The notion of "service" isn't quite the same in Russia as it is in other parts of the world. And beyond that, things in general just don't always work all that well. When a group of us visited Moscow in 1986, which was early-Gorbachev, we came home thinking, "THIS is the country we spend billions defending ourselves against!?"
Which is all part of the allure for Ian Frazier, whose book Travels in Siberia recounts a drive from St. Petersburg across the continent. Here's a paragraph that jumped off the page as summing up the whole "Russia" thing. People who have visited will nod knowingly:
"We joined the queue of waiting vehicles beside the train station about two in the afternoon. Asking around, Sergei learned that we would be able to get on a train leaving that night at nine thirty. If I thought I could pleasantly while away the afternoon reading, sketching and jotting in my notebook, I was mistaken. The misery bubbling up everywhere in Chernyshevsk blotted out any idea of calm. Sitting in the van was difficult because of the heat. The widely strewn trash and garbage guaranteed every person an individual corona of flies. Strange guys in warm-up suits loitered the premises at large and hit on any stranger they saw. Even Sergei and Volodya, when they strolled from the van, had to dodge them. The couple of times I ventured among them I was like a crouton in a goldfish pond. The public bathrooms had overflowed some time before, so most people who needed them employed instead whatever out of-the-way or not-so-out-of-the-way corner of Chernyshevsk they could find. The train station itself was devoid of services or information of any sort. Apparently all departure and arrival announcements were relayed solely by word of mouth."
Of course the train never came, and Ian, Sergei and Volodia were left to fend for themselves overnight.
(Photo from a 1990 trip to Leningrad, which reclaimed the name St. Petersburg in 1991. More photos in the Russia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)
