The following continues the serialization of Chapter 6 from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity. Mind you, Part 5 looks like Bombay (Mumbai), and today, Moscow, are being touted as among the best places. Nope, I'm starting with particularly terrible locations I've experience, those certainly not being considered among the elite best.
Moscow was an Experience
The 7th World Hydrogen Energy Conference was held in Moscow in September of 1988. With my wife and several of my staff in the travel party, we flew first to London, then on to Moscow. David Block, director of Florida Solar Energy Center, and his wife Sharon, also attended, and joined us on our trip back. We stayed at the Hotel Rossia, then, the largest hotel in the world with 5,000 rooms. Picture a gigantic World War I military barracks and you get a sense of the accommodations. However, the rooms were really cheap. How cheap? I don't remember, but I just went to Google and found the hotel was shut down in 2006.
From the first morning session to the final at the end, the conference room was packed with mostly Russians. I guess in those days anyone who received permission to join the meeting felt committed to be present at all times. In other worldwide technical conferences, many times the speakers were the only ones in attendance, and by the last gathering, most would have left town.
There was one incident where our group missed our subway stop and got lost. We walked up to the street level, and a very nice gentleman in a black leather jacket topped with a furry cap inquired if we needed help. We explained our plight and he so courteously guided us back down and, even, paid for our trip to the correct stop. I later learned that he worked for the KGB.
The one factor still sticking with me, though, is that all the Soviet delegates were very cordial and competent. The Seoul Olympics were being held at the same time, and one morning, a Russian scientists came up to us and painfully reported that they had beaten the American basketball team, eliminating us from the gold medal. It wasn’t sarcasm. He truly felt terrible that they had won.
However, the food was dreadful (the best vodka and caviar were exported). We pretty much were forced to eat at the conference and hotel, featuring rubber chicken and cold oil slabs. There were no such things as restaurants then.
We had one final ghastly experience, but, nothing like what was to come in Cairo. There were no real lines at the airport. You had to fight to get to the window for changing money and the like.
We boarded Aeroflot, which took me back to those movies of World War II bombers. Well, we made it to East Berlin, and were able view a tad of this grayish town before checking through to West Berlin, almost like Dorothy stepping from the black and white of Kansas to the colored land of Oz. After a couple of days, we picked up two cars and drove through the corridor to the real West Germany. We were twice stopped by the East German police: first, for missing a turnoff, and a second time, for pausing at a rest stop, but where buses are supposed to park. Totally unnerved by then, at the gate to freedom, we passed on six passports, but the guard counted seven people, so there was a frantic search, only because I had dropped one on the floor of the van. We then found our way to Kiel, a picturesque harbor town. The rest of the trip was wonderful, but uneventful. Moscow is never on a list of best places to live, for good reason.
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There is a new storm in the Atlantic projected to bypass the Caribbean and head toward the Carolinas. That Pacific disturbance now seems inclined to move west considerably south of Hawaii.
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