well, we were "allowed" to not do all planned
activity. if we did all the planned activity we'd have
had no time to meet un-official russians. i met a guy
in the group that was retired from wright patterson in
dayton. we would walk right past the tour buses and
drop down into the moscow subway. not even any
graffeti
anyway when we came up we would start asking people if
they spoke englist, we knew that any young adult had
english in school. they would not talk, but we found a
way to break the ice so to say. we were there in
december.
  the russians fed us in the hotel, but, we learned
that they have the best ice cream. so into the ice
cream parlors we'd go. we'd pich some young people and
we'd say, " that realy looks good, but we don't know
how to order, could you help us order some?" we'd
always end up setting at their table eating ice cream
and discusing the two countries. they learned about
the u.s. warts and all. we did not tell them any lies.
the good the bad and the ugly, we'd tell them. they
also talked to us about russia. they said that the
punishment was so bad for crime that it was low.
  by the way this was the first friendship force
"interchange" with the ussr. it was called an
interchange because unlike most friendship force
"exanchanges", no russians were in the u.s at the same
time we were there. niether was there any living in
the russians house. we felt that we met real russians
and got the straight info from them. i do remember
they were afraid of their top guy. he came up through
the kgb.
  i'd like to return some day but in summer.
--- "Michael H. Collis" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Ken, was it that, or was it the fact that it wasn't
> talked about?
>
> ken barber wrote:
>
> >you know kat, i found that when i was in russia in
> >1982 that there was no crime to speak of, now it is
> >terrible.
> >


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