Zdrazdy! Making Friends on the Siberian Express
Somewhere in Siberia 1989
Our tour through Russia and China was suddenly halted when we got the news that China had closed the border due to the Tiananmen uprising. We were in Irkutsk and our group voted to return to St. Petersburg (at the time Leningrad). I was happy that I would be spending three days on this famous train.
These pretty little girls from the next compartment were curious about us. Their grandmother was an economist and she, too, was curious. She wondered why, if we Americans had so much money, we dressed so sloppily. This was 1989 and the rest of the world hadn’t followed our lead in wearing jeans, athletic shoes and baseball caps. The economist wore a simple cotton housedress, but it was freshly ironed. She was in her best. She did speak some English but there was no way I could explain that although our clothes looked sloppy to her they were not inexpensive. I think our appearance convinced her that America was as poor as her political leaders had tried to make her believe.
I liked a lot of things about this and most of all the lighting. J.
Hi, Jerry.
Those girls have the typical Russian beauty. Lovely features and blond coloring. They remind me of our guide in Kyrgyzstan, beautiful, intelligent and hard working yet she said she held no hope for a good future “unless things change”. But at least she lives in Kyrgyzstan. Her family had been exiled there by Stalin.
Russia is experiencing a population decline due to low birth rates and high mortality rates. Towns are dying: those who can emigrate, alcoholism is rampant, AIDs and drug use as well. It’s a bleak story for girls and boys like these…sad. The poor Russian people, victims of totalitarianism down through the ages.
Rosemary