INSIGHT INTO THE NEWS: Hazards of travel in the former USSR (10/08/00)

INSIGHT INTO THE NEWS

by David Marples

Hazards of travel in the former USSR

Traveling in the Soviet Union prior to 1991 was all-too-predictable. Intourist, the only travel agency, ran all the hotels and supervised foreign groups. Facilities, food and internal flights were uniformly awful. But have things changed? Has the new entrepreneurial spirit brought about dramatic changes for the foreign traveler?

Aeroflot (known to Western passengers as "Aeroflop") has gradually developed a new fleet, including several Boeings, but the industry is plagued by lack of funding and irregular flights. The airline, however, has several spin-offs in the newly independent states. At Boryspil airport in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, old Iliushin and Tupolev planes have acquired new coats of paint and Air Ukraine International markings. They stand visibly rotting away on the tarmac.

In Warsaw recently I bought a ticket to Miensk on Belavia airlines. Because of the price foreign travelers pay for tickets as opposed to locals, I was flying first class. However, in Warsaw no one knew whether there would actually be a plane until 30 minutes prior to the departure time.

A small 24-seat airplane awaited us. It opened from the very rear of the plane and our luggage was loaded first, while frantic Polish militia tried to prevent passengers from lighting up cigarettes on the tarmac. I found myself on the very front seat with a large table in front of me. Looking out of the window I saw two figures struggling up the airplane steps with a large TV set. To my astonishment they deposited it in front of me and connected it up. "Men in Black," dubbed into Russian, began to run - a 2-hour movie for a 40-minute flight. The flight attendant, who had clearly dipped herself head first into a make-up bag beforehand, flashed her gold teeth and asked me what I would like to drink: "Brandy or vodka?" First class, Belarusian style!

Some cities have international airports but no facilities. In Lviv, in May, I arrived at an international airport that looked like (and probably once was) a deserted museum. After nearly two hours in customs, I emerged to the usual plethora of would-be taxi drivers clamoring for customers. I had no Ukrainian currency as it is illegal to import hryvni into the country. But there was only one currency exchange office and it was closed. What to do? Eventually I persuaded a cab driver to take me downtown and find one that was open.

Hotels, however, have caught on more quickly. In cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vilnius, one can find hotels that compare with anything in the West, though prices in Russia are prohibitive. In Moscow the old Sovietskaya Hotel near the Belarusian Station has been revamped. It is a thing of beauty. The rooms are old with high ceilings, and the whole place resembles an 18th century palace. It even had a Business Center, but neither fax machines nor Internet connections were working when I was there. Some things never change.

Only rarely have I been forced to stay in hotels in Miensk and Kyiv. The highlight of Miensk's Planeta hotel is its bar and disco, in which locals (mostly young unattached women) congregate in vast numbers into the night hours. The rooms are stark, but the price of $75 (U.S.) per night is reasonable and justified according to the local propaganda by a TV that picks up the BBC News and German quiz shows.

Kyiv is a different story. I have stayed in the Dnipro and watched as one side of the building was flooded after a rain shower. A special prize for grimness has to go to the Bratislava, where guests are awakened by disco beat and the sound of Georgians consuming vodkas at 5 a.m. before leaving for whatever work they are pretending to do. I once ate lunch there without having the remotest idea what I was eating. So where are the decent hotels in the Ukrainian capital?

Look in any travel guide and one will find that the recommended hotel in Kyiv is the Prezident Hotel Kyivskyi, a dramatic structure on the top of a hill, a short distance from the city center. I was rash enough to try it earlier this year along with a University of Alberta colleague.

Upon entry, surly staff demanded our passports. A single room was exactly that. A narrow rock-like bed in a room one step above a prison cell. A double room is two rock-like beds jammed together. The dining room, however, could accommodate the Black Sea fleet. It was invariably deserted, and with good reason - the chef had clearly failed Cookery 100. The one highlight was a harp-playing young woman at breakfast, whose voice was as sweet as the porridge was thick. When it came time to pay the bill, my colleague got involved in a prolonged argument. He had booked his room in U.S. dollars, but was informed that the exchange rate had changed. He pointed out, to no avail, that the dollar had risen not fallen, against the local currency. It appeared that the hotel had its own exchange rate.

Then it was my turn and I came to realize how easy my colleague had gotten off. The manager produced a hotel card purporting to show that someone else was using my room. Upon inspection it turned out to belong to a young woman of 26 called Iryna. I informed the woman that if a 26-year-old woman was in my room then it was quite likely that I would have noticed the fact. After some 20 minutes of arguing, she decided to allow payment for a single room. As we left she said quite sweetly: "I hope you won't have any difficulties next time you come."

"No we won't," said my colleague, "Because there won't be a next time."

I also wondered why it is that in all the hotels where I have stayed in Ukraine the staff is Russian-speaking. This even includes the Grand Hotel in Lviv. Try speaking in Ukrainian and you will receive a bemused, even bewildered look. But switch to Russian and they come alive, even a bit of the gruffness is cast off. Doesn't this say something about hiring tactics, especially when the staff is relatively youthful?

If one wants to measure the slow progress in catering to the needs of foreign travelers in new states like Ukraine and Belarus, then one can visit Poland, where one not only has a Western-standard airline (though to be frank it is hardly punctual) and hotels, but where a discerning traveler can always find bargains, too. In the former USSR one still has Soviet service, but at Western rates, and that is generally offered with unsmiling and often disarming rudeness.

David R. Marples is professor of history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and director of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, which is based at that university.

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