1936 On the Continent

seaport of Yalta, thence to Sevastopol by boat, and then by train up to Kiev. In all this I had had some thousand of miles of travel, with hotels, meals and the rest of course included. I had been living and travelling large distances on £1 15s. a day. It then so happened that I had to get back to London quickly, and so could not spare the time to go up to Leningrad again and so home by the Soviet boat—all of which would again have been included in my daily £1 15s.
    Instead, I had to take the International train right across Europe from the Soviet border, