One year I spent over two weeks in Russia. We flew into Saint Petersburg and spent our time traveling down to Moscow. This was a musical trip in that all the 35 or so people on the trip were members of our church choir. We sang in a different church every night, as we traveled south to Moscow.

I certainly enjoyed Saint Petersburg. It was a very wealthy city with many museums and art galleries where one could see lots of valuable and beautiful objects. This was different from other trips in that our free time to see things came at the beginning of the trip. The rest of Russia, between St. Petersburg and Moscow was 50 to 75 years behind what we were used to.

Every time we drove into a town or city there were a lot of buildings that had obvious work begun, but never finished. This seemed to be the situation everywhere. There were no rest stops along the road. Every once in a while, there was a hole in the ground that had been dug there for people to find comfort.

The hotels were very lacking.  One never knew when the electricity would be cut off by the government. Whenever the lights were on, we figured they were about 15 W. We learned not to plan to read at night. The water from the spicket was a trickle.

All grown ups worked. Mom and dad had jobs. Most got paid a pittance. There were no grandfathers because they were all killed years before. Grandmothers went out every day to stand in a line to buy a loaf of bread, another line for a piece of meat and another line for a veggie. Hopefully there was bread, meat or veggie left by the time she got to the front of the line.They never knew what dinner would consist of or even if there would be any.

Russia was such a sad country. I remember one pastor telling us that he was not going to preach that night , because he just wanted us to sing our songs a second time.  The reason was that he wanted his congregation to continue to see our happy faces again. We really never saw anyone smile.

After we left Saint Petersburg, we never saw a private car, only government trucks, and not many of those but what a difference in Moscow! Traffic was horrendous. Every road was clogged with cars. This is the city where all the diplomats and government officials lived, and they all had cars evidently.

I enjoyed the Russian food that we were served. In Moscow, we ate dinner at a two-story McDonald’s. Everyone was so excited to see that and to have American food.  I was probably the only one who would have preferred to have local food one more time.