Russia
The "Top Gun" Experience

May 20 - May 30, 2000

"Fly MiGs over Moscow" - when I read the ad by Incredible Adventures some time ago in a German magazine, I was infected instantaneously; I knew I would have to try this mixture of speed and altitude. Just by then I could not afford spending > $30,000 for a one-week trip. But last year finally, the time of financial independence had come, and so I booked the exciting adventure... the long-anticipated dream was about to come true.

But there was more than flying fighter jets to visiting Russia. There was also the memory of a cancelled trip to St Petersburg, four years ago. I had already been on the connecting plane to Frankfurt, when I read in my guidebook that Russia requires a visa for entering. As usual, I had bought the book at the airport just before boarding. This visa situation was highly astonishing to me; I had been to so many East-European countries before, just with a photo ID, not even a passport. But here, I learned in Frankfurt there was no way for obtaining a visa on short notice, and so I had to cancel the flight and go back without having seen famous St Petersburg, which many a guide describes as the undisputed highlight of Eastern Europe.

Of course I tried to get a visa from the Russian embassy in Germany right afterwards and start over one or two weeks later. Alas, it was not easy to get hold of anyone there - they simply never answered the phone. After about a week's time of trying I finally reached someone, who told me about the rather complicated process: Either you have a private invitation from a Russian family (which has to be stamped by a local police office), or you have to send in confirmations of hotel reservations for each night of your stay. This was quite contradictory to my usual travel arrangements, where I check the hotel situation at the destination and check into whichever hotel seems convenient. And I was told the visa process would take several weeks anyway, so I just forgot about the trip. Such a delay would have jeopardized an arrival during the best time to visit - the White Nights period, from end of May to end of June, when the sun sets not before midnight and rises again around 4am, leaving sunset colors on the horizon in between, so that it never gets really dark.

So for the MiG trip to Moscow, I made sure to go around end of May, and add a few days in St Petersburg to the itinerary. Incredible Adventures promised to take care of the visa process, and as hotels and trips were all organized well in advance, it seemed to work out this time. Still they could not apply for my visa in the US, and we had to work with a visa service agency in Bonn, as the Russian embassy in Germany was not more responsive than last time. This visa service (Visa-Dienst Bonn) was truly excellent - they had my visa in just one day!

Once arrived, the passport formalities were not any worse than in any other remote jurisdiction. It took maybe 15 minutes to process the entire flight. And when I saw a tall young brunette waving my name, I thought to myself "These Incredible Adventures guys know how to treat customers." Alas, she was only the Intourist representative to guide me through customs (Intourist must have some strange arrangement with the customs officers - they even did not ask for my arrival form, we just went straight through). Outside, I was handed over to the tour operator's Moscow manager - a 50-year old. Pity.

After a day of organized shopping, we went straight to the airbase to get into the fighter jet cockpits. Here are some impressions.

Of course, Russia has also other interesting sides. Vodka and caviar, for example :-). And many wonderful and surprisingly well restored buildings.

Moscow

I was very surprised by Moscow. It was so different from what I had expected. My belief was that nobody would speak English, tourists would be rare (because of the described visa problems), and that, as in most east-European countries, buildings had not been well maintained for decades. That after opening to capitalism and the inherent problems there were more important things to spend money on than restoration, such as to import and adapt the population to western lifestyle slowly.

I was completely mistaken. Moscow in the meantime is as capitalistic as any western city. You can buy anything you desire, Versace designer clothes or Montblanc pens, Casio watches and Motorola cellphones, go dining in 5-star restaurants or lodge in palace hotels. The old GUM complex, where citizens would stand in line for hours to get the very basic of living goods, has been transformed into a sparkling glass-top American-style shopping mecca. Astonishingly enough, the prices for those extravaganza goods are even higher than in the west - although an average worker still has to live on a salary of about $50 a month. It must be quite frustrating for the vast majority of people to be held up up the bottom of such an enormous price spread. It seems that the luxury businesses only cater to a selected few: the "New Russians" (having legally or illegally made a fortune in the early days) or wealthy tourists. And tourists are many. Especially Americans with loose dollar bills, accustomed to paying US prices even in a country where operating costs are minimal. So often times, prices do not seem right. Running a hotel, where staff is the prevalent cost factor, should be much cheaper than in the US. Still, prices are equal. In the evening, you go to the hotel restaurant, which is hailed as the best in town - only Americans around, of course - and pay $50 for a main dish having the quality of a cheap eatery. It will take some time to have enough competition in place to ensure reasonable prices, not prices set by someone out for the quick buck who has copied a Parisian menu but cannot come up with comparable quality. But by then probably operating costs will have caught up, and there will be a western equilibrium. 

The second surprise was the look of the historic buildings. Just as painted and polished as any major tourist attraction in the West. And obviously this has not even been done only recently. Even in Soviet times, Russians took tender care of their main symbols to show the glory of communism to its own people.

The famous Red Square (next to the Kremlin) with St. Basil's Cathedral.

One of the many churches inside the Kremlin.

Omnipresent Matroshkas at the a tourist market stand.

The Bolshoi Theater, where I saw an exceptional ballet performance of "The Sleeping Beauty" by Peter Tchaikovsky.

Moscow's mayor has a very special approach towards beautifying Moscow. He takes a participation in nearly every newly formed enterprise and spends the loads of money from those channels for expensive restorations and new sculptures. And not all Moscowians agree that the money is spent very wisely. The rebuilding of the church in the background is seen by many as a medieval relief of sins, and the gigantesque statue of Peter The Great is so ugly that people have tried to blow it up just after inauguration. Now there is a 24-hour guard. It is said that the artist designed the statue as Christopher Columbus for Spain at first, but then Spain would not buy it, and so he sold it to his old friend, the mayor of Moscow.

St. Petersburg

St Petersburg has been Russia's capital for over 200 years, from 1703 to 1917 - exactly the age of sumptuous palaces, blossoming Baroque architecture, and competition of show-off grandeur among the rulers of Europe. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were Russia's tsars during that period, and left architectural treasures to today's admirers nothing short of Versailles or Schoenbrunn. Catherine's Palace in Pavlov (20 km south), with a huge French garden around, served as summer residence, whereas the Hermitage, in the very center of St Petersburg, was the designated Winter Palace.

Although these wonderful palaces have been completely destroyed by the German army upon retreat in World War II (how sick must man be to destroy such fabulous masterpieces), all of them are superbly restored. They have already been museums during the Soviet era, to give an example of the wild debauchery of the nobles while their their peasants were still treated like slaves. 

There is also a myriad of old churches and monasteries in the city, from European-style Baroque to the onion domes of the classical Russian churches.

In general, however, the St Petersburg buildings are not in the same meticulous shape as the Moscow ones. It seems there has not been too much money for maintenance since communism disappeared. In this game the Moscow mayors won - his strategy was obviously more efficient for getting the city in shape. But St Petersburg is adopting a similar route, many building are already being renovated, and once the task is accomplished, this star in the north will shine much brighter than Moscow - without Moscow's suffocating traffic jams, on the banks of a majestic Neva river and its departing peaceful canals.