our correspondent in Moscow gives us glimpses only a traveler can give—
Dear Bob,
This weekend I went to attend a training programme we were running for loan officers. It was held at a sanatorium, owned by the state railway company, outside Moscow.
It was a building suspended in time, though the fabric had been partly refurbished the attitudes remained Soviet. The bartender the previous evening had wanted to fine us for putting two tables together! A chambermaid complained at one participant for putting the shower mat on the floor as it would get dirty! A sign at the grocery store proclaimed that staff (of the sanatorium) would be served before guests! There would be no queuing for the workers and no customer service either (and, of course, most of the guests were workers for the very same company as the staff)!
The canteen, I think, served the same menu it always had, except the begrudging addition of a packaged yoghurt at breakfast and a forlorn kiwi fruit at lunch. The food was universally unappetising – except the tea, though there is little you can do to ruin tea.
But then last night, we had a banquet (in the bar) and the cuisine was transformed – thoroughly Russian but utterly edible – the Russian hospitality ‘gene’ so evident in private finally cut in – and delivered – and a warm evening of eating and drinking and dancing ensued (replete with elaborate toasts and an impromptu poetry competition…
It was a pity about the beds you retired to, so narrow that one turn threatened to have you on the floor – though firm. The first such place I stayed at (in 1993), the springs were so shot that you lay down, sank to the floor, with the thin mattress curling to embrace you!
But it was lovely to get out into country air – and slipping through the encircling sanatoria fence, I was able to walk amongst the trees; and, recognised how long it had been since I had been ‘in nature’!
Reading Kundera’s Immortality – and I fear the book feels like it. It is so clever, and with each display of cleverness becomes heavier and heavier, I am afraid.
