Travel Notes, Installment Five: Miscellany

Travel Notes, Installment Five: Miscellany

My three-week sojourn in Russia is coming to an end. On Monday we fly back to Brussels on Turkish Airlines via Istanbul. Yes, we have had our fill of the caprices of the Estonian authorities at the border and have chosen the most widely used solution by European travelers to Russia even though it costs twice the price of flying here via Tallinn. How much aggravation we may save is still to be determined because the flights to Russia from Istanbul were seriously interrupted a couple of days ago due to the Ukrainian drone attacks that closed all four Moscow airports, with knock-on effect on all air operations in Russia. We cross our fingers and hope for the best.

The shutting of the Moscow airports left thousands of passengers stranded all over the country and abroad. Its economic costs were very considerable and will be unsustainable if this is a frequent occurrence. This is something that grabs media attention and cannot be swept under the carpet. Accordingly, if it is continued, the Kremlin will be forced to take some drastic action against the ‘decision-making centers’ in Kiev as they have long ago promised.

This final installment of observations will be a mix of additional thoughts on the various other topics discussed here previously.

I open with a postscript to yesterday’s report on the celebration of Victory Day, 9 May. Moscow authorities yesterday reported that the people’s march, or March of the Immortal Regiment as it is called, drew in 800,000 participants, which is far from the record numbers we have seen in the past thought still very respectable.

Here in St Petersburg, the authorities claimed that 1.1 million people took part, which would be roughly the count of the most populous march five years ago; before COVID. However, it is hardly credible that Petersburg, with a population three times less that of Moscow, would have higher numbers in its march. Our friends who hosted a 9 May dinner party for seven of us in their downtown apartment went out earlier to watch the parade and were certain that it was substantially smaller, shall we say one quarter of the peak parades of the past. It would not surprise me that the staff of Petersburg’s do-nothing mayor Beglov would inflate numbers to get the approval and pat on the back from the Kremlin.

On the positive side, here in Petersburg they did not shut down the mobile internet and GPS systems as a safety measure to send possible incoming drones astray. They did precisely that in Moscow with very unpleasant consequences for taxi services, for all credit card payment systems, for ATMs and for a host of other services that depend on the mobile internet. Commerce in Moscow was seriously disrupted. Not here. In fact sensible people in Moscow drove out of the city to their dachas for the weekend to avoid the chaos resulting from cut-off of the internet.

Yesterday morning the broad Russian public that was not busy planting potatoes at their dachas was surely seated in front of their televisions watching the live broadcast of the Moscow parade. Then again in the late evening, that same public was surely watching on television the open-air gala concert on Red Square which featured the country’s best performers in many different genres up to and including opera stars.

During the day, when we went out for walks in the neighborhood of our apartment in the Pushkin/Tsarskoye Selo borough of Petersburg, we saw families carrying flowers and other presents on their way to lunch parties with relatives and friends. Uniformly they saluted us with the ‘Congratulations to you on Victory Day.’ This public well-wishing expressed by people you pass on the sidewalk or at the entry to your apartment block is a totally new phenomenon in Russia. My wife insists that it is a sign of the relaxed atmosphere of folks now that the daily struggle for existence, the standing in lines to buy most anything that came with the Soviet past and continued into the 1990s has been replaced by generalized prosperity and instantaneous gratification of consumer desires.

*****

The 80^th anniversary celebrations in Moscow did not end with the March of the Immortal Regiment in the afternoon or the Red Square concert at night. Separately, in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin had meetings with each of the 28+ world leaders who had made the trip to this event together with leading members of their national delegations. Other parallel meetings were being held by Minister of Defense Belousov and his military counterparts from the visiting countries, mainly from equatorial Africa, where Russian military missions are very active in maintaining security and combating terrorism now that the legacy French forces have been ejected. And still other meetings were held by Speaker of the State Duma Volodin with the five Members of the European Parliament and the one parliamentarian from Serbia who had come to the celebrations.

Last night’s Russian state television news gave extensive coverage to President Putin’s meeting with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam and his high level entourage. Their presence and the participation of a contingent of Vietnamese troops was especially valued. It set the stage for conclusion of several substantial commercial and military state-to-state agreements including on the construction of a small-scale nuclear plant in Vietnam by Rosatom. On the Soft Power side of the equation, the sides agreed on the creation of a center for Russian language courses in Vietnam. To Lam acknowledged that each time he visits Russia it is like ‘coming home.’ This particular warmth of feeling has to be put in the context of present-day perplexity and anxiety in Vietnam over Donald Trump’s tariff wars which will do great damage to Vietnam’s position as replacement manufacturer to the USA for wares hitherto produced in China.

For his part, Vladimir Putin reminded his colleagues that the ties with Vietnam were not only from the period of that country’s struggle for national independence but also went back to World War II when Vietnamese fighters joined the international brigades in Russia fighting the fascist invaders. The Vietnamese were present today at the 80^th anniversary as heirs to the deeds of their forefathers on Russian soil.

