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Me in 1993, first night in Moscow aged 16 having $2 "champagne" from the hotel lobby poured down my throat
(lemmy.world)
The stories from this trip are wild. edit: It was a school trip.
Thank you! I was wondering if I'd made some unspoken mistake.
I honestly feel so privileged to have been there at that time in history. My folks had to scrape the money together for the trip and it was such an incredible experience. I saw first hand the poverty suffered there. It was pretty grim. We were told to bring US dollars (pre-Euro days) and we exchanged them daily because the USD to Ruble rate was changing so fast.
The biggest story from the trip was that one guy got mugged by the police at gunpoint at a Spartak Moscow football game.
The other big one was that we went to the circus one night. Well it involved some fairly hefty animal cruelty so myself and a few others walked out (teachers didn't notice), tried to catch a cab, eventually paid the bus driver that was supposed to bring us back to the hotel to organise one for us and headed in to central Moscow unsupervised and went to the only Pizza Hut in the country (which was near the only McDonalds in the country).
We got back before the teachers noticed. I honestly do not know to this day how that happened.
Oh, the other thing that really is burned into my memory is that there was a wedding party in the McDonald's when we went there. Bunch of Western kids absolutely inhaling big mac's and they were having hamburger and small fries. They were so happy and I felt like such a glutton.
It was one of those uncomfortable life changing moments where you are forced to look at how good you have it.