The world may be broken into three parts, as the French say, but for us in the Overseas business of the Bell System, it had a great many more parts. I found them all fascinating from the Indians, to the Saudi Arabians, to the various tribes in Africa as well as to the more familiar in Europe and in Australia and New Zealand. My only regret is that I didn’t have time to explore it more fully. I worked at it for 15 years, but the fact that we had to move on to the next stop militated against learning as much as we could have. Rudolf Ruutschi of Switzerland, said on more than one occasion that we have to “let the sun shine on our faces” and we could grow with the people and learn their ways. We had to make the next stop and all the stops after that. And then back to New York. We were there so that some of the culture came to be second nature. I regret that we failed to spend as much time as the world’s cultures and customs would dictate.
So now, we look back to recall a good many incidents over the past years from the 1970’s and the 1980’s. Some are a little funny – see how BLAH, BLAH, BLAH got a telephone answered. Some are more serious as in the case of traveling through the old Soviet Union. Most are less serious than all that. We will try to recall that a lot of good humor made it easier to bear the burden of being away from home for prolonged periods of time.
So why don’t we start with one of the few places where I welcomed a stout drink of brandy with breakfast. Let’s start with the Soviet Union. Yes, I know that it’s Russia and a dozen other independent republics, but before the Berlin wall came tumbling down, it was known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – the USSR. Probably the most formidable of the countries hostile to the United States.
 
Moscow, Rumania, Poland and more
Now this is one rule, for our people, that shall not be broken in any place in the world – but most especially in the Soviet Union. We don’t deal in currency transactions aside from an official rate of exchange. No matter how many Rubles or Zhlotys or whatever are offered, we don’t buy it. Not from cab drivers or from waiters or the men hanging around the local hotels. We don’t buy it. If you’re in a currency bind, the American Embassy will be most unhelpful. You’re not quite on your own, but the distance is negligible.
Now the next rule is to never get into a fight. You’ll lose because the cops are on the local side of the order, and they are usually cut into the take. And lastly, do not mess around with women. If a woman in Poland or Rumania or in Russia invites herself to sit at your table, better you should get the management to shoo her away. If they let her stay, head for Room Service, such as it is.
Now, on the menu of the National Hotel in Moscow. It resembles a sort of large book. Maybe it would be 9” or 10” by about 12” to 14”. My companions started to salivate. However, when the waiter showed up, he began to list the things that he did not have. No beef stroganoff. No veal with vodka. No meat pie with beef broth. The long and the short of it was that he had a chicken and another mystery meat – and that was it. So this was a four day stay in the best hotel in Moscow across from the Kremlin. Our four year old grandson plays restaurant with a menu he has picked up from the local deli. When old Will is asked about pizza, he is out of it. Same for ham sandwiches. Same for Coca Cola. It’s all the same old dodge that Will and the headwaiter play, a script from the National Hotel in Moscow.
Now a word about the room. It had a little square of about 2” x 2” of soap. That had to last for as long as your stay at the hotel lasted. In my large living room, there was a large lump under the piano. It was explained that the floor below mine had a chandelier. The shaft of the chandelier ran up into my room, so I couldn’t do anything about that hump, without the chandelier falling into the room downstairs. When I looked up, I could see that I had a chandelier anchored in the room above. I stayed away from that chandelier.
There was a stern looking woman always on duty outside our room. She took our keys in the morning and gave them back at night. There was no fooling around with that Mrs. Stalin-esk character. I did not mess with her.
Now, a foolish reminder about how bad the Soviet System was indeed. I showed a Kleenex to several people in and near the hotel. I wanted to buy a box of Kleenex. Each of them sent me to another store and on to more stores. Finally, I got the message. There was no Kleenex in all the Soviet Union, but no one wanted to admit it. I hung on to the Kleenex in my over coat pocket until it was pretty shopworn.
And so we departed at the beginning of the fifth day at somewhere around 6:30 AM. Our hosts, who were good hosts, took us to the bar near the Swiss Air terminal. The hosts ordered brandy. I not only enjoyed the brandy with our hosts, but once I found my airplane seat, the steward said we had the look of someone happy to leave the Soviet Union. And we couldn’t eat until we landed at Warsaw. And so it seemed natural to polish off two more brandies before breakfast. I never missed the Soviet Union.
 
Rumania
Before we got to Moscow, we sat for a long time in Bucharest waiting for the Aeroflot flight to Moscow. Near us sat a man with a lighted cigar in one hand and a cigarette in the other puffing in alternate intakes. Unlike Clinton, he inhaled both. Dave Dietz said simply, “He wants to get his life over with.” It made sense to me.
Aeroflot, the national airline of the USSR, gave each of us in the first class cabin a roll out ruler, the kind that you pull out and push back in. It was a full meter with millimeter markings as well. Finally, it had Cyrillic instructions to mark certain places in the tape. Unfortunately, I had no immediate use for a Russian tape so I offered it to my two sons-in-law. They didn’t really look hard for a use for it, so it fell into disrepair. I lost it.
 
Poland
Now, let’s get this straight. There are two stand-out places behind the Iron Curtain – Hungary and Poland. We’ll have to get to the Hungarians at a later date even though they have the most radiant set of women in all of Europe. The Poles are tough and defiant. They show it in their love of colors. They will not be undone by a collection of ragamuffins like the Russians. They may be under the yoke of the Rasputins of the East, but they remind us that they are like a radish. They are red on the outside but white on the inside. So much for red all the way through.
The Forum Hotel in Warsaw was built to some sort of Western specifications. It didn’t have enough elevators and the windows failed to open. They didn’t seem to have air conditioning. However, at the end of each hall by the elevators, stood two fairly enormous machines. They had been brought back from the West and were called Shoe Shine Machines. The shoe shine machines made it into a first class hotel. No matter that the ordinary bureaucrat never shines his shoes, the fact was that the many shoe shine machines made it a World Class Hotel. Even the Plaza had no machines like these.
Each of these machines came with English, Polish and French signs. There were two different shining machines – one on the left for the left foot, and about two feet on the right side of the machine, one for the right foot. Obviously, one stood on his right foot and stuck his left foot into the shining machine. Then he stood on the left foot and stuck his right foot into the right shining machine. Both shining machines were about a foot off the ground. Well, I’m sorry about the old Polish joke routine, but the signs said in English and Polish and French, “DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SHINE BOTH OF YOUR SHOES AT THE SAME TIME.” I suppose some Russian or a member from an East European country, may have tried to shine both shoes at one. It would have made for quite a splatter in that hotel hall.
We leave with one more attempt to outdo the West. In each room there were book marks. That shows the sensitivity to higher learning for the patrons at the Forum Hotel. Unfortunately, the book marks had an adhesive on the back to paste in the prescribed page. Well, their hearts were in the right place and remember, we’re red on the outside but white all the way through.
The old Soviet system had not many admirers. It collapsed of its own weight. Think of the planning in every East European capital called Plannization. Ah well, it is mostly all gone now. Let’s see what the new tomorrow may bring.
 
E. E. Carr
December, 1997
Essay #2 (Old Format)
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It’s the little details that I love about these essays. Who knew that kleenex-seekers would be out of luck in the Soviet Union? I’d have been miserable for that alone, unless the SU also was short on cats and cedar. The adhesive bookmarks definitely take the cake, though.