Andrew Sullivan published my "Window" photo

[brooklynite]

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/06/28/the-view-from-your-window-217/

[gcomeau]

1. Snowden? Is that you?

[Renew Deal]

2. I see Sarah Palin right there.

[catbyte]

3. Most terrifying flight of my life was a 1976 Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Kiev

I still shudder when I think about it, LOL. Ah, Soviet aviation...

[octoberlib]

4. My friend had to take an Aeroflot flight in the '90's

and said the same thing. She said the interior of the aircraft was very poorly maintained(ripped seats etc).

[catbyte]

5. The landing felt like an uncontrolled dive. Another passenger nervously said, "I hope

there's a runway down there." The interior was really poorly maintained too. Seemed like it hadn't had maintenance in weeks.

[newthinking]

10. And then everyone clapped on the successfull landing

As if it is not always expected.

[catbyte]

12. Were you on that flight, LOL?!?

That's EXACTLY what happened.

[Warpy]

6. My ex said their interiors were incredibly Spartan

with people crammed into relatively hard seats. Being rigid with fear might have been the planned outcome the seats enforced.

His flights were internal flights in China.

[catbyte]

8. The in-flight "meals" were incredible too. They might have once been food, but not recently.

It did not present the Great Soviet Revolution in a positive light. Moscow in 1976 was like visiting another planet. I was actually in Moscow on July 4, 1976, but flew into JFK on July 6 & saw the Tall Ships in New York Harbor. Impressive. I was 21 at the time and fairly naive about international cultures--I'd only been on a 2-week trip to Italy a couple of years before. The Russian people we met were scared to go to our hotel room because government agents stationed at the international hotels could tell they were local by their shoes & weren't supposed to fraternize with us. We were only able to get them to come up with us when we smuggled our extra sneakers down to them. The lines at stores accepting only rubles wound for blocks, all the while the "dollar stores" were chocked full of items. I could go on for hours with stories from my 4 weeks there, but I'll spare you, LOL.

[Jenoch]

9. I'm curious as to

why you were in Moscow as a 21 year old in 1976?

My grandmother flew to the Soviet Union on a fake passport in 1970. Well, it was a real Canadian passport, but she was a U.S. citizen. She wanted to go to her home village after my grandfather died.

I flew on a Russian made airplane a few years ago. It was a YAK 42, the same kind of plane that crashed a couple years ago in Belarus and killed an entire Russian hockey team. The plane I was in had flimsy seats that would fold forward like a lawn chair. The luggage compartment above the seats was a shelf with a string to hold the luggage in. I watched the movie "Airport" a while back and apparently that's the same kind of luggage rack the old 707s used back in the day.

[catbyte]

11. I went to college in Grand Rapids, MI & my Poli Sci class piggy-backed with a group of Jerry Ford's

friends touring some Soviet museum exhibit of Etruscan Gold, so that's how we got in--we were with people with connections. They were only with us for 2 weeks; we stayed for 4. We went to Moscow, Kiev & Leningrad. I guess we were treated like royalty by Soviet standards when we were with them, but it didn't seem like it at the time.

[Jenoch]

13. You were really lucky

to see the Soviet Union at the height of the Brezhnev Cold War. Few Americans got to see it first hand. My father and uncle were in Kiev a couple of years after the break up of the USSR. They stayed in what was considered a fancy hotel for westerners. They did not think it was as good as a Motel 6.

I spent two weeks in Moldova (smallest Soviet republic outside of the Baltic states) and stayed in a Soviet built apartment. The inside of the apartment was nice. The outside was terrible. Nobody 'owned' the outside.

[catbyte]

14. Even back then people were disgruntled. We'd pass billboards of Brezhnev & they'd make rude gestures

I immediately recognized . It was a fascinating experience that I wouldn't trade for the world. They were still obsessed with WWII and everywhere we went there were monuments to the heroes of "The Great Patriotic War" and almost every building in Leningrad had bullet holes in the brick with a little plaque next to it. Ruins were everywhere. We visited a Young Pioneers camp outside of Kiev and Baba Yar. We ended up being locked into the future Olympic stadium in Moscow and had to find our way out, eventually ending up in the back yard of a police station at midnight, LOL, after a 6-hour dinner in the new stadium complex. The entrace we'd used at 6 was locked at 12. Service wasn't a priority. I don't think I'll forget my experiences even if I develop Alzheimer's. I know what you mean about the accommodations.

[TeeYiYi]

7. Did he have permission?

TYY