In the prolonged absence of any new travel entries, I have decided to adapt a recent thematic get-together presentation for publication.
Although we have lived in the USA for over 30 years, we tend to prioritize travel to the Old World. The person in our family who has seen the most of America remains for the foreseeable future Natasha’s Dad. He used to visit us once or sometimes twice a year, and on each such visit, he would go away for a week or two on guided itineraries around the country.
If we were to put pins onto the map of America for all the places he visited, practically the entire contiguous 48 states would be covered in pins.
The grand national parks of the American West – like Yosemite or Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon – he has been, we have not.
The world-famous iconic places – like Mount Rushmore or the Gateway Arch in St Louis – he has been, we have not.
The cities that may not qualify as must-sees in the broad sense, but ones where any curious tourist would always find something interesting for themselves – like Denver, or Indianapolis, or Salt Lake City, or Detroit, or Cleveland, or Kansas City – he has been, we have not.
Smaller names, each interesting in their own way – like Chattanooga, Tennessee, or Asheville, North Carolina, or Harpers Ferry, West Virginia – he has been, we have not.
We don’t even need the fingers of both hands to count the places where we beat him to it. But one of those places is Washington, DC.
Our first trip to the American capital left us with a lot of noteworthy memories.
It was the first – and last – time we traveled anywhere by Greyhound. That happens to be a bit of an abstract fact since no specific details about the trip stuck in my memory aside from getting off the bus to stretch our legs during the stop in Baltimore. Since then, we have always used beltways to go around Baltimore on our trips to the Washington area, so that bus stop constitutes our entire claim of having set foot inside Baltimore.
That was the only time we toured the Pentagon. To be honest, this is by now also a fairly vague recollection: there were long corridors around the perimeter of the building and we sat in an office resembling a cluttered classroom for a primer on how the place operates. But that’s not the main point of that particular memory.
The year was 1993. Natasha had landed in JFK less than two months prior and had a Russian passport accompanied by a work permit. I was in possession of the Green card that had literally arrived a day or two before. By then, I had long ago stuffed my Soviet exit passport into some drawer, hoping never to see it again.
On our visit, we joined a group of students from Rostov State University who were studying in America on an exchange, among whom was one of our old close friends. With them were a couple of American chaperones. The group had been pre-registered for a visit to the Pentagon, with eight people in total. The lead chaperone in a sweeping gesture indicated that adding two more people would not be a problem.
But there was a document control at the entrance. And two people in the group were not pre-registered – one without a passport at all, and the other a new arrival who spoke very little English at the time.
Actually, this limited command of the language probably helped, because suspecting someone with such poor English of espionage seemed rather far-fetched. Or maybe the times were simply different. The group was delayed for a good half hour because of the two of us, but eventually, we were all cleared and went through, and a gallant major then guided us for an hour and a half along those interminable corridors and cluttered rooms.
That trip to DC was the first – and only – time that we traveled away from home without securing in advance a reservation for overnight accommodations. When we first discussed joining our friend and his group for a couple of days, he said matter-of-factly, “Why don’t you spend the night in our room.”
There was one room for the whole lot of them. Eight people of both genders!
We still don’t understand how they all fit in there, but if the Pentagon was big enough to stretch into accommodating two more unexpected visitors, a room at the Embassy Suites certainly couldn’t manage that.
We already had a credit card back then and asked the receptionist if they had any other rooms available. He condescendingly said no and advised us to walk over to a cheaper place, a kilometer or so away. There we rented a room for one night for $89, which was quite a lot for us at the time, although probably significantly less expensive than what we would have paid at the Embassy Suites.
What else? Ah, yes, the next morning was the first – and far from the last – time when we were caught on the street in a tropical downpour and got soaked through to the underwear. We were still inexperienced and comparatively timid back then, and stepping into a hotel, store, or cafe to wait out the rain didn’t seem like a viable option. We instead stood under a tree, to no perceived benefit.
Afterward, however, we managed to find a taxi back to the hotel to at least wring out our clothes a little and dry off for half an hour before returning to the Greyhound. In all honesty, I wouldn’t have let such two wet puppies into my own car, but one driver took pity on us. Probably also thought, “What a dumb pair of spies.”
A memorable trip on all counts.
And why was it worth recounting?
Because the way I see it, the most important aspect of any trip is remembering it for something that you want to recall and retell.
And letting those recollections drive your thirst for more and more trips.
Dedicated to the memory of Vladimir Borisovich Trakhtenbroit (1930-2022).