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[Valeri Shanin]

WHERE ARE YOU GUYS GOING?
(RUSSIAN DISCOVERY OF AMERICA)
by Stanislav Kutcher & Sergey Frolov



* * * * *



"Where ya headin'?"
"West."
"One of you sit in the front, the other go make yerself comfortable in the back."
As Sergey slammed the door and the shabby Chevrolet sputtered forward, two rusty razor
blades slipped off the dashboard onto our strange driver's knees.
"So, ya say yer Russians?" the bald bozo muttered through his smoke-stained teeth.
"Exactly, sir"
Blood-shot watery eyes peered at Sergey. The sharp wrinkles underneath them grew deeper. "So, it means, you're enemies!..."
"...Of whom?!"
"Of us, naturally"
"Why are you giving us a ride then?"
"Well, kid", the bald head grinned. "You don't know where I'm gonna drop you... and in what condition."



* * * * *







At six a.m., on the 29th of June, 1991, the early morning Moscow sun gently lit Sheremetyevo
International Airport. The fragile rays penetrated the dirty windows of the terminal, landing on the motionless bodies of
emigrants, sleeping on and between dusty benches; on the tired
faces of OMON* soldiers patrolling up and down the lounge in full
uniform; and on the silverish wings of the giant IL-86, which was being prepared for flight across the world.
"Amazing," thought two young men, armed with backpacks, note
pads, pens and portable tape recorders, as they approached the customs area. "The very same sun that shines over Moscow, also warms the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Canyon and long white Californian
beaches... Truly amazing."
A young customs officer with a komsomol pin on his chest,
smiled at the two unusually equipped tourists.
"Where are you guys going?"
The pair answered in one voice: "To America!"


* * * * *


PROLOGUE: SO WHY DID WE DO IT?
One rainy autumn afternoon in 1990, the two of us were sipping cognac in our newspaper's cafe and exchanging stories about our various Komsomolskaya Pravda assignments. Stanislav was particularly impressed with Sergey's hitch-hiking experiences in Scandinavia. Sergey - by Stanislav's colorful accounts of his recent trip to the United States.

"So why not combine our experiences and hitch-hike across America?" The idea struck both of us almost simultaneously. We finished our cognac, went upstairs to the newspaper library and found a map on which to plan our tentative itinerary.

In order to ensure that our journey would be as full of unexpected adventures as possible and wide open to journalistic opportunities, we decided to travel by every mode of transportation we could, though of course giving undisputable preference to hitch-hiking.

We rather immodestly named our bold project, "Down the road With John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac." Both of us had been inspired by Kerouac's On the Road, and the sub-culture he inadvertently created known as the beat generation. John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, which by the way, we think is a pretty dull novel, inspired us nevertheless to visit precisely 34 states, and to begin and end in New York City. "We have two advantages over Steinbeck's book," we told each other. "First, his work is about America, written through an American's eyes, and second, it describes America in the fifties, which we both knew, no longer exist."

Komsomolskaya Pravda approved our idea though their support was of a more moral than financial nature. Each of us received $100, which we had to literally tear out of the newspaper's hard currency budget. The editors also approved the money for our airplane tickets to New York. In those days, travelling on Aeroflot (for Soviet citizens; foreigners paid (and still do pay) Western prices) was still very cheap and a couple of round-trip tickets to America was not at all a difficult expense.

And now, some background information:

Russians have always thought of America as more than just a country on the other side of the earth. Our childhood impressions came mostly from romantic novels, filled with images of noble Indians, fearless cowboys, and honest politicians. We somehow pictured the United States of America as a land of true freedom and democracy, with no room for cowards and loafers.

But as anybody who remembers the Cold War will know, wistful thinking was not the only Soviet attitude toward America; we were also led to understand your country was evil. With all the anti-imperialist, and more precisely, anti-American propaganda, however, a strange thing happened: While Soviet foreign correspondents poured dirt on anything American they could find with their "true reports" from the "land of no morals," your average Ivan believed barely a word of all that crap. Suspecting that their government was lying to them, many Soviets began thinking that maybe America was not such a bad place after all, and maybe even a good place.

And then in the late 1980s, under Gorbachev, the official lie was officially smashed, and what we call "100 percent positive information" began flowing into our country. And wouldn't you know it? Yesterday's critics were suddenly today's lauders. According to the media's "discovery," not only was America a good place to be, but in fact, was heaven on Earth. We were being led to believe that in America, everybody was happy and only an idiot was unable to make a million a month.

We, being professional sceptics, didn't buy the second version either, and decided to see America with our own eyes. Yes, we wanted to go to America, but not like some overfed government apparatchik or a tourist looking for a cheap VCR. We wanted to travel; to see wealth and poverty, crowded cities, and remote ranches? In short, everything America had to offer from talk shows to the national pastime. The America we longed to see was the one Americans themselves see.



