A Roco Italian State Railways is pressed into service for a Soviet electric. Long story short, I went from Moscow to Helsink aboard a similar looking train in 1964. Long story. (Glad to get out from behind the Iron Curtain).
I'm glad you did too. I hope my fellow Americans are smart enough that you never need get out from behind any new ones.
Nice show. 1964 the year I graduated from grade school and I got my drivers license. My former wife's mother came from Russia and married a US Army sergeant in West Germany.
Dad's choice of vacation destinations was always something of a mystery. Why he hauled the entire family of five to a place not a lot different than North Korea today, I can only imagine. Ostensibly, he was researching the Cossacks, and in an age before the internet, felt compelled to do his research in the Moscow state library. I sometimes wonder if taking us all along was sort of a human shield. Not one of his greatest achievements, but it was, none the less, an experience. A bit like the "Mosquito Coast." He did eventually publish his book on the Cossacks, but it probably only sold a dozen copies. Not likely he was conducting espionage, though he did Russian translation while in the service, at the Pentagon, just about the time the Rosenbergs were getting lit up. We traveled under Canadian passports, as travel between the USA and the USSR was forbidden, at the time. Oddly, while the train impressed me, I've no desire to go back.
In '60-'63 the whole family had to travel to state parks. My parents and there 12 sons in a '60 Corvair. Then a '58 Rambler wagon.
I have had, and continue to have, friends from behind the Iron Curtain. Their thoughts and perspectives of life were very different than mine. Serving in the Cold War Navy gave me cause to research more of the Soviet state 'issues.' To quote, "Verrry Interesting!!" And none of my friends want to go back to such a state!
In '64 I was a little squirt, but even then I knew this was a truly dreadful place. Empty streets, empty stores. Everything gray. Mother was a nervous wreck. When I get the time, I'm going to paint up some shoe boxes in battle ship gray with signs from Orwell's novel, like, "Ministry of Love" and bill boards featuring some of our new Komrades in D.C. with slogans like, " Big Brother is Watching." Make a new video. I had a good friend, RIP, who matter of factly recounted trudging over the Hungarian border in '56, to West Germany, in deep snow and only the clothes on his back. He was being hunted by the Secret Police. He talked about many such people hiking through the forests past rows of Soviet tanks, the crews drinking vodka, with no orders to shoot. Yet.
My former wife's mother came over from Russia and married her father a US Army soldier. When Helen was 12 her father came back to USA but her mother stayed in Germany. That would have been '65. I have met several that escaped from that part of the world.
My mother-in-law was raised in pre-war Germany and as a young girl recalls their family's escape via train to the west near war's end. Her mother cut her hair short so that she looked like a boy, all to evade attention from the Red Army which was unleashing revenge of all kinds on German citizens. Her father was lost in the war, along with everything they owned. She recalls she and her siblings tossing all of their family photos out the window of the train for reasons she can't recall. After the war, she moved to England where she became a housemaid and learned English, then met my father-in-law who was in the USAF where he had a long career. They were married and moved to the U.S..
New Trains to the Baltic! CCCP. Apologies for the bad focus. Was trying to get this expensive camcorder to do more than it is able, the venerable smart phone with its tiny lens works so much better. The locomotive and matching coaches is produced under Soviet auspices, the brand name translating to "Mini." The paper work enclosed, and the customs documents, are in Cyrillic. It is also determined that this locomotive, built about 1888, and survived well into the Soviet era, was used extensively between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, so the title might have been better as "New Trains to the Black and Caspian Seas," rather than Baltic, but I was fatigued and did not see the error until just now. In any event, it is a whimsical "trailer" advertising Soviet trains from one place to another; the Soviet economy did not promote tourism.
