PART FOUR
This time I’m going to write about the first gig that Phil and Fred had in Moscow which was at a music College on the outskirts of Moscow. The day started with a reception at the British Council at their beautiful building. Fred remembers the occasion for the vast amounts of vodka they were obliged to drink and how eventually Phil couldn’t take any more and left Fred to face the interview the Council arranged by himself! The Council had arranged transport for Phil and Fred for this first concert with the loan of a very nice people carrier and driver for the evening. On the journey outwards we had the longest block of flats in the world pointed out to us . It was a mile long building along the side of a very big road, a kind of urban motorway. That’s about all I remember about the journey but we arrived safely at the music college with all our considerable amount of equipment. The music college, as it turned out, was situated quite close to this motorway. Everything went as generally planned. All the equipment worked without any problems. The concert was good and Phil and Fred were well received etc. After the gig we packed up all the gear, which was quite a chore as Phil’s rack -mounted units needed to be put into a fairly hefty flight case, as well as the guitars and all the rest of the gear. We stacked everything near the entrance and waited for our transport to arrive to drive us back. Only it didn’t arrive. We were eventually left with just the caretaker, who only spoke Russian, and he made it clear to us that we had to take our kit outside so that he could lock up. So we took all our gear outside and he locked up, got into his car and drove off.
There we were, in Russia, in the middle of winter, outside on our own. It was very cold and late at night. Mobile phones hadn’t been invented. None of us speak Russian. We are outside the venue which is now totally deserted and it is becoming very obvious to us that nobody was coming to pick us up. We are not in a public place. We’re not in a town setting or anything. There is nobody about. It’s very dark. Did I mention that it was very cold? and getting colder by the minute. And pitch dark. Not nice. What on earth were we going to do?
Henk, of course, came to the rescue. Henk Weltervreden the intrepid explorer and world traveller! Henk the ever-resourceful. He just said “wait here” and disappeared into the night. Some ten minutes later he came back in a very large, black limousine, driven by a uniformed Chauffer (who only spoke Russian) that Henk had flagged down on the motorway and had arranged for the chauffer to drive us all home for a few US dollars! We manoeuvred all the equipment onto the leather covered seats, piled in and in no time at all we were delivered, with all our gear to our various addresses in Moscow. I give you – Henk Weltevreden – what a hero!
Finding transport in Moscow gave us a whole heap of trouble. We had assumed it would be easy in the country’s capital city. When we were preparing for the next gig we asked our hosts – with whom we had been “billeted” – for a telephone number of a taxi service so we could be taken to the gig. We were told that it wasn’t possible. ” What? Not possible to ring for a cab and have it come and pick us up and drive us to tonight’s gig?” Yes, apparently, it was not possible to do that. We were flabbergasted to say the least, but our hosts were adamant. We could not phone for a taxi to take us to the gig. We spent the rest of the day trying to find someone who could take us and eventually were introduced to Victor through a contact of Henk’s. Victor’s vehicle was an ex army-type lorry. There was only one seat – the driver’s seat – and it didn’t have any suspension or a proper roof. It was covered with some tarpaulin that was lashed to the sides and had an open back. We just had to sit on the floor with our equipment but there was a bar next to the driver that you could cling to. Victor was very pleased to put himself and his truck at our disposal. He collected us and brought us all home for the rest of the tour. and charged us $30 US dollars for each return trip, which we thought it was a reasonable price. It was only later, at the very end of our stay, when we were in our hosts flat and our host’s elderly father arrived for lunch – which he had brought with him. He was a retired doctor. His lunch, which he unwrapped, was a piece of pork fat which he cut into thin slices, arranged them round his plate and consumed them with some relish! Afterwards we learned that his monthly pension amounted to $30 US dollars. So what we had considered to be a very reasonable price for each of Victor’s trips in his lorry was the equivalent of a doctors monthly income every day When we eventually were driven to the station at the end of our stay, we travelled by taxi which our hosts arranged for us by phoning for a taxi 24 hours in advance! Can you beleive it? It was possible to arrange for a taxi to come and take you anywhere you wanted as long as you arranged it the day before! – a detail that our hosts hadn’t revealed when we had asked them for the phone numer of a taxi service so that we could arrange transport to gigs. We had simply been asking the wrong question! The price of this taxi ride, which was a long drive into the centre of the city from where we had been billeted – easily the equivalent of our trips in the army lorry- was 8 roubles. I can’t recall what the exchange rate for dollars to roubles was in those days but a rouble was only worth a few pence in British currency.
