Jack's Trip To Russia

The year was 2007... and Jack decided it was a good time to go to Russia. He did many things, like spending 3 hours in a train station, counting Lenin statues and being unsure about breakfast. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So, gladys it was January two thousand and seven that I,
for some reason, and I don't even remember why, I
decided to go to Russia on vacation.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Russia was that when you were on your Russian author's kick.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
I've always been on a Russian author's kick. But I'm
a child of the cult, weird child children of the
Cold War. I've always been interested in the Soviet Union
and Moscow and Red Square and all that sort of stuff,
historically huge Russian literature guy. And I don't even remember
how I made the decision. And it was during the
period of time where at least I thought a lot

(00:35):
of the world thought Russia is actually, you know, becoming
like a regular country and is sort of like a
regular country. And I had done some world travel to
easy places to travel to, like Mexico, Great Britain, Italy,
places other places, but tourists friendly enough that there was

(00:57):
so much English around it was really easy to get
a So I just assumed Russia, certainly Moscow and Saint
Petersburg were similar. I mean, I didn't even really think
about it. This is pretty smartphone, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
That reminds me. There, Judy and I were in a
H A H Munich train station. I want to make
sure we got on the right train. And I asked
a young woman, she's probably in her early twenties, excuse me,
do you speak English? And she said, of course I do,
and she was German. But and it wasn't contemptious or anything,
but she was like.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, of course I do. You're a silly man.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
So, yeah, that's a very different place than what you're
about to Dosiy.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, my limited world travel, it was effortless to get around.
I mean, if you went into a big, giant, big
city train station, there were signs in all kinds of languages,
but lots of English, and there was an English map,
and you know people at the hotel. I mean, just
it was not hard. It was not it wasn't really
challenging at all. Well, right, and even if you're you
don't speak German. For instance, if you want to train

(01:52):
to Stuttgart and there it says Stuttgart on the sign,
you go there. That's one of the problems that Russia's
got that cyrilic or whatever it's called out bed, so
their letters don't even match up. So there was zero English,
that's my point zero. So I land there. I barely
get out of the airport because I was in trouble
from the moment I got there, because there was just

(02:13):
no English around. There was no like exit this way.
And again this was pre smartphones, so there was no
looking it up or translate or anything like that. I
had not been to a major international airport where it
didn't have exit in English or something somewhere. Anyway, I
just I couldn't even figure out how to get out
of the airport. And then when I got to the
whole customs thing and everything like that, there was some

(02:35):
Russian guy there with a badge and a gun who
wouldn't stop yelling at me. I mean, I showed him
my passport. I'm trying to get out of there, and
he just kept yelling at me, just kept screaming at me,
oh no, I'm not any slamming my passport on the
table and pointing at me and pointing at signs, and
I had no idea what he was talking about. And
I just kept shrugging my shoulders, and I thought, I
don't I'm stuck. I don't know what's gonna happen. Are

(02:57):
they gonna put me in jail? Finally, he just waved
with your He just waves his arm like, I'm tired
of this. You're pissing me off. I'm discussing with you.
He waves me up. So I'm through the turnstile and
now I'm out into I'm into Russia. I'm into the
part of the airport, and I just I mean, it
was a struggle from the first second trying to figure
out where the train station was. I was at the
train station for three hours because I had a hotel

(03:19):
room booked in Saint Petersburg. I had to get on
the six hour train to get there, and I booked
everything in the United States. It was easy online. The
train station no English, not a single human being speaking English.
You couldn't decipher the schedules or anything like that. Was
just I was as lost. I was as lost as
it could be. Finally, after three hours, I heard an
English word from somebody, somebody who spoke English, a guy

(03:42):
who traveled, and I went I said, dude, I've been
here for three hours. I have no idea. He helped
me out and figured out how to get to Saint Petersburg.
But the whole trip ended up being that way, more
or less like trying to get to the bathroom or
order a cup of coffee or wherever was just eat.
Everything was just impossible.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
I'm looking at the cyrillic alphabet right now.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Forget it. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it is that.
There's no resemblance to any sounds or anything you've ever heard.
So one of the funnier parts was I'm in I'm
in Red Square. It looks just like it does on television,
and those big giant churches with the colored balls on top,
and Lenen's tomb and everything like that. And I'd seen
all these Soviet Union parades with the Titan missiles and

(04:24):
all that sort of stuff. It was just it was
fascinating to me to see that. But I went into
a museum. I'm walking around this museum and there's no
English anywhere. So I'm walking up to displays and looking
at him, just thinking, I wonder what this is. I'll
be darned, that's a This looks old. There is a
military uniform of some sort. I don't know who belonged

(04:46):
tour for what war or what centry. Anyway, I'll walk
over here, I wonder what the heck that is. I
wasn't in the museum very long. I thought, I'm not
learning anything. It'd be easy now. While I wouldn't go
to Russia now, like I said, I was during that
brief window where we kind of thought they were becoming
a democracy or whatever, I wouldn't go now. But at

(05:10):
least if I had a smartphone now, I could do
the Google Translate and get around. But in one of
the museums I went to from the beginning, the number
of Stalin statues. I saw. That's what tripped me and thinking, Okay,
it's not headed the direction or something isn't quite what
I thought it was. There's no way you're going to
join the nation the world of normal nations and have

(05:33):
Stalin statues and Lenden statues all over the place. I mean,
that's weird. One museum I was in was full of
Stalin like dummies or whatever, like wax figurines with his
arms around children and smiling. I mean, they're still doing
the whole Uncle Joe thing. Wow in their museums. I mean,
the one of the worst mass murders in the history
of the planet, they were still doing that in two

(05:55):
thousand and seven. So and it's not shocking that it
has gone back the direction of it has been the
last thousand years of dictators and and and and tsars.
That's hilarious walking around that museum. So go look at
this thing. I wonder, what the hell is an old box.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
He could have the head of Saint Peter in it,
could have been the jewelry box of I think Arena.
Is that Napoleon's sword or I don't know, shoe shine box.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
This is a waste of time, is what I was thinking.
Armstrong