Simon Wrote:
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> I remember flying to Moscow on Aeroflot in '89.
> Only think I remember at the time was the landing
> - definitely the worst I've ever seen - we bounced
> side to side, wheel to the wheel, for about half
> the runway... I guess looking back at it maybe the
> pilot was suffering from Hypoxia.

Could be. If we all fell asleep, I can't imagine how the pilots stayed awake. I seem to remember our landing being rather jumpy as well.

>
> That train journey between Leningrad and Moscow
> was quite something back then - like gowing back
> to the middle ages!

We were forced to take a night train only so we missed the transition. Our trip was heavily controlled as to where we could go and so on. We were followed in the evenings (it was white nights) when we wandered about the cities after dinner. We did have a curious experience with the bus. We had been driven around in a Mercedes bus for the previous segment of the trip. When we were in Leningrad, our special Russian tour guide (who wore a Dior suit), asked us if the bus was okay. I said it was out of politeness but others on the trip complained. The next day, we had a newer bus but same people complained again. It went on every day until we were being driven around in the newest bus available (come on, how can you beat a new Mercedes bus?). It was interesting...I do remember being told that we had to take a night train so that we couldn't see the country side outside. That's why so many of us suspected that we had less oxygen on the flights to and from the USSR. So we would sleep and not see.

Stephanie




In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.--Ralph Waldo Emerson