CHAPTER I
WELCOME TO THE YELLOW DEVIL CITY!
They say that though New York City welcomes newcomers differently, it teaches everybody the same simple lesson: The weak and careless will not survive.
"You feel New York City's rhythm, hustle and style the moment you leave the aircraft's aisle." This exprompt of Sergey was more than just a silly rhyme. From the very beginning we were caught in a storm of surprises.
The first person to meet Soviet passengers in John F. Kennedy International Airport is an immigration officer.
"Any immigrants?" he bellowed every ten seconds at the crowds coming into the passport control area.
"Yes, we're immigrants!" a few people responded happily before breaking away from everyone else, like a twelve-year-old taking off his Sunday suit to go play baseball.
Well, they've made their choice.
A dozen cops were maintaining order. Mostly black cops, we noted involuntarily.
Our compatriots keep whooping merrily. "Here we are in America!"
"I bet they're gonna try to form a Soviet-style crowd instead of a regular line!" Sergey whispered to Stas.
Not a chance. A tall black lady police officer, her big leather holster unsnapped, ordered in a tone of voice that implied that she was accustomed to getting her way: "Excuse me, sir! Move back! Now! Everybody stay in line!"
The crowd stayed in line.
"They call this a land of freedom??" someone muttered, offended.
Their first lesson: Freedom does not mean anarchy.
The passport control officers were definitely in high spirits. It took Sergey two minutes to have his passport stamped through. Stas had no problems either - at first.
"You've got a very nice smile," he greeted the young woman in a blue uniform as she opened his passport. "I'm damn sure you'd win first prize at the national "Miss American Smile" contest, if they held one."
He probably should not have said that.
Still smiling, she inquired where he had learned to speak English so fluently.
"Strange you mention that," Sergey laughed, misinterpreting her smile. "He never did do very well at his KGB school in Moscow."
Another smile: Kind of different this time.
"Who's going to accompany you on your tour?"
"We've got friends in this country."
The woman asked us to write down the address of one of our friends.
A uniformed gentleman came up to us.
"Who stamped your number 1 visa ("The holder of this visa must be accompanied by a guide at all times," says the small print)? And before we could answer, another question: "Sixty days of journalistic work for Komsomolskaya Pravda"?" he asked with a clear East European accent.* We wondered how he pronounced the name of our newspaper so fluently.
Before we could really think about it, he hurtled yet another question at us: "Whose address have you put down?"
"His name is Michael Connor. He is the Managing Editor of the Syracuse Post Standard."
"Very good," the man said seriously. "This editor must have a hell of a flexible schedule. Is he going to spend sixty days with you guys?"
We stumbled for a second. We hadn't expected to run into detailed interrogations on the day of our arrival.
"Well, we have many other friends in different parts of the country," Stanislav said. "We'll be changing our guides along the way." Naturally, our hitch-hiking plans didn't include permanent co-travelers. Actually, they didn't include co-travelers at all, except for the drivers that would be giving us lifts.
"I could buy that," the red-tape man in blue uniform pronounced. "But this is very unusual and even suspicious. By the way, Mr. Kutcher, why are you traveling with a blue passport? As far as I know, in Russia, blue passports are normally given to government officials and KGB officers."
We couldn't believe our ears. The bastard was suspecting us of...
"I only had two days to obtain this passport," Stanislav started explaining slowly but firmly. "You may not completely understand it, but Russia is a country of wonders, as they say. On the day they made my passport, the Foreign Ministry had no more red covers. Imagine that? They had no more red covers and had to give me a blue one."
"By the way," the guy continued. "Your paper used to belong to the Komsomol, to the Young Communists League."
"Right you are. It used to. But not any more."
Sergey who had already been let through, approached a large thick officer: "What's this guy got on us? He's finding fault with everything we say."
The officer smiled.
"He's a former Soviet himself. He doesn't feel any sympathy for his homeland and is suspicious of all Russians," he said before slapping our compatriot with the badge on the shoulder. "Come on. Cool down, Alexander. These guys are all right. Let'em through."
Alexander obeyed.
"Zrya ty rvesh zhopu, priyatel! Na dvore devyanosto pervy god." (Don't strain your ass, bud! It's 1991), we said to Alexander as we left the customs area.
...Before we had left Moscow we had arranged by telephone with a friend of ours, student-businessman, Mark Connor, to meet us in New York. The plan was for him to drive us to Syracuse in up-state New York, from where we planned to start hitch-hiking toward the West Coast.
Mark would be waiting for us under the big clock in the middle of Grand Central Station. His girlfriend Judy and twenty cans of Budweiser would be with him, looking forward to seeing their Russian friends. We, however, though also standing under a big clock, were stuck at JFK, in the company of Georgii, a forty-year old locksmith from Georgia (remember the Beatles' "And Georgia's always on my mind..."?). Georgii had arrived on the same plane as us and was now waiting for his immigrant brother whom he had not seen since he was ten and had somehow forgotten to warn he was coming before arriving in New York.
"What's the use of wasting money on cabs if my brother will be right here to bring you guys to the station?" said Georgii after we had helped him with his mountain of suitcases and showed him how to use "this weird American telephone." Remembering how much money we had, we decided this was a sober idea.
But time was running out. Mark, who had to be in Syracuse by six, was waiting for the Russians at the train station. The Russians, however, were still waiting for Georgii's brother. The guy had said he would be there in half an hour, but finally showed up two hours later, apologizing for being "a little late." The two long-lost brothers rushed into each other's arms with tears accompanied by loud Georgian exclamations that attracted the attention of a nearby cop. Trying to hold back his growing impatience, Sergey politely explained that we had lost too much time because of Georgii and were in a great hurry to get to Manhattan.
Benjamin, Georgii's brother, stared at us and said something he must have thought was very encouraging: "I'm sorry, but I can't take you boys to Manhattan! I've got to get back to work as soon as possible. I'll do everything for you, but this is out of the question!"
What he did do, was give us a lift to the Bronx and put us on a direct subway line to Grand Central Station.
Stanislav had already been to America, but Sergey's first impression of the country was gotten in the Bronx. His face became longer, as we say in Russia, when he saw a rusty Plymouth parked on the sidewalk, gloomy houses with crumbling walls, and garbage cans turned upside down right in the middle of the street - just like in a Stevie Wonder song. Stanislav's eyes, meanwhile, fell on a group of black teenagers shaking and hopping to RAP's wild rhythms which were blasting out of a huge boombox. All of this reminded us of MTV videos which are so popular in Russia nowadays. When the dancers started shooting unfriendly glances at our backpacks with big Aeroflot tags, we decided to move along without sharing our opinions about their dismal neighborhood.
We finally ran into Grand Central Station two hours after Mark, his beer and girlfriend left for Syracuse. One of Dostoevsky's characters, Marmeladov, once said: "Do you know, sirs, what it's like when there's no place for you to go?" Well, we suddenly did. There were no night trains to Syracuse, which meant we would have to spend the night in New York City.
After hunting through Stanislav's notebooks for New York contacts, we spent at least ten dollars of our fortune on telephone calls to people we hardly knew - in vain, for we had evidently come up against some kind of answering machine conspiracy: "Sorry, I'm not in right now, but if you leave a message after the beep I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
After the fifteenth attempt Sergey became so unhappy that he left a message consisting of a complicated combination of the dirtiest Russian swear words he could think of. "I sure hope that guy doesn't know Russian," was all Stanislav could add.
The clock struck 9 p.m. In Moscow, people were doing their morning exercises. Our biological clock was still on Moscow time and though we could have fallen asleep anywhere, we instinctively understood that sleeping on the streets is not a good idea. Nobody would bet a penny we'd ever wake up.
So, we tried our last hope and called our Georgian friend Benjamin, who had fortunately given us his telephone number.
"Vah-vah!" The voice on the other end of the line sounded offended. "How come you're saying you got no place to sleep?? From this day on you have your Georgian brother in New York! Go take the subway and be sure you don't miss your stop in Quinze. Be waiting for you at Drive 63!"
By the time we got to Benjy's apartment we could hardly keep our eyes open, which nevertheless became wider when we saw the the dinner that had been prepared for our arrival. Innumerable Caucasian dishes would appear under our noses without us knowing how they got there. Twenty years of living in the United States had not changed the traditions of these people from Tbilisi: Although they had lost some of their Russian, Benjy and his wife, Nora, had not forgotten what a real Georgian table should look like. The customs of the Caucasian mountain people were strongly observed, too. During the entire evening, neither Nora, nor her daughter who had been born in the New World, dared join the men in the dining room. In between serving us, they ate in the kitchen.
"Our traditions are our most precious and valuable heritage, said Benjy. "We are all Georgians. We even speak that damned English with a Georgian accent.."
"But America is a melting pot," objected Sergey cautiously. "If I emigrated, I would do my best to blend in with everybody else. That's the only way to become an American and not die from homesickness."
"Become an American? How can you be saying such things while we're still eating? Circumstances made me come here, but I will forever remain a Georgian. Why the hell should I become one of those with no history? It's hard enough to live here."
"So, you don't feel free in the country of free--"
"In the country of freedom, you mean to say?! Vah! Let's better talk about Russia, or Georgia, or whatever that land back home is called. I hate the USSR, but my hatred for what they call the New World is one hell of a lot stronger..."
We realized that this conversation could last for hours and we were far from wanting to criticize the country we only just begun to explore. Besides, we had been overfed, and, correspondingly, were fed up with both the fine food and hospitality. Stanislav began to understand that our hosts had decided to introduce us to an old Georgian tradition that we like to call, "Supper Proceeding Into Breakfast."
When Stanislav had been in the Asian republic of sunny Uzbekistan, he had learned how difficult such traditions can be on a European stomach. Suspecting the Georgian custom was not much different from the Uzbeck one, he pretended to fall asleep at the table and was finally carried all the way to the bedroom. In about half an hour he heard Sergey's body fall heavily on the bed next to his.
Early the next morning we called our friends in Syracuse. They said they wanted to hug us to death and suggested we take the first train possible
After such a marvelous start to our voyage though, the original plan to start hitch-hiking from Syracuse seemed dull and not creative enough for the skilled adventures we thought we were.
"After all, if we start off in Syracuse, we won't see a bit of New England," Stanislav said.
"Boston is where Harvard is," Sergey noted thoughtfully. "A good place to start making money by lecturing."
Not daring to contradict our sound reasoning, we decided to go to Boston. Of course, neither of us were adventurous enough to suggest hitch-hiking in or anywhere near New York City. Even Kerouac himself once admitted that only lunatics can challenge the rules of that New Babelon.
So, we spent $47 each on train tickets to Boston (we planned to compensate for this expense by lecturing at Harvard and selling a couple of stories to some Boston newspaper). The train was scheduled to depart at 2.30 a.m. from Penn Station and arrive in Boston at 8.30, which suited our intentions just fine to start every new day in America as early as possible.
So, we had a whole day at our disposal, and this day will forever remain in our memory, thanks to a couple events that were dropped from the heavens into our hearts, which were burning for adventure, like a bucket of cold water.
But meanwhile, the conquest of the Great City began. The first thing we decided to do was to make a call to our old American buddy Ken Ketchie in North Carolina.
"Wow!" exploded Ken.
"Hi!" we said back, warmed by his enthusiasm.
"Stas! Sergey!" he shouted into the reciever. "I've decided to sponsor your bold project and have sent a modest sum through Western Union to New York. Don't forget to pick it up."
We rushed around Manhattan in search of a Western Union office. Finally we found one and were practically climbing on top of each other to reach the counter.
"Your IDs, please," a grey-haired clerk asked us.
We produced our press cards.
"This won't work. It's in a foreign language."
"Yes, it's in Russian, but it has our photos and the word "press" on it."
"Congratulations. I don't get the press here that often, but I'd still rather see something with your names printed in English."
"Will our train tickets do?"
"No, what I need is an official document. A passport, at least."
Well, what do you know! After being flooded with loud articles that had been shrieking nothing but praise about America for the past few years, we had been sure that the U.S. was a complete bureaucracy-free nation; the country where money can be recieved by showing a post-marked envelope with your address! We would have been happy to oblige our clerk, but our passports, unfortunately, were with our backpacks, which themselves, were in storage at Grand Central Station.
"Sorry, but in that case you'll have to drop by some other time," the American brother of a Soviet bureaucrat told us. Long live the international solidarity of white collar workers and other red-tape sons of bitches!
"Would you please at least tell us how much we're supposed to recieve?" we asked resentfully.
"Five hundred dollars."
Damn!
Returning to the station and back to the bureaucrat took us two hours and four dollars of subway fare, but we at last received Ken's generous gift.

Is it our imagination, or is there a special law that every true American novelist published since 1900, must contribute to literature a detailed, and in most cases, boring description of New York City? Well not wanting to violate the laws of literature, and not having the strength to not have a go at it ourselves, we decided to give the city a few words of our own.
For what it's worth, New York City is:
The flavor of ten thousand Chinese restaurants, filling the sky and blending with the smell of ten thousand toilets;
a never ending maze of how-the-hell-did-they-build-them skyscraper palaces;
brownstone boxes in the Bronx and squares filled with loafers with baseball bats;
dirty sidewalks that know the soles of both those who leave twenty-buck tips for lunch and those, who, in order to make the very same twenty bucks, spend days wandering the streets finding empty beer cans in the garbage.
If America is an ordinary four-room apartment, then New York is its huge cluttered kitchen, with a housewife constantly cooking wonderful exotic dishes for her guests who are relaxing in the living room; it's full of smoke, the stove smells of burning fat, the sink is backed up.
Or maybe New York is the whole house--kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom all together--Who the hell knows! All that we do know is that there's no way one puny passage can cover everything.
Another New York tradition concerns Soviet writers. During the past fifty years or so, it's become something of a habit for our writers to give New York their own personal nickname: New Babylon, The Skyscraper City, The City of Contrasts, and of course Maxim Gorky's (not to be confused with the novel "Gorky Park"), " The Yellow Devil City." The old guy meant the vast amounts of gold circulating in the notorious center of capitalism. Nowadays, you won't find much gold on the streets of New York, but you will find enormous quantities of Yellow Cabs, so we still find this nickname to be very appropriate and the one we will stick with for the time being.

By eight in the evening we had found a small cosy bar somewhere in Brooklyn.
"I'm not leaving here until at least midnight." The determination in Sergey's voice left little room for doubt that this would be our last point of interest in today's long day of becoming acquianted with the Yellow Devil City.
As Stanislav navigated his way down the stairs, managing to not leave a piece of his scalp on the rather low ceiling, he spotted the reason for his companion's exclamation. In a dark corner of the poorly lit room, there was a rhythm and blues band playing a simple but alluring melody. We stopped walking and watched with admiration. Sure, for New York this was no doubt a common sight, but for us, the four black musicians, playing for the dozen or so customers, were part of the reason for which we had come to the United States in the first place. We were face to face with the spirit of the REAL America and we could almost taste it!
"Damn!" expressed Sergey. "This is where we should have been all evening. Do you know this song? No, of course not. In my soul I've always been a dissident, but you, you son of the Soviet Union, while I was risking my job listening to this kind of stuff, were off singing communist ditties at Pioneer camp." The usual thrifty Sergey had just ordered his fifth beer and was feeling pleasantly buzzed, so decided to criticize the younger Stanislav for not knowing what real music is.
"Sorry, old man, but I was brought up by the Beatles," Stanislav said and finished his screwdriver (he was not so young to never have realized that large quantities of beer make him too relaxed, while strong alchohol, no matter how much consumed, does nothing but raise his spirits and sharpen his senses).
"The Beatles are great, but they're not better than something like this! This is what life is! This is why I love America!"
"Why don't you show them how Russians can play guitar?" Stanislav asked.
"Compete with these guys, are you crazy? You have to be born here to play like that." Sergey had drunk a fair amount, but obviously not enough to try entertaining the American public.
"Why not subsidize our drinking expenses?" Stas thought to himself as he boldly left his stool and walked up to the bartender.
In about two minutes he returned, and told Sergey he was going out to make a call. Instead, he hid in the doorway and got ready to stifle his oncoming laughter.
The song ended, and as the last ripples of applause subsided, one of the musicians picked up his guitar, walked up to Sergey and handed him the instrument. The barman at this point, spoke into the microphone: "And now,ladies and gentlemen, we are about to hear some Russian R&B, performed by a famous Russian journalist Se-re-gey Fro-loff!"
Poor Sergey muttered something an American ear wouldn't have been able to pick up, and smiling as politely as he could, explained that he wasn't much of a musician and not in the proper mood anyway.
"Your friend, sir, has just walked off with a bottle of Jack Daniels in exchange for his promise that you would play for us." This wasn't true, but the sincerity in the man's voice was hard to doubt.
When Sergey struck the final chords of Boris Grebshchikov's "Let me drink some railroad water," applause and delighted exclamations shook the small room. Even translated, a non-Russian could never understand the complex hidden meaning of the lyrics, but the style was familiar to everyone as the popular Russian rock star had been greatly influenced by Bob Dylan.

"C'mon, let me drink some railroad water,
I love summer for summer is warm;
Love winter better for my window's frosted over...
And they can't see me through the glass,
And the snow's covered my footprints...

When I was younger, I thought I was old,
And now I'm drinking my wine,
And eating my cheese;
And I'm rolling down the slope,
Or should I say, I'm rolling up?

Our train is on fire,
And there're no more buttons to push.
This land used to be ours
Until we got lost in the fight,
It's time to reclaim it, I know
You know, I can see the light...

Sergey modestly said "Thank you," shot a confident look in Stas's direction and continued with "Born In The USSR," a popular Russian parody on Springsteen's "Born In The USA." Next followed "There Is A House In New Orleans," "Rocky Racoon" and "Those Were The Days". When Sergey performed the Russian original of this song, he was asked to translate this version word by word into English.
Feeling for some reason that it was improper for Russian journalists to accept money for playing music in a bar, Sergey refused to accept the 70 dollars or so that was offered him by his admirers at the end of his set.
Strolling down Broadway later in the evening, Sergey found a fifty-dollar bill that someone had evidently stuffed in his pocket when he wasn't paying attention. "Here's to good places in New York City!" said Sergey, raising an imaginary glass. "And to all the poor victims of capitalist morals!"
At about 1. a.m. we hopped the subway, hoping to get to Penn Station an hour before our train was scheduled to depart. Using hindsight, we now realise it would have been a lot more intelligent to take a cab, but our desire to taste a spicy dish called "Night-Time Manhattan" proved stronger than our intelligence.
We are glad New Yorkers call their underground a "subway," because it in no way resembles our Moscow metro. With its low ceilings, concrete walls, stuffy air, and an awful lot of shabbily dressed individuals, it reminds us of a basement, a toilet, and the student dormitories at Moscow University of Friendship Between the Peoples of the World.
In Moscow, metro riders start cursing the Russian Ministry of Transportation if they have to wait longer than four minutes for their train. In New York, we waited over 20 minutes, and when we finally did get on a train, it turned out to be an express, which didn't stop until we were way beyond our destination. Instead of getting off at 33rd street, we re-emerged above ground at the corner of 14th Street and 5th Avenue. What could we do but go back downstairs and wait for a train back the way we came?
The platform was completely empty except for a a black guy of about forty dressed in a faded Chicago Bulls T-shirt and torn black jeans, and a young woman with a baby holding a baby. At two in the morning in New York, people don't like to be too far away from their fellow human beings so we sat down to wait close to this apparent family. The man was delivering a lecture, speaking as articularly as he could with his toothless mouth.
"...All our misfortunes, brothers, stem from the fact that we don't chew our bananas well enough. We should chew bananas carefully, slowly; and the slower we chew, the better. As we chew bananas over and over again, our saliva glands produce more saliva which dissolves what we have in our mouth and accelerates the digestive process. If you don't digest your food well enough, your blood will become filled with too much cholesterol, which causes hardening of the arteries, which may in turn cause heart attacks..."
We felt our own mouths go dry listening to this person spout his philosophy. We couldn't stand it any longer so grabbed our bags and hurried outside--our second mistake of the evening. Put it down to beer on top of jet lag on top of inexperience in the Yellow Devil City.
"19 blocks down 5th avenue, a 20 minutes walk at the most. You're young and I'm an experienced hiker. We still have time so let's go," said Sergey cheerfully.
"Maybe we should catch a cab."
"You're not in Russia, Stas. Keep your taxi habits to yourself. 'Don't be funny, save your money,' as they say. When's the next time you'll be able to take a stroll in New York at two in the morning?"
"I mean, you're sure it's safe enough?"
"Americans are great people. Here, you can find a common language with even a maniac sentenced to death."
Stanislav didn't want Sergey to think he was wasn't as self-confident as his older friend, so he quickly put on his backpack and said, "C'mon, Mr. experienced hiker. Try not to slow me down."
Taking a pleasure walk down Fifth Avenue at two a.m.
is not usually an idea that is likely to occur to two healthy minds. We marched along hoping that we somehow were exceptions to this rule.
Fifth Avenue, at that hour, was populated by ambassadors of Columbian drug cartels and scantily dressed women "ready for a little lovin';" the winds from New Jersey had scattered fliers advertising sexshows across the pavement; police only drove by with their windows shut tight; and your chances of survival can be calculated against the distance you have to walk.
Finally, two minutes from Penn Station, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, we got a lesson in the American version of what Russians call the "Hop-Stop."
"Hey, buddy!" someone called to Sergey from behind.
Stanislav had turned the corner and didn't hear the voice, or see Sergey stop.
Sergey's late night "buddy" turned out to be a short Puerto-Rican whose cement-like eyes told us there was absolutely no chance of reasoning with their owner. He had been following about 30 feet behind Sergey, but beer and Russian R&B were dancing in his head and he was unable to fully acknowledge the implications of this New York City encounter.
"Hi! Something happened?" Sergey greeted the guy in what he believed was a friendly American manner.
"Yeah" said the man, and produced a cheap rusty knife. "Somethin'gonna happen to you unless you gimme money!"
Money! The poor idiot thought he was going to get rich off of us! At first Sergey attempted humour by suggesting his assailant read an article in yesterday's New York Times about the current economic situation in the USSR. The mugger wasn't interested.
"I kill ya. I make a hole in your throat if ya not gimme money!"
"Okay, okay." Convinced of the futility in discussing ethics, Sergey began to take off his backpack to show this twerp that Russians would rather fight than give up their beloved dollars.
Heavy steps from behind made Sergey turn around. A black guy who looked like a cross between a professional basketball player and a boxer was holding a much more significant weapon than a knife. Four more potential participants were making their way across the street. "Stas!" Sergey shouted.
Stanislav heard the anxious voice and ran back to his friend. Twenty feet from the scene, he was blocked by two men wielding baseball bats.
"Money, ya damned freek!" This was addressed to Sergey. For some incomprehensible reason no one showed any interest whatsoever in Stas. They only wanted him to stop him from interfering.
Right about then, Sergey remembered the advice of all our American friends who had, at one time, been in situations like this one: "When in New York, always carry some cash with you for muggers; not less than twenty dollars," Karl Stoltz the former assistant press attache from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow used to tell us. "That's the going rate for a crack dose."
That, as we now understand, is also the value of silly pedestrian's life on a New York street.
Lying in our own blood on the gray asphalt of Fifth Avenue is not the best way to begin our great American adventure. This simple thought prevailed over the eager but senseless urge to fight. Besides, our train was supposed to leave in just 15 minutes and we didn't want to have to face the agressive hospitality of Benjy for the second night in a row.
We accepted our position philosophically: Why be greedy? Let these guys escape from the harsh reality of capitalism. Americans have helped Russians, so the least a Russian could do is make a small contribution to the American welfare system.
Sergey pulled two twenty-dollar bills from his pocket, and handed them over to this rejection of the American dream.
"Thank you, mister!" expressed the muggers with sudden, surprising politeness, and vanished as if they had never existed.
"Welcome to America!" we told each other.

CHAPTER II
SOCIALIST AMTRACK AND BOSTON WITHOUT A TEA PARTY
The train from New York to Boston takes six hours at the most. With no sleeping cars on the train, it's both useless and uncomfortable to try to sleep, so we decided to pay a visit to the Amtrack snack bar. In the cramped barcar we felt absolutely at home because the first thing we saw was a real LINE (just like in Russia!) snaking all the way to the back of the car. People were lining up for food in America! We couldn't believe our eyes, but nevertheless instinctively asked who was last in line and took our places.
The line was hardly moving. Everybody seemed to be a little bit tense, but the weakest nerves of all belonged to the server behind the counter.
"What do you want? You want Coke? No Coke. Chips? No chips left. Juice?? Only if I squeeze it myself. No nothing!" she greeted customers in an annoyed tone.
My God! Why did we come all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to get the same lousy service that we get in Russia?? Not even Soviet officials had mentioned the existence of lines in the United States, with the exception of those at unemployment offices.
We started sharing our impressions of Amtrack service with one another in Russian, using a colorful language you could never hope find in the rather prudish classics of Russian literature. It's great when nobody can understand you.
Someone understood us. A respectable-looking tall blond gentleman, standing next to us, spoke suddenly in pure Russian: "Eto tochno, rebyata! Polnaya khuinya sdeshniy servis. A eta chernaya blyad' mogla by sebya i poprilichnei vesti!" (Right you are guys! The service here is bullshit. And that bitch should watch her manners!)
We were startled and then blushed. The man winked at us encouragingly and stretched out his hand. "Hi, I'm Jeff Brown from Michigan. Russian history was my major in college and I spent a year in Moscow in 1980. Saw the Olympics, lectured at the Pushkin Institute. Had a wonderful time."
"On a special asssignment with the KGB?" inquired Sergey.
"CIA," Jeff retorted.
"British Intelligence." Stas got into the conversation, too.
"Nice to meet you."
"Same here."
"What's your name again?" Jeff asked Sergey.
"Just call me sergeant," said Sergey.
We all laughed. Jeff had a good sense of humor. We were happy to be able to talk with him.
"Travelling on Amtrak used to be pretty nice," Jeff told us. "And it was cheap, too. But when it became monopolized, the prices went way up, schedules went to pieces and the service, well, you've just had a taste for it yourselves."
"Why don't they fire employees who don't--"
"Because the unions don't let them fire anybody. Besides, hardly anyone bothers to complain about anything these days. So, lazy Amtrak employees aren't afraid of losing their jobs. You could say that Amtrak is turning socialist."
We remembered an old Soviet revolutionary song:

"Our train is rushing forward.
Communism is its next stop.
There's no other way to go,
A rifle in our hand..."

We were kind of dismayed to hear that. What's happening to this crazy world anyway? Some people are trying to break out of the tight sweaty grip of socialism, others are marching straight into it.
At about 9 o'clock our train pulled into to Boston.
"They were right to name this part of the country "New England," was one of our first Boston impressions. Gentle features of the Victorian architecture, faces radiating self-respect, a calm constructive lifestyle; none of this had anything in common with New York's crazy atmosphere. Thank God! If the all of America was like the Big Apple, what would there be to envy?
At the station, we made several telephone calls. The plan was purely American: We wanted to promote our project. Our first target became The Boston Globe.
"Hi, we're Soviet journalists. We plan to hitch-hike sround the States."
"Hi there! That's great, but I'm afraid this kind of story is not for our paper. Try The Christian Science Monitor. Hey, hold on! We may be interested in running a couple of your stories, though. Topics? Hmm... Say, emigration from the USSR. By the way, are you guys planning to stay in this country?"
"Only if someone buys us a private jet to fly back home on weekends for grandma's pancakes!"
"Good for you. Mention that in your article. Fax us the story from the Monitor. Best of luck!"
A call to the Monitor.
"Hi, we're Russian..."
"How are you? We just got a call from the Globe. Come on over, we'll be waiting for you."
And that's how we managed to get injected into a subtle and very sophisticated American machine. Twenty minutes ago nobody had ever heard of us. Now it seemed, the word about two guys getting ready to follow in the tire tracks of John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac was spreading across the city.
Our last call was to Syracuse, to Mark Conner's brother Mike, the Managing Editor of the Syracuse Post Standard. As we dialed, the operator told us to deposit two dollars. We naturally complied. In a minute the request was repeated. By the time we had finished talking, the operator had managed to squeeze another two dollars out of us. We hung up the receiver and two seconds later, it started ringing. Instinctively, we picked it up.
"Two dollars, please."
"Sorry, but we've already payed. Our conversation is over."
"I'm sorry, but the computer says you owe AT&T two dollars."
We quickly replaced the receiver once more. American technology is fine, but the computer's competence can be greatly exagerated. The telephone started to ring again.
"Stas," Sergey said and pulled him by the arm. "Let's get out of here before somebody calls the police. There might even be some kind of alarm system around here."
We put on our backpacks amd walked away as fast as possible, trying not to look conspicuous.
The damned telephone was still ringing. People would stare at us, at the telephone, then back at us. As we passed another row of telephones on our way out, one of them started ringing, too. Finally we made it on to the street.
"The company does it on purpose to scare people into always paying their bills," said Sergey. "There's no way you chintzy bastards can get away from us!"
"That's a good plot for a book," said Stas.
A telephone on the corner seemed to be watching us resentfully, but didn't start ringing. We had made it.
The Boston metro surprised us as being very clean and cheap: only 75 cents. Compared to $1.15 for the pigsty in New York, it seemed to us a real bargain. We had already forgotten how much we used to complain in Russia for having to pay the incredible sum of 15 kopeks for a metro ride (half a cent according to the current exchange rate).
In the headquarters of the Christian Science Monitor we were met by the charming Laura Van Tyle: "That's great! How very interesting! Is it true you're going to hitch-hike across America?"
"What's so extraordinary about that?"
"Well, nothing, except for the fact that nobody's hitch-hiked in the last ten years in this country. It's become too dangerous, you know."
In a minute we were surrounded by Laura's colleagues."
"You guys are crazy!"
"What weapons did you bring?"
"I hope you remembered to write a will."
"They'll be butchered before they make it out of Massachusets!"
All we could do in the face of this anti-enthusiasm was put on an air of complete indifference and behave like brave superheroes ready for anything.
We spent three hours in the Monitor talking with Laura and her editors. There was no way we could know at the time just how helpful those conversations would prove.
By evening we had already recieved $200 for the two stories we'd faxed to the Boston Globe, and feeling rather flush, took a cab to Harvard University where we planned to spend the night. Billy Kovach, a friend of Mike Connor, had been an aggressive newspaper wolf in the past and was now Curator of the Newman Foundation at Harvard. He was the first American to take our plans in stride and refrain from making any predictions of doom.
"Hitch-hiking around the country?" he said. "Brilliant idea. I hitch-hiked from East to West, North to South seven or eight times when I was in my late twenties. The best way to get out of Boston is on I-90."
Having said that he handed us the keys to a student apartment on campus.
By Harvard standards it was a rather ordinary flat with two bedrooms, living-room, kitchen, and a fire-place. In Moscow, most professors couldn't afford such luxury.
On the other hand, nobody has to pay $25 thousand a year to go to our universities.

CHAPTER III
HITTING THE ROAD
At eight a.m. we solemnly stepped onto the highway, bid farewell to the Boston skyline partially shrouded in a gentle morning mist, dropped our backpacks onto the shoulder, and raised our thumbs for the first time in America.
"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" asked Stanislav.
"I once stood on a road for an hour in Sweden. It all depends on the traffic."
"And what about the drivers?"
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. Remember what they told us at the Monitor?"
"Oh yeah, the danger talks. Well I'm sure Americans can tell the difference between a criminal and a traveler."
"Yeah, but can we?"
"Optimistic this morning, aren't you?"
"I'm not used to getting up this early."
"I promise you the longest we'll have to wait for a car to stop is half an hour."
Our physical conditions were not good. First, we hadn't had enough sleep, and second, the cheeseburger and cup of gray liquid the student cafeteria had the gall to call coffee, were not what we would call a good breakfast. As far as Stas was concerned, his lungs craved nicotine. He had quit smoking in the New York airport and the habit's fangs (he started smoking when he was 16) had not stopped gnawing at his self-control.
But Sergey was right. Our first car, the car we will always remember, like a man remembers his first woman, pulled up beside us in exactly 22 minutes. Our first driver, Jack Bloomfield, a psychiatrist from Medford, Massachusets, was indescribably happy to meet us: "Well, what do you know? Hitch-hiking is alive and well after all in this country," he said as he helped us with our backpacks.
"We beg your pardon, sir," Sergey answered with dignity. "We don't know about this country, because, generally speaking, we're from Russia."
"From Russia??"
To this day it amazes us how little the average American knows about Russia. The Iron Curtain which had separated the USA and USSR for over 30 years, notwithstanding, Soviets have alway tried to cram as much information as possible into their heads about the distant evil empire. Most Russians can tell you how many states are in America, many can name all American post-war presidents, and absolutely everyone is always ready to rattle off a few choice phrases in English.
Jack's first question was, "Hey, guys, there's always been something I've wanted to find out. What does CCCP stand for?"
"See-See-See-Pee?" We didn't understand him.
"You know, the thing written on t-shirts. Some kind of Russian symbol?"
Then we got it. He meant CCCP. In Russian it transcribes as Es-Es-Es-Er and is the abbreviation for the Russian translation of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The same thing as "USA" in English. In the Soviet Union, however, every schoolchild would not only pronounce "USA" correctly, but the full name of the country as well.
But much can be blamed on the Soviet government, which never allowed American journalists and writers to travel across the USSR, not even as much as the American government allowed Russian journalists to travel in the United States.
With Jack we understood that we should be prepared to hold short "illiteracy liquidation" sessions every time we climb into a new car.
"What's the difference between Gorbachev and Yeltsin?" "Is it really that cold in Russia?" "Are there black people in the USSR?" "Is it true that at least 70 percent of Russians work for the KGB?" These questions make up maybe one twentieth of what we were asked during that ride.
We said good-bye to Jack at an overpass near Springfield.
"Hi there. Having a good time?" A long-haired guy with a beard, dressed in a colorful short-sleeved shirt and orange trousers stood under a maple-tree, guitar in hand. A young pretty face with big innocent eyes emerged from the bushes. The face belonged to the guy's co-traveler, a girl wearing a loose dress to her ankles. It was tie dyed the same colors as her friend's trousers.
"Collegues!" said Sergey, the hitch-hiking veteran. And people say hitch-hiking is dead. Hi! Had many lifts today?"
With their serene faces, bright clothes, and hell-knows-how-many-years-old guitar, the couple looked like they had just stepped out of the sixties. "Hippies," we both knew immediately.
The four of us struck up a conversation. When they learnt we were Russians and hitching in America for the very first time, they tutored us in the rules of the game.
"As a matter of fact, hitch-hiking is prohibited in Massachusets. But it's okay as long as you don't go past that sign," the young man said pointing at a big green metal plate behind us.
"Hitch-hiking prohibited. Violators will be fined 50 dollars."
That's weird, we thought. Does a "hitch-hiker-free-zone" really begin beyond that sign?
Stanislav decided to step beyond the sign and take his chances. In a couple minutes a big police car stopped in front of him. Without getting out of his car, the officer expressed, "Hey you, Long Legs! Didn't you learn how to read English in school? Get the hell out of here!"
Who did the cop think we were? Although nobody would say that English teachers in Russia knew enough English to teach their pupils how to speak English, they had taught us how to read it.
After that, we hitched several short rides, each about 50 miles long. At one point we found ourselves at an intersection not knowing which way we were suposed to go. To put it plainly, we forgot where east was and couldn't find a roadsign to help us out. Stas walked across the highway to a group of road workers. They were indulging themselves in lunch, and, as he approached them, no one bothered to look his way.
"Excuse my interrupting your meal, which I hope you are enjoying," Stas greeted the men. "Could you please tell me where, in your opinion, east is?"
Except for the sounds of food being chewed and paper being unwrapped, there was total silence. When Stas repeated his question, one of the workers, clearly the oldest, stopped eating, wiped his lips with a piece of paper and slowly pronounced:
"My dear little boy, may I ask how old you are?"
"Nineteen," Stanislav answered, trying to figure out what his age had to do with east.
"For nineteen years, my boy, you have been living in this country. You must have done pretty poor in school, eh? Do you, by any chance, know where the sun rises? And what time it is now?"
Had Stas not wanted more than anything at this moment a snack, a snooze, and a smoke he may have found this astrology lesson very interesting. As it was, he didn't even appreciate the involuntary compliment to his English.
"Damned sorry," Stas said. "But in Russia they sell compasses on every corner."
...As we were finishing our fourth Bigmac, generously offered us by the workers, we learned that the old man's grandparents were Polish and lived in Lvov, a city on the Russian-Polish border where Stas' Polish grandmother had been born and raised.
It was the first time that we drank whisky during the daytime in America.
At three o'clock we found ourselves unable to get a ride near a toll booth and remembered how, during the "era of stagnation," international correspondents from the Soviet Union would frighen their compatriots with harsh American realities such as, "In America, people must pay to use roads." On the eve of our departure for the United States we happened to read a newspaper column by a journalist who had once been famous for exposing the evils of capitalist society. Here's an paragraph from his recent article:
"Yes, in some U.S. states there are "toll booths" - places where drivers must pay for using a highway. However, in America - land of the free - nobody tells the driver that he must use the toll road. He may always, if he wishes, drive on the two or three parallel roads which are smaller and free of charge. The catch to this liberty is that the price for using a toll road is nothing compared to gas expenses on the parallel road, which is usually much longer and where the speed limit is lower."
Suddenly, it started to rain and before long, we were soaked and shivering in the rather chilly air. With each heavy drop of water that landed on our persons, our optimism was getting closer and closer to becoming extinguished on our very first day on the road. And that's when our saviour, U.S. Navy engineer Michael Coronna, decided to give two wet hitch-hikers a lift.
Mike told us that he had just returned from the Persian Gulf and was now stationed in Bridgeport, Connecticut working as a Navy recruiter.
"Is it difficult to recruite kids?" we asked.
"Not a bit," Mike said. "Kids have always been a little bit romantic toward the Navy. Travel overseas... And now that we've won the Gulf War, they can't wait to sign up. My job is a piece of cake."
We hadn't noticed the state line and were winding through the beautiful hills of eastern New York. The sky was clearing up as the sun stealthily creeped from behind silver clouds. We were really beginning to enjoy life on the road and sat back comfortably in the gigantic Buick. Much to our relief, the tall, heavy framed Mike, with quite a respectable moustache, was talking away, rarely asking the questions that we had quickly become too used to.
"Is this the first time you've met Russians?" we asked.
"The second," Mike said, smiling with a faraway look in his eyes.
We nodded understandingly. "You've been to many ports of the world?"
"A year ago I was in Sevastopol, (a Soviet port on the Black Sea). Top U.S. Navy officials were paying what they called "a visit of friendship and partnership" to the homes of Russian admirals. While our captain drank Russian vodka with his Russian colleagues, we sailors went ashore and disappeared into the city. I was in kind of a bad mood for some reason and decided to get a drink. After emptying several mugs of beer, I started feeling like a little romance, so I asked a waitress to dance. She was really incredible. We ended up dancing all night and she told me she wanted to be with me forever.
"How unlike Russian girls!" Sergey commented in such a serious tone of voice that Stanislav thought Mike would really believe that Russian port girls are not above feigning love to go abroad.
"I know what you mean, buddy," Mike quickly answered to show he wasn't that naive. And I even knew it at the time. But I couldn't do anything about it. I truly fell in love! I can't explain it, but I wanted more than anything to bring her back to the States with me. When the captain denied my request I was so pissed off. God, she was cute. She said she went to a foreign language school in Sevastopol. Spoke decent English, by the way, too. She told me she was ready to ship out without even telling her mom."
As he finished his heartbreaking love story, we pointed at the radar detector sitting on the dash that had just started beeping.
"Oh yeah, thanks. Do you have these things in the USSR?"
"They're starting to bring them in from abroad"
"This little black box has saved me hundreds of dollars! It can spot a cop two miles away. The trouble is that they've got their own devices that can interfere with the operation of my box. A war on the airwaves, you could call it. And the funny thing about all this, is that the inventor of my radar detector is the very same son of a bitch that invented their disruptor! Figure out how much money he makes by selling his toys to both cops and honest people!"
We parted with Mike at the outskirts of Amsterdam. This particular aspect of America particularly pleased us: all those tiny Romes, Athens', Hamburgs, and Londons make it impossible for a European to feel too homesick.
Mike scrawled the address of his parents in Amsterdam on a piece of paper and handed it to us: "If you guys don't get a ride by night-time, give me a call. I'll come pick you up and you can spend the night at my folks'."
We had a snack in a cafe and feeling quite good, made ourselves comfortable on our backpacks.
We were admiring the view of the huge scarlet ball sinking steadily beyond the hilly horizon of the New York countryside, when a brand new Ford pulled out of the cafe parking lot and stopped beside us.
"Hey, guys! I've got George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" playing on the radio. Jump in and enjoy the combination of sunset and sunrise!"
The author of this unusual invitation was Dan Williams, a young professor at Colgate University which is located in the tiny town of Hamilton. Dan was in a cheerful mood and hurrying to meet his buddies, some Colgate graduate students for a party. As we drove into the night, we downed a couple of beers each and before long, we too, were invited to compete with Americans for the title of best beer drinker at Colgate.
The next morning, trying to relieve his hangover with orange juice, Dan said, "I don't know about your bible knowledge or your abilities to program a computer, but from this day on you've definitely got your names in the Colgate record book."

