As requested - Travelogue, Red Arrow February 1987

[Barrie Lawrence]

I introduced myself under ‘Hello’ and asked for help disposing of an old Hornby train set. I mentioned in passing a trip I’d once taken on the Red Arrow in Russia, and another over the Andes in Peru. Someone wrote, “Why not write a travelogue for us”.

OK – never written a travelogue before, but as you’ve all been so helpful, I’ll have a go!

The Red Arrow – from Moscow to Leningrad (now St. Petersburgh), February 1987

It’s a long time ago, so I’ll just list some of my memories of that trip.

The purpose was twofold. Firstly, I had only been married a few months, and I thought that Russia in wintertime would be just so romantic – Zhivago, snowscapes, pine forests, Lara’s theme and all that. Secondly, we were part of a party of dentists (my own profession) going to visit teaching hospitals and dental clinics!

The briefing meeting was interesting – “Make friends with the Russians. Take coloured badges and contraceptives. That’s what they really like!”

The romantic notions evaporated at Heathrow. My wife had suffered from depression in the past, and the thought of Russia (“Will you manage to escape from the Soviet Union once you’ve got there?” her friends had asked) was too much. She dissolved in tears as we were about to embark on the Aeroflot, and everyone present thought she was a dissident being taken back by the KGB. She was shrieking “I don’t want to go! I don’t want to go”, but a professor of Oral Surgery and his wife who I’d known at dental school calmed her down, and tear-streaked but silent, she boarded the dreaded aircraft.

The food was awful, but that was part of the adventure as far as I was concerned. Breakfast was a little raw fish and a little yoghurt one day, and the next it was a little yoghurt with a little raw fish! Dinner was Bortsch (cabbage water with small fat lump) and then medium fat lump with recycled cabbage for main course. We tried to eat it all so it wouldn’t be served again the next evening! And after meals the waiters hung around trying to sell us black market caviar. Most people had brought chocolate bars with them anyway, and vanished to their rooms quickly after each meal!

The dental hospitals and clinics were rather dire. Fast air-rotor drills, but not plumbed in to a water supply, so teeth glowed and died when drilled, leading to abscesses. And so on.

The architecture was very Soviet, and similar to the rest of Eastern Europe – concrete blocks of flats, and concrete look-alike hotels. The ice and snow in the streets was constantly being attacked by 25-stone Russian ladies with pick-axes, who were undoubtedly ‘Heroes of the Soviet Union’.

A man in a rain coat followed us everywhere. He loitered at the door of St. Basil’s when we entered, so one of our party went over to him and said “I expect you speak English, comrade. I should go for a coffee if I were you – we’ll be about 45 minutes”. But he looked through him and remained at the door.

It was the early days of Gorbachev, and in the workers’ club young people were full of optimism and anticipated a quick change to western life-style over the following few years.

The Red Arrow – I can’t remember much about the train itself. I think it was steam, and we went over night in sleepers. There were 4 bunks to a carriage. A steward arrived at the carriage, dressed in a brightly coloured uniform, just like he had stepped out of Zhivago. From a silver ornate coffee pot he poured strong Russian coffee into beautiful china cups. Wow, I thought, this train has style. Niet! When I went to the toilet, it was blocked, and so they had drilled a hole in the floor and we had to use that!

The views in the morning were very Zhivago – snowscapes, pine forests and quaint little villages.

At Leningrad we stayed at the Hotel Sputnik, toured the Hermitage, walked out over the River Neva which had thick ice, and visited Dental Clinic No.37, or similar, where they proudly showed us an ancient X-ray machine (a museum piece in the UK), and lasers donated by a large dental company, for which they had no instructions but were zapping patients experimentally anyway!

That was 21 years ago. Now it’s somewhat different. Or is it? The KGB lives on in Putin, Georgia gets the treatment once meted out to Hungary, and as you are probably aware, the Red Arrow continues to travel overnight, every night, from Moscow to St. Petersburgh!

Barrie Lawrence

[Shed Cat]

Barrie, thanks for taking the time to write to write this. I have never had the chance to go on a great adventure like that, so I enjoyed your story.

(my comment about the "travelogue" was that there is far more to rail travel experience than simply noting the locomotive number and maker's name - and that no-one in this relaxed forum would critise if you couldn't supply details of the actual loco number or the depot where it was based )

[paul miller]

Fabulous Barrie, I have had a few holidays that resembled more of an adventure myself, unfortunately never rail journeys. Keep them coming, in fact have any of the forum had anything similar to share with us.
Paul