Book Report: Fodor's 90 - Soviet Union
Tips and tricks from a Glasnost-era Western travel guide to Russia
My apartment is crammed with hundreds of books, mostly bought secondhand at used bookstores and from Goodwills across the country on Ebay. The other day this one popped up in a $1 bargain bin, and I flipped it open to see this on the inside:
There’s something poetic and absurd in a team of writers at Fodor’s spending years of their lives on the herculean effort of researching and publishing this extensive travel guide only for the Soviet union to implode within a year or two and render much of the travel advice moot.
Here are some of the best anecdotes I picked up from the book, mainly from the opening chapters which focus on the overall travel do’s and don’ts; rather than specific regions:
Booking Travel
The state-run tourism monopoly is named Intourist. Classic half-assed Soviet abbreviation.
The American office of Intourist is listed at 5th Avenue in NYC, i.e. literally across the street from Saks.
The Canadian office, more sanely, is situated right off the McGill campus in Quebec.
Tours aren’t cheap.
Inclusive 8 day tours start around USD$1600. Longer tours in the $3000 range (inflation adjusted: $3000 and $7100 respectively).
For comparison, last year I visited a former Soviet state and paid significantly less per diem, in real currency terms. And I stayed at the 5 star Hotel Metropol!
Hazards
The packing list would be appropriate for a wilderness adventure involving a great deal of paperwork:
Fodor’s advises that food and water are generally safe, but that travelers risk contracting the exotic giardiasis diarrhea.
I hope that the disease is as bad as everyone claims. I’ve personally and laboriously pumped hundreds of gallons of freezing water through ceramic filters on backpacking trips to avoid contracting giardia from Sierra Nevada mountain streams and I wouldn’t want that effort to be wasted.
Fears about contamination from visiting areas near Chernobyl are summarily dismissed.
Travelers are advised that regardless of whatever citizenship they personally claim, the USSR may have other ideas. Former Soviet citizens, which presumably is a difficult category to pin down, risk being “harassed or expelled, or imprisoned.”
You can see Fodor’s lawyers’ at work in phrases like: “A decision as to whether a former resident of the U.S.S.R. or territories now under Soviet administration should travel there can only be made by the individual himself in the light of his background and other pertinent factors.”
Driving a car in violation of local driving regulations can apparently result in imprisonment. A partial list of rules is included, from the reasonable (against drunk driving) to the odd (“we have heard of people being fined for having a dirty car”).
Import/Export
I’ve heard firsthand stories from people who visited Russia near the end of the Soviet era selling or bartering away their blue jeans and running shoes. Unfortunately, Fodor’s tends to toe the party line (heh, heh) on this matter and there are no helpful rankings of to which Western grey-market imports are most sought-after.
Books published before 1945 cannot be exported from the Soviet Union without a permit. I don’t really understand this one, it seems the reverse of what I would have expected.
Travelers are allowed to carry precisely one Bible
Presumably to help with the ongoing foreign reserves crisis in the USSR, travelers are predictably encouraged to spend foreign currency, and goods made of precious metals can legally be purchased only in controlled amounts.
Surprisingly, you are allowed to bring a rifle into the USSR for hunting game, provided you register it properly on arrival and departure.
Outside of the internal Soviet regulations, Fodor’s warns travelers returning to the UK that they will not be permitted to import more than 50L of beer. Was this a common issue?
Food and Drink
“...we must admit that it’s not always easy to find the best cooking”
Beverages are sold in grams
Visitors are warned that restaurant workers often take lunch breaks. During the lunch hour. When most people would go to a restaurant for lunch, presumably.
Table service is predictable sluggish and it is suggested that waiting around is a Soviet national past-time. Fodor’s: “The co-operative cafés and restaurants, springing up under the new private enterprise laws, are reported to provide much speedier service – it could be something to do with the profit motive!”
Traditional Russian food is described as containing “plenty of farinaceous matter to fill the stomachs of the hungry peasants.” Whoever wrote that sentence should have had their thesaurus taken away.
Tourists are…allowed? tolerated? to skip lines for restaurants, in front of locals. The guide encourages doing this if you are brave enough.
Today, American families on vacation to the Magic Kingdom can experience this indignity without leaving the country: I understand that a similar service is available as part of the $500/hr packages offered by DisneylandVIPTours@disney.com
Other Trivia
Fodor’s spills as much ink on the “Obraztsov Central Puppet Theatre” as it does on the Moscow ballets and symphonies. I’m skeptical.
Soviet sanatoria are presented matter-of-factly as options for travelers seeking X-rays and therapies.
Overall, I found this book well worth my time and my $1. Go with the best. Travel with Fodor’s.