Putin gave special attention to Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico, who successfully made the trip to Moscow in spite of vicious efforts by the EU authorities in Brussels and by the neighboring EU states to prevent his going by threatening dire punishment and by prohibiting his plane from flying over theit territory on his way to Russia. In their talk, Fico made light of the ‘childish behavior’ of EU foreign policy vice president Kaja Kallas but we may be sure that this conflict will play out in deep splits among the EU Member States in months to come. President Putin remarked that Fico had also attended the 70^th Anniversary Victory Day celebrations ten years previous, for which he was especially grateful.

One other foreign dignitary who came in for special mention on Russian news was Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who was in splendid form and looked every bit the worldly wise statesman. Maduro had been seated on the reviewing stand next to Vietnamese leader To Lam and so was pictured repeatedly by the television cameras during the parade. Yesterday he came up to Petersburg, where he had a VIP tour of the city that included a visit to the Piskaryevskoye Memorial Cemetery where hundreds of thousands of victims of the Great Siege of Leningrad are buried in mass graves. Needless to say, you will not read about this gesture, so meaningful to the Russian public, in the Financial Times account of the Victory Day weekend in Russia.

*****

Thus far in my Travel Notes I have hardly commented on the weather other than to say that it did not rain on Mr. Putin’s parade.

At this period of the year, in Petersburg we are well on our way to White Nights. The days here are now about 18 hours long: in June they will be approaching 20 hours. Despite the very cold ambient air temperature, which over the past three weeks has descended to zero Centigrade and below at night and despite the several heavy snow showers that briefly covered trees and open spaces with a snow cover, the buds on trees have opened. We are enjoying that pale yellow-green leaf cover of the earliest days of spring. The tulips and daffodils of flower beds planted by the management of our apartment complex have withstood it all and stand tall.

This is also the rare moment in the year when a little sardine-sized fish called the koryushka that flourishes in Europe’s largest fresh-water lake Ladoga to the east of Petersburg makes its way down the Neva River to the Gulf of Finland to spawn. The koryushka is caught in vast numbers and is sold to the public not only in fish markets and in supermarkets but from buckets on street corners in the city and from stalls set up in front of shopping malls in the suburbs. This fish has the distinctive aroma of fresh cucumber. You roll it in wheat flour, fry it in sunflower oil and serve it up with a slice of lemon to the enjoyment of family and guests. The pleasure it gives is no less than that of a very good friture du lac at eateries along Lake Geneva. The price is very democratic, affordable for every pocket book.

I close out these Notes with a further remark on other gustatory pleasures in today’s Petersburg that readers may not anticipate. I have commented on fruits and vegetables in the supermarket chains but omitted to say that it pays to shop around because each has its own suppliers and there can be real surprises in the daily offerings.

Yesterday, for example, I found fresh green asparagus on sale in the medium price range Magnit supermarket around the corner from our apartment house. Asparagus! Until a few years ago this vegetable was known in Russia only from encyclopedia entries. These particular asparagus were amazing for their freshness. They clearly had not been flown in from Peru, as is the case with most of our supplies in Belgium except for the brief period of local growers. The stalks were less rigid than what we see in Belgium, suggesting that it comes from a different seed provider. My best guess is that is was grown in the Moscow region, about which I heard some years ago. The price was perhaps half that in Belgium. On the plate as our first course last night, it was superb.

This same Magnit had on sale fully ripe, fragrant and soft to the touch peaches. By their imperfections and small size they could not possibly have passed the bureaucratically imposed quality demands of the EU, however tasty they might be. I assume they came from Serbia, which is less finicky about appearance. Other supermarkets also had peaches on offer, but they matched the rock-hard, non-fragrant peaches that you will find in high price specialty retailers in Belgium at this time of year.

Our corner green grocer deserves special mention. The provenance of fruit covers the globe and attests to the uncanny way that Russian finance authorities have solved payment challenges with most all of the Global South absent SWIFT access. This little store offers ripe and aromatic strawberries sourced from four countries: the Russian South (Kuban), Azerbaijan, Greece and Turkey. They have ripe new harvest watermelons from Iran priced at what you would pay per kilogram in Belgium at mid-summer. The Moroccan blueberries are bigger and tastier than the same provenance berries currently on sale in Belgium.

The list of gustatory treats goes on and on. Then, turning to other consumer wants, I address here a question that Judge Napolitano posed on a recent interview when he asked about availability of California wines here and then broadened the question to other distinctly American foodstuffs. I will not comment on availability of Snickers bars or Lays potato chips, because in his videos from his walks around Moscow published in the past year and watched by millions Tucker Carlson showed those particular iconic treats on sale here. I will only mention Harry’s American sliced white bread, which has captured a large part of the ready-packed bread segment in Belgian supermarkets despite, or perhaps because it is priced at twice the normal Belgian loaves, Harry’s is now available freshly baked in Russian ovens and sold at par with Russian toasting bread.

Bon appetit!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Postscript: Correction – Per the Sunday evening Russian state television news there was no March of the Immortal Regiment in Moscow; it was cancelled for security reasons. And Moscow confirms that in fact there were 1.1 million participants in this march in Petersburg. My excuses to Mayor Beglov!