Franklin F. Snyder
But when we were there, we didn't have anyone following us all of the time. We
just were never sure about what the security was. But you could take a taxi and go
places by yourself. We went through the art museum. That was in Leningrad not
in Moscow. But when we stopped at that hydraulic laboratory, the wives of the staff
there took Mrs. Snyder on a mushroom hunt in the woods. That night at dinner,
they made a great howdy-do about serving us those mushrooms. Mary was afraid
of them so she said, "Well, how about sharing them with the rest?" They had
brought them to the table where the English-speaking people were. The French
table, they were very eager for the mushrooms. I think Mary got rid of them
without having to eat any of them.
Q ..
The Russians are pretty generous with that kind of stuff though, basically.
A ..
Yes, when we got to Moscow, we went to the new hotel near the Kremlin. I think
it was the largest hotel in the world at the time. They had one wing of it, one part
of it finished. The rest was not finished. I don't know how, I think it took us an
hour to get registered. Stand in line, and the kind of equipment they had. The cash
registers they had were out of this world.
At the official meetings in Leningrad at the hotel, they set up a special restaurant for
us. It didn't matter much at dinner, but at lunch time, you couldn't get in there and
out of there for less than an hour-and-a-half. We figured that the waiters must come
and take the orders, and then they must go back and do the cooking. But I'm sure
they didn't, but that's what it seemed like. It was terrible, the time it took. The
food was all right, but the service was just out of this world.
Q ..
Service is not part of their business.
A ..
No .
Q ..
I was there in `93, and it's not very good.
A ..
The thing that's really interesting about this, of course, we were getting a per diem
and UNESCO, this was a meeting sponsored by UNESCO, although I think WMO
might have been jointly involved.
Q ..
I'm going to stop you just for a minute.
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