We got into real trouble when Henk tried to buy rail tickets to get us back to Europe. There was a weird system for buying tickets that Henk had discovered and used previously. I don’t remember the details, but it was something to do with a 2 tier system which allowed ordinary Russian citizens to buy rail tickets as opposed to international travellers who went through travel agencies. Henk had always bought tickets the citizen’s way as it was much cheaper. This time when Henk tried to buy tickets he was told that all the tickets had been sold and we would have to wait another week until they became available again. We really didn’t have enough money to stay for this extra time, let alone impose on our hosts for another week and anyway we had other commitments back home. We seemed to be stuck. Later that day we visited a friend of Henk’s who we had arranged to see before we left and told her about it. She replied that she used to work for some international agency or other – can’t remember the details – and that she still had a book of tickets, which she found in her desk and proceeded to issue us with the tickets we needed to get back to Rotterdam on the day we wanted. She waived aside Henk’s offer of payment saying they hadn’t cost her anything and that she was pleased to be able to help us. Wow – problem solved!
Well, the day came and we took our taxi ride to the station and started our journey back to Europe. The train was amazing! It was an absolutely brand spanking new train on it’s virgin voyage. The floors throughout were covered in a beautiful green covering. I guess it had to be vinyl but it looked like the lovely thick lino we used to use for doing lino cutting at school. It didn’t have the slightest scuff or footprint on it, although we could see our own markings appearing as we walked on it. We were the first passengers on this virgin train. I particularly admired the lavatory because I had been struck by the appalling condition all the public lavatories we had seen in Russia during our stay. I had even been in the habit of taking photos of them as a kind of sick souvenir of our adventure. The loo on this train had never been sullied by human waste, it was pristine and amazing. Interestingly at the end of our journey it was in the usual appalling condition. It seems Russians don’t know how to use the flush, and think the floor is the place to deposit used lavatory paper. There were all kinds of luxuries on board in our compartment. These Russian compartments were often used for overnight journeys and on this one there were complimentary toothbrushes and tiny little tubes of toothpaste. These turned out to be fakes, as when we unscrewed them they only contained air. Likewise there were complimentary sachets of sugar which, although it looked like sugar, was actually some kind of white grit which wasn’t sweet and didn’t dissolve. We had this carriage to ourselves and it was great, only being interrupted by the ever-changing parade of ticket inspectors who allways charged us for excess baggage, which we were very happy to pay considering this was a completely free trip. We were particularly amused when one ticket inspector demanded an excess baggage charge of $15 and then stopped us while he went and fetched his partner and then pointed to him and said “That’s $15 each”! Nobody, for the whole of the journey, raised any objection to our tickets and we travelled back through all the countries in between without challenge until we reached Rotterdam Central when a ticket inspector turned them over in her hands, just as we were getting our excess baggage out of the carriage and said “These tickets are rubbish” to which Henk replied “How dare you” and we left her looking dazed and made our exit.
Coming back to the West was wonderful. Suddenly everything was easy. Henk managed to get a gig for the Duo in a club for that very evening. We were made incredibly welcome. The Patron opened a wall cupboard, revealing all the different types of canabis on offer, which he gave us free, along with a free meal for us all in the restaurant. When we sat down for this meal we could hardly contian ourselves with the luxury of it all, having spent our time in Lithuania and Russia living off a pretty mean diet of vodka and borscht with gherkins and bottled, sour apples. The restaurant was heaving with an immense variety of fabulous, steaming dishes of every kind being carried backwards and forwards from the tables, some of them hardly touched, such was the quantity. Everything was absolutely delicious. When they served us coffee it came in cups piled high with whipped cream. We were practically in tears with the the whole luxurious, generous spirit of it all. How lucky we are to live in this part of the world.
