RANSVESTIA

ing trip. I'm not going into all the details here because the whole trip was described in TVias No. 87 and 88. But for those who may not have read those issues and because it really was an important contribution to my trip, I want to mention something that happened on the way into the city from the airport.

We were met, as all foreigners are, by an Intourist guide who got us through customs and into a taxi for the trip. She was a girl of about 20, I guess, and she could talk good enough English. On the outskirts of town we began to cross some of the numerous canals that run through the city as they do in Venice, Italy. On one of them there were a number of fair-sized fiber glass boats with outboard motors on them. I commented that I supposed that they would belong to the party big wigs or central committee members or such. She said no that they belonged to ordinary people. I, of course, couldn't believe that because I was after all, well read in TIME magazine, the Los Angeles Times and well indoctrinated with the "truth" about the USSR as dispensed by American propaganda sources. So, of course, I didn't believe her statement and argued it with her a bit. It couldn't be, according to all that I had read, and heard that the poor ordinary citizens of that country could afford such expensive luxuries as boats and outboards. Didn't everybody in America know that the Russians were short of all sorts of things from food to computers? So naturally the guide had been well briefed by her superiors in the proper party line to tell the visiting foreigners in order to give them the right impression of the country, at least that was what I decided, and gave up the argument because she wouldn't admit that the boats really didn't belong to the ordinary people.

Well, two days later after a morning's sightseeing, I went for a walk of my own. What, no KGB agents following me all about? That's what we are told. But I went to the large department store in the middle of town. In walking up their aisles with sections like three-sided rooms on both sides of the aisles selling about everything you could imagine, I suddenly came to one of these areas filled with boats like I'd seen on the canals and the section next door was full of outboards! Well it was obvious that if the ordinary people were not to be allowed or able to afford such things, it would only create a lot of public resentment to put them on display like that, and the fact that they were right there in the store, was pretty good proof that the guide had been right and I was wrong.

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