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National Geographic : 1966 Mar
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March, 1966 T GEOGRAPHIC THE NATIONALGEOGRAPHICMAGAZINEVOL. 129, NO. 3 COPYRIGHT© 1966 BY NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY, WASHINGTON,D.C. INTERNATIONALCOPYRIGHTSECURED An American in MOCKBA Russia's Capital By THOMAS T. HAMMOND, Ph.D. Illustrations by National GeographicphotographerDEAN CONGER ALOUD KNOCK shook the door of my sleeping compartment. "Wake up!" shouted the train conductress. "We'll be in Moscow in half an hour." "Spasibo-thank you," I shouted back. "How cold is it?" "Twenty-two degrees below zero!" I shuddered. This centigrade figure meant nearly eight below zero on the Fahrenheit scale-a real introduction to Russian winter. I pulled on my long underwear, woolen shirt, heavy tweed jacket, and galoshes. The con ductress brought me hot tea served in a glass, the usual Russian way. Munching on a breakfast of pirozhki, meat pies, I looked out the window at a world all white, gray, and black. Snow lay everywhere, hanging gracefully on the pines that lined the railroad tracks and burdening the rows of log cabins in the villages. Even the sky seemed covered with snow, since the orange ball of the sun was barely visible behind a curtain of white clouds. Peasants rode by in heavy horse-drawn sleds or plodded through the snow in huge felt boots. The men wore fur caps with thick flaps covering their ears, while the women were wrapped in so many woolen scarves that they seemed to have no necks. Both men and women were bundled in dark-blue jackets of quilted cotton; they looked so rotund I thought they might roll more easily than they walked. Clouds of steam rose from their mouths as they puffed along. Moscow Revisited-Student Style Our train from Warsaw now passed through forests of lovely white birches, past suburban railroad depots and rows of new apartment buildings, each topped with dozens of TV antennas. Finally, the train squeaked to a halt in the Belorussian Station. Though I had been to Moscow three times before, I was as excited as a country boy on his first trip to New York. On my previous visits I had been a tourist, staying no more than a few weeks, and the Intourist travel agency had catered to all my needs.* This time I would be in Moscow five months, and I would live like an ordinary Soviet citizen. *See "Firsthand Look at the Soviet Union," by Thomas T. Hammond, GEOGRAPHIC, September, 1959. 297
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