim forms.

As I had lost so much time, the only taxi I could get to town was a very beat-up car, which had seen much better days.

My brief-case and I entered the car and off we went to Moscow. We drove along very slowly, which was a blessing of sorts, considering the state of the car. I immediately noticed a hole in the floor through which I could see the road passing by. As if this were not enough, the car broke-down shortly thereafter. The driver got out and started fooling around under the hood. Figuring that repairs might take a while, I got out of the car and started strolling around a field which was adjacent to the road. As I walked and watched, I could see nothing happening fast when my right shoe fell apart. I was wearing something like a penny loafer and the thread connecting the upper part to the rest of the shoe broke. It didn’t just tear a little, almost three inches of the upper were separated from the lower part. The shoe would not stay on my foot unless I walked on my heel with my toes pointing up. As I gimped my way back to the car, the driver saw this and we both had a good laugh. Somehow, the driver got the old jalopy running and we made it to the Intourist Hotel.

Now, I had two problems. The first was to buy new shoes or repair the old one. The second was to buy some toiletries as my suitcase was anywhere but in Moscow. I got a ride to GUM the department store on Red Square. One must remember that this was “The” department store of the Soviet Union. I arrived shortly before closing time, but there was still a chance to get in and buy the few items I needed.

I stumbled inside dragging my foot, like Igor of Frankenstein fame, ready to spend my rubles for Soviet products, but was shocked to find that there was virtually nothing inside GUM for sale. I searched for shoes and could find none. I searched for a toothbrush and toothpaste to no avail. From counter to counter I went getting more desperate as time went on. I finally found someone who had something like a Boy Scout’s camping toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste like one gets on business class during an international flight. That was it.

I went back to my hotel and somehow found some thick thread and a needle with which I could temporarily repair my shoe. So at least I no longer looked like Chester walking down a Dodge City street.

That night, I was invited to a business dinner with someone from RaznoImport/Export. All I can recall about that is that the food was not so great, mainly smoked and dried fish with some pickled vegetables. Still, there was plenty of vodka. Although he asked me if I had any preferences, I let my host order everything as I knew this food was better than what he generally ate, and he would take the leftovers home with him. He did.

After dinner, I walked around the city for a short while. I went down one of those underground walkways which keep pedestrians from clogging the streets and saw, for the first time in my life, a bunch of Punks. There in Soviet Russia roamed a gang of rowdies with multicolored spiked-hair, sporting black-leather with steel studs. Upon spotting these communist paragons, I decided to turn around and go back to my hotel.

I saw my host again the next morning and after that meeting was over, I had time to kill until my flight to Tokyo that evening. I went out walking around Red Square and decided to have lunch at the famous National Hotel. I asked to be shown into the dining room, and was led to a round table in a large room where everyone was speaking Russian. The waiter came up to me and started talking to me in Russian and I had no idea what he was saying. Luckily, I had been seated next to two British businessmen who were fluent in Russian, and they helped me with my order.

When the waiter left, the Brits laughed a bit and said that I had been seated in the wrong dining room. As a foreigner, I was supposed to be eating in the dollar dining room, i.e. the one where all bills were charged in dollars. For some reason, I had been placed in the ruble dining room where everything was charged in rubles. The food was the same but the bills in the ruble room were much cheaper than in the dollar room. I had no idea why I was brought to the ruble room unless it was because many people thought I looked Slavic. In any case, it was a stroke of good luck that I had landed there. And not just because of the prices.

It turned out that the two Brits had been doing business with the Soviet Union for many years. As I recall, one had been doing business there for about twenty years and the other for about fifteen. Both spoke fluent Russian and both had a very good grasp of what was going on in the Soviet Union.

We spoke over lunch and toward the end of it, our conversation turned to politics and what was happening in the USA. It was then that I learned how correct President Reagan was in his handling of the USSR.

They asked me about Reagan and American politics, and I told them what I knew, which was not a whole lot. In reply, they told me that whoever was behind Reagan’s Soviet policy it was brilliant. They based this observation on the belief that Reagan’s goal was to force Gorbachev and the USSR into a corner by making them choose between increased military spending or helping the ordinary consumer. By forcing the Soviet to do this, Reagan would bring change to the USSR as it couldn’t keep up with the USA. What ever decision Gorbachev made would be bad for the communists. In the end, it would break them. That lunch was the high-point of my trip.

Whenever I hear fools say that Reagan didn’t have much to do with the downfall of the USSR, I think of these two British businessmen who in 1985 actually knew what was happening.

After lunch I made my way to the airport and, low and behold, my suitcase was there. It turned out that the people at Heathrow had mistakenly labeled my luggage for destination Munich, not Moscow. Oh well, such are the pitfalls of international travel.

I went back through customs and another lady smiled at the number of currencies which I carried. I then took an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Tokyo, which was the longest overland flight I have ever taken. On most international flights, one flies over a lot of water. But Moscow to Tokyo is over Siberia and Siberia is huge. I was amazed at the vastness of the place. Normally on night flights, one sees a fair number of lights on the ground. Not so over Siberia. It was just a vast blackness, with the occasional small bright spot.

And I finally had something to spend some rubles on. During the flight the stewardess offered a number of different items for sale. One of these was a beautiful amber necklace which I bough for my wife. She still wears it.

Another interesting factoid. Modern French wine is not, repeat not, French they are American.

Around the turn of the 19th/20th century there was a blight in the French wine country that destroyed the grape vines. French grower desperate for quality cutting imported millions of cuttings from Napa Valley to restore their fields. 

I suppose that the argument could be made that since these vines had French origin they could still be called French, however they were resistant to the blight due to American genetic growing standards making them IMHO  completely American. The work of an obscure monk, Gregor Mendel, a German speaking Czech saved the French wine industry. 

Researchers at the University of Arkansas cheminical enginering dept.  have found a process for turning kudzu into bio fuel, at this time the process is not cost effective. 

Well, you will have to take that up with Christian Brothers thats where I got my info.  But they did have skin in the game, so perhaps they exaggerated a bit.