(from my diary)
15 November 1992
Fresh produce and new food after Hamburg. It was late night when we got to Rotterdam. What a huge city.
The cook obviously went shopping in Hamburg. Our meals before were mostly meat, potatoes, beans, grains and so on. After Hamburg, we got fresh vegetables, herbs, and fruit – the produce not available in St. Petersburg in winter. Some new food items like sauces with foreign labels appeared on the dining tables.
The ship quietly proceeded along the shore and into the river estuary all day until she docked at the Port of Rotterdam, largest in Europe.
16 November 1992
Spent the day in Rotterdam. Before lunch, we went to a store where Zhenya got a LEGO construction set. Walked and bought yummy ice cream.
Our hopes were high when we got up in the morning. Having missed the opportunities to see Finland and Germany I was determined not allow the third one to slip by. After breakfast, I went up to the captain’s cabin as soon as it was decent to do so. He said that we could go with the others and that we should wait on the pier by the ship.
We quickly got dressed for our outing. The weather in Holland was warmer and overcoats were no longer needed. I had no idea where we were going to, but asked no questions. Our group consisted of several crew members, Maria, the two of us and the chief engineer’s wife who also traveled as a passenger.
In the Soviet times, any ship crew always included a KGB officer whose official job title was the second mate. Everyone aboard knew that this “second mate” did nothing else but spied on the crew. He listened to conversations and reported to his office any suspicious behavior. His responsibility was to keep a close eye on everyone and to detect potential defectors. Any group going ashore had to include him.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the position of a KGB officer, aka second mate, was abolished. However, in 1992 the job titles were not yet revised. The captain needed 3 mates to run the ship. They were called first, third and fourth mates, but there was no second mate which was rather amusing.
A shuttle bus came, we all got on it and a few minutes later found ourselves in front of a nondescript building. Inside there was a medium-size store with all kinds of goods. The merchandise was laid out on the shelves so anyone could access it. That was different from Soviet shops where all goods were out of reach behind the counter with a shop assistant. When customers wanted to see a particular item they pointed at it. The shop assistant would fetch the desired item and put it on the counter for the customer to have a closer look at it. If the customer decided not to buy it, the item went back on the shelf. Otherwise, the customer would go to the cashier to pay for it, return to the shop assistant with a paid receipt and collect the item.
The store was empty when our group entered it. Having identified us as Russians, the shop assistants looked nervous. The crew who had shopping lists from their families dispersed between the shelves. The chief engineer’s wife, an attractive middle-aged woman, took a sweat suit from a clothes rack and looked at it with approval. It was clear that she was going to buy the suit.
‘How expensive everything is!’ Maria said to me pointing at cuticle scissors and metal nail files. ‘Buy it, take it out of the shop and it is worth nothing! Can’t sell it even for the price you paid for it.’
I did not need to resell scissors and was not sure how to respond. A crew member rescued me by asking to help him to choose mascara for his daughter. While we were doing this my son ran around the store and discovered LEGO sets. He already owned two small sets, gifts from my aunt, and loved playing with LEGO. I thought that buying another LEGO was not a bad idea. We still had a long journey ahead of us and a new construction set combined with the existing LEGO parts would keep my son occupied for a while.
Zhenya wanted a large box from the top shelf. I looked at its price, ‘No, no, we cannot afford it.’ He settled on a medium-size LEGO set and an ice-cream. I paid for both in US dollars and received change in guldens. The LEGO box was taken from me and set aside together with everyone else’s purchases.
‘Mom, why can’t I have my LEGO now?’
I had no answer to that. It was my first time in a duty-free shop. I was not familiar with their procedures, but again decided not to ask questions seeing that all purchases were collected.
There was nothing to do at the store after that. We stood outside with the others waiting for the shuttle when I realized that the port was really close, we could walk to it and thus see more than the store interior.
The streets were quiet; houses in the area were mostly private with occasional small groceries in between them. A woman was washing the pavement in front of her home. She dipped a mop into a bucket and scrubbed the asphalt with it as I would wash the floor in my apartment. White foam from the detergent covered the pavement.
‘Does the pavement need to be that clean?’ wondered I. ‘Tomorrow it will be all dirty anyway.’
Zhenya interrupted my thoughts, ‘Mom, how many guilders do we have? Let’s spend them.’
I counted the coins. He was right; we would not be able to use guilders outside of Holland.
My son pulled me into a tiny corner shop and looked around. The fact that he was in a foreign country did not seem to bother him. A plump short woman smiled and greeted us in English. Zhenya stared at pocket calculators, then pointed at one of them. The kind woman indicated that it was 5 guilders and said something that I did not understand. I paid and we continued our walk to the port.
We almost reached the ship when my son said ‘Let’s go back and spend the rest on ice cream!’ That was an excellent idea because our meals did not include dessert. We turned around and soon spotted a little takeaway café that displayed a sign with all kinds of ice cream and their prices. I spread the remaining coins on the counter. Together we calculated how many ice cream bars we could buy trying to maximize their number. The Chinese owner of the café watched us with amusement and laughed. Our money was enough for 5 different bars. This left us with one guilder that we kept as a souvenir. Two ice creams we ate right away and returned with the other 3 bars to the ship to put them into the freezer in our cabin. That was so easy. Life started to look good!
We boasted about our successful transaction to Vladimir, the second mechanic, who was our other neighbor. Maria’s cabin was towards the bow from ours and Vladimir’s was to the aft of the ship.
Vladimir shook his head in reproof, ‘For that much money you could get a large box of ice cream from a supermarket.’
That was a blow! How could I know that if I never was at a supermarket? I tried to hide my disappointment. Vladimir noticed it anyway. He said, ‘Never mind, next time you will know where to go,’ and I understood that there would be lots of other things like this, big and small, that could only come with experience.
The LEGO was delivered to our cabin. My son unpacked the box and happily studied its contents. I sat down on my bunk to assess our first encounter with the Western World.
Well, my impression was that I was not impressed! Everything looked so ordinary. Sure, the streets were clean, but not perfectly clean. We saw trash here and there, although nobody in Russia would wash the pavement with detergent. The people in Rotterdam smiled easily and seemed nice. The houses were neat, but again nothing about them caught the eye.
I remembered how someone who was abroad told me not to expect a shock from going to the Western World from Russia. The shock happens when you return to Russia and compare it with the Western World. It is natural for people to take good standards of living for granted. Improved conditions feel no better until you lose them. It is the downgrading that hurts.
Five years later, when I went to Russia the first time after we left it, I could attest to this. In 1992 I only began to learn all these things.
It’s amazing! On my first trip abroad, to Germany, I also bought a LEGO set for my daughter 🙂