October 6th - Ira Part 3

March 1992

The plane departed from Minneapolis Saint Paul and eight long hours later we arrived in Helsinki.  The rules were no drinking, no sex and I couldn’t remember the last rule.  The plane ride was filled with smartly dressed missionaries from the Latter Day Saints.  The Berlin wall was freshly removed so Utah was anxious to get their soldiers into Godless lands.  They were practicing on innocent high school students during the long flight made longer by Jesus talk.  The funny thing about the plane ride and the missionaries were how nervous they were around our teacher chaperones.  If they knew it was wrong to try and seduce our fresh minds, well maybe social instinct should overshadow religious proselytizing (just saying).

We took turns sneaking to the back of the plane to have cigarettes since smoking was still allowed.  We also took turns teasing the missionaries with varying degrees of pranks and idiotic role playing.  One of the students Alex looked like he was Jesus - long hair and a goatee.  We asked the religious zealots if it was possible that Alex could be Jesus.  All we were asking was What-If?  They weren’t amused although one of them gave me a picture of Jesus, at which I promptly had Alex sign his autograph.

We jumped on a Helsinki Air for the short ride to Moscow.  Jet-lagged and delirious with coca-cola the bus ride was surreal.  Moscow was a charcoal drawing like someone had come through smudging it here streaking it there.  It was beautiful yet drab and even the graffiti look dark washed.  Coming from the Twin Cities in the throws of winter it didn’t feel like we’d come to an exotic Eastern European country.  That soon changed when they took us to our hotel and sat us down for a meal.  We were paraded into a long narrow room scant of windows.  An aged red carpet painted the only color otherwise nothing too exciting except for a few statues.  It too was oddly dark and barren.  My experience thus far was rather depressing but there was a solemness and sense of foreboding like we were in a noir film.

The meal consisted of fish soup, potatoes, and hard boiled eggs.  As much as people think Russians eat a lot of cabbage soup, the truth is that it was twice what they thought, only we were spared for our first meal.  This was the first of several meals that facilitated my loss of twenty-five pounds from departure to return.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like the food, it was mainly the proportions were small, each meal could fit on a teacup saucer.  I ate everything, I mean everything, I was so hungry all the time.  I ate whole sardines, potatoes, boiled eggs, bread with thick ass butter.  It was all good just scant.

One of the boys from Park High on the trip from the airport snagged a bottle of Stolichnaya from a street vendor.  We broke rule number one within the first 24 hours of landing in Moscow.  I am rather proud of that fact.  A few of us stayed up late the first night hanging out in the lobby of our floor playing poker.  This was my first time away from home staying in a hotel by myself, of course I was going to enjoy every bit of it.  The other bonus was the exchange rate for Rubles to Dollars was 100 to 1.  For every 100 rubles it was worth 1 dollar. The prices for everything was similar to the US, but in Rubles.  So a loaf of bread was about 2 or 3 rubles or 2 or 3 cents American.  This was a dangerous mixture, put a dozen American teenagers from the Midwest in the middle of Russia with about $10,000 each - we were bound to have a good time and get into trouble.

As we played poker into the wee hours we were interrupted by the elevator opening and two very sexy Russian ladies and a very slick looking John Travolta disco man holding each lady arm-in-arm waltzed into the lobby.  His gold chain and sunglasses and cologne were enough for us to know that the school hadn’t picked a four star hotel.  The man snuck away with one of the ladies leaving the other to mingle in the lobby with us.  It wasn’t long for all of us to put the picture together, we may be young but our hormones were raging like a bunch of sexless teenagers, away from home for the first time, ever!

Eventually Svetlana left the comfort of the lobby chair and was down on the ground playing poker with us.  Other than the exchange students visiting the previous fall she was the first native Russian we experienced.  My Russian comprehension was pretty good so I was designated translator.  I wasn’t a superstar with Russian - I had my dictionary and was looking up every word she said, and likewise I was looking up every English word we were trying to communicate.  One thing is for sure, three years of Russian class vocabulary had not prepared us for this conversation.  After several hands of poker she grabbed the cards and dealt them out as if she was going to play solitaire, but instead she used the deck to give us each tarot card readings.  She spoke very quickly but it was fun translating and laughing as she told us all about us.  She was pretty spot on stating how lazy Jeremy was, ambitious Rena was, and how inquisitive I was.  

She slipped in a question I couldn’t translate and she became frustrated because I couldn’t understand.  I poured through the dictionary trying to decipher her pronunciation and translate.  It occurred to me after a bit when I put the puzzle together she was asking what my room number was and whether she wanted a visitor.  It was difficult to hide my face as I blushed.  My scared youthful ambition drew the line on poker and tarot cards.  I politely declined and was saved from further temptation when she was called into the room with slick.  On my first night in Moscow, I had a chance to lose my virginity to a sexy Russian prostitute .  We were going to be in Russia for 40 days and for our first night and 1 1/2 rules broken, we were in for quite a ride.