Last week, I wrote about my maiden experience in Europe when I travelled to what was then East Berlin to study journalism in 1979. I recounted how my colleagues and I spent our first night huddled together at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, trying to keep warm in the extreme winter cold of the transit lounge.
Well, six months later, we were back in Moscow, entering through the same airport. This time, I, together with my fellow ‘Bongolanders’ and some twenty other students from our Berlin college, was on an educational tour of the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Naturally, our reception this time was in stark contrast to the previous chilly experience. Some officials from the USSR Media Council warmly received us and escorted us to our waiting minibus, which drove us to our hotel — the Ukraina — in the centre of the expansive city of Moscow.
After lunch and a few rather tasteless Russian beers, we were invited to the Moscow Press Club. There, we met a vivacious group of Russian journalists with whom we exchanged ideas. Even more enjoyable were the Club’s chilled Heineken beers — a rare treat in Communist Russia at the time.
After two days during which we toured Moscow — including Lumumba University, the famous Bolshoi Ballet, and the Russian Space Exhibition — we flew to Volgograd, a city in south-west Russia on the western banks of the River Volga.
This is a deeply historic city, as we would learn during our two-day stay. It was the site of the famous Second World War Battle of Stalingrad. We visited the towering statue, The Motherland Calls, commemorating the war and the Soviet victory. It forms part of the Mamayev Kurgan Memorial Complex, which includes a panoramic depiction of the bloody battle, as well as weapons and artefacts.
The battle saw more than one million Soviet soldiers killed, wounded or reported missing.
The city was named Stalingrad on 10 April 1925 in recognition of Joseph Stalin’s contribution to the fight against the ‘Whites’. However, in 1961 it was renamed Volgograd after Nikita Khrushchev, then head of the USSR, exposed the abuses of the Stalin era, including purges and forced collectivisation.
Three days later, we were off to Batumi via Tbilisi, in what was then the Georgian Republic of the USSR.
Batumi did not look Russian at all. If anything, it felt more Turkish or Arabic. No wonder it is called the ‘Pearl of the Black Sea’.
It is located in the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, one of the most beautiful regions in Georgia, along the coastline of the Black Sea. Batumi borders Turkey to the south-west of Georgia.
Apart from its beautiful beaches, we were amazed by its vast botanical garden, covering 111 hectares. We took a two-hour walk through this garden, established in 1912 by the prominent botanist and geographer Andrey Krasnov.
The Botanical Garden boasts one of the widest varieties of flora in the world. It contains plants from nine phytogeographical regions: East Asia, South America, the Himalayas, Mexico, Australia, the Mediterranean, and the Caucasian humid subtropics, among others.
After the long walk, we were naturally very tired and famished. Our hosts, reading our minds, ushered us into a panoramic, glass-walled hilltop restaurant overlooking the Black Sea.
We were served a sumptuous meal, with wine flowing freely.
The only mistake was that we all assumed the roast pork legs, appetising white meats and fish were the main course. We ate to our fill, only to be surprised by the arrival of trayfuls of roast turkey and salmon with half-baked potatoes as the actual main dish.
What was there to do? We drank more wine and ate more. No wonder I woke up late the following day. Opening my door, I came face to face with the room attendant.
“Salaam Aleikum!”
Was this Zanzibar, I wondered?
No — this was still the USSR. In some parts of that vast land, people spoke languages influenced by Arabic, Turkish and others, alongside the many Slavic and Russian tongues.