CHAPTER IV
THE MODEST CHARM OF AN IMPERIALIST SHARK
We gained so much respect from Dan and his friends that one of them offered us a ride all the way to Syracuse. We immedeately accepted the offer because we longed to see our friend Mike Connor as soon as possible and were in no mood to spend any more time hitch-hiking down small country roads than we had to.
Mike Connor, Managing Editor for the Syracuse Post Standard, despite the difference in age (he's 38) shares first place with Ken Ketchie (about whom you'll read later) on the long list of Americans we now regard as our good buddies.
In early 1991, Stanislav, then 18 years old, organized an exchange program between Komsomolskaya Pravda and several U.S. newspapers. Mike Connor was the first to come to the Soviet Union, while Stas was the first Komsomolskaya Pravda reporter to visit the United States. They had a terrific time in Russia, Uzbekistan, and the Baltics. Mike when it was his turn to host, did his very best (which could not have been better) to make Stas' first visit to the United States as eventful as any agressive young reporter could hope for. Stas, Michael and Sergey (who joined the pair quite often in Moscow) became great friends, and Michael, on seeing Stas off in New York, made him promise to spend at least a couple of days in Syracuse the next time he returned to the U.S.
We arrived in Syracuse on the Fourth of July. We both knew that for America, this holiday is probably as important as Christmas, but we seriously doubt the country had seen such a celebration in quite some time as was taking place on that warm summer day just after the Gulf War. Every flag pole, house, and car was decorated with banners reading things like: "I'm Proud of the Guys in the Gulf," not to mention the unbelievable abundance of stars and stripes and yellow ribbons everywhere.
"See how happy our patriots are today," Mike smiled as he unscrewed a bottle of Jack Daniels before the family fire-place. "It's been years since anyone's been able to wave their flags and sing to the glory of their country's military success!"
Like all liberal minded American Democrats, Mike was, to put it mildly, very skeptical about the idea, the operation, and the consequences of the War in the Gulf. He was also against what he called, "flag-waving."
"There's no doubt someone had to teach that Iraki bastard a lesson, but they didn't even get him! He's safe and sound while thousands of Iraki women and children have been killed. I also understand how it's in America's best interests to control Kuwait's oil resources. It's more

[Valeri Shanin]

Может, у кого-нибудь есть и свои рассказы о путешествиях на английском языке? Или ссылка на другие истории русскоязычных путешественников на английском? Присылайте!