But I Smile Anyway…

Linda’s SoCS prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “trip.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

The first thing that came to mind when I read this prompt was a trip I took with school.

I was lucky enough to go and visit a country I’d have no reason to, in my normal life.

Russia.

Back then, they were coming out of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We were instructed to take certain things, like ladies’ tights and biro pens, with us to gift the chambermaids, and sweets for the children we might encounter.

I remember the cold as we arrived.

We were in St Petersburg, first.

And we were surrounded by people who were trying to bring themselves out of poverty and restrictions they’d lived with for years.

Moscow was the same.

But different.

Here, Mcdonald’s had just opened a few days before, for the first time, in Russia. Our coach drove past a queue that looked like it stretched nearly a mile, wrapped around a block. A queue filled with people wanting to taste a little bit of what felt like freedom to them.

Wherever we went, people were trying their hardest to make a living. And so many of them supplemented their honest jobs with sidelines of selling various souvenirs to tourists.

I remember a chambermaid coming up to us and asking us if we needed help, as we struggled to get a particularly stupid younger member of our troupe back to her room, after drinking something she purchased illegally. When we shook our heads, she pulled wooden spoons decorated like Babooshka dolls out from under her apron, and said “You vant to buy?”

Then there was the time the waiter in the hotel restaurant served us our drinks, looked around for any of his superiors, and then whisked away his tray to reveal some vinyl records. “You vant to buy?” Er, no thanks. They were Des O’Connor records, I kid you not!

We had been accosted outside by people selling bootleg vodka and even champagne, which we had avoided. However, when we arrived in Moscow and entered the lift to take us to our room, a man with a trench coat and the traditional Russian fur hat, carrying a metal briefcase, entered with us.

The doors closed and the four of us stepped uncomfortably to the rear of the lift, feeling a little intimidated by him. As the lift climbed upwards, he turned around, grinned at us and swung open his briefcase, which was filled with bottles of vodka and champagne, nestled in foam beds. “You vant to buy?” he asked.

Thankfully the lift reached our floor and we hastily escaped with a flurry of no thank yous!

We saw so much on this visit, including the Basilica, Lenin’s tomb. The beautiful buildings and the history of this place…

But what will stay with me are the haunted faces of so many people.

And my fear, now is, that, what with everything happening in Ukraine, and the way Russia is being sanctioned, those innocents in Russia, as well as all those affected in Ukraine, will be carrying those haunted faces for a long time to come.

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS March 12, 2022