RANSVESTIA

house or DuPont or Standard Oil is doing but what their country is doing, one more indication of the relationship of the people to the country. There were more on my trip but I'll get to them in due course.

This whole place can be characterized as the world's largest county fair since there are buildings for every aspect of Soviet life spread around the park. The principle difference is that instead of being used just one week a year it is open all the year though with Moscow's winter snows it must slow down a bit. We didn't get to see the Bolshoi or go to the symphony because in the summer these groups are travel- ing abroad giving concerts. Maybe we should have stayed home. Any- way we did the city tour and walked through the famed Park of Culture and Rest. There was plenty of park and doing a trip through that park would certainly be no rest. Like everything else in Russia it was im- mense. The same goes for the main building of the University of Mos- cow. This is built in late Stalin-esque style. It is massive, it is tall, it is big, it is impressive, and it is duplicated about five other times on the Moscow skyline. You get kind of mixed up looking out the window in one direction and seeing this skyscraper on the horizon then a minute later you are looking in some other direction and there it is again makes you a little confused.

I essayed a solo ride on the subway, too. I had figured out the Rus- sian cyrillic alphabet from figuring out the names of cities on the radio dial in Leningrad and had learned that P=R, B=V; C=S and H=N, etc. Thus one sees PECTOPAH all over the place and translating it it turns out to spell restauran- without the "t." Surprisingly, there are a lot of public eating places and night spots in Russia. Anyway, back to subways. Having mastered this little bit of the Russian alpha- bet I could at least read the station names. I didn't say I could pro- nounce them nor know what they meant except for such names as Komsomolskaya or Karl Marx Allee but I dived down the subway and got off and back on again at about half a dozen stations, even trans- ferred to another line for a couple of stations and back again. Believe me Moscow's subways live up to their billing. The trains are fast, quiet and more than anything, they are clean - both of trash and of grafitti. What a change from the disgraceful transportation in New York. And the stations, they are like museums all marble, stained glass or sculptures or bronze reliefs, etc., yet the ride only costs four kopecs (equal to six cents). Each one is different and all are interesting. And there are mobs of people, too. This little trip was something of a contra- diction to the idea that somebody follows you around all the time. I was free to go where I pleased in Moscow and I did and I think any-