RANSVESTIA

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ning down between groves of trees to the Baltic shore about half a mile away. The place is beautiful like all palaces but Peter was something of a sadist. He had a zoo in the park and used to amuse himself and frighten his guests to death when they would be walking in the park and he'd turn a lion or a wolf loose. He also had some cute arrange- ments still pulled on tourists a sort of rock garden. When people come up to examine it, a man seated nearby, and looking like a spec- tator, turns his foot a little and streams of water come up to wet down the curious. The kids love it but Peter must have been a little odd, to say the least. He built the city and established the industrial base of modern Russia but he was also present at the torture and death of his own son as a traitor. Nice guy. We spent one evening at the circus which was fascinating — not only the performers, animal and human, but to be among the ordinary Russian people on an outing. They knew we were foreigners and we couldn't speak to each other except to say "spasebo" (thank you) or "das vedanya" (I can say it and that probably isn't the best spelling but it means goodbye). They were very friendly and smiling. Aren't they supposed to be kind of overworked, oppressed and sullen and suspicious of foreigners and afraid to talk to them?? Maybe I was misinformed. We took the subway out to the circus and thus had our first introduction to Russian subways but more of that later.

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After three days in Leningrad and our introduction to the Soviet Union, we went back to the airport to board an Aeroflot jet to Moscow. At this point I might say that Aeroflot is the biggest airline in the world and that it is exceedingly well patronized. Every Aeroflot of- fice I saw in any city was jammed to the doors with people trying to get tickets and every airport was mobbed in the domestic part. We were always in and out of the Intourist section which spared us the mobs, the bags and boxes and the kids. The planes of Aeroflot run from 10 or 20 passenger jobs for short domestic hops like we have on our commuter airlines through a lot of turbojets to the equivalents of our 727's, 737's, DC-10's and 707's. Although the Russians have a supersonic like the Concorde we didn't see it. They don't have the equivalent of our 747's because they don't need them. But their newer planes are just as nicely equipped and furnished as the 707's and DC-8's we have. The only trouble is that at a lot of their airports they are not equipped with ground air so after you get seated, belted, and the doors close, you just sit while the pilot goes through the check list and has a last cigarette. If it's hot outside it just gets hotter inside with 50 to 150 people cooped up in the cabin. Until the plane is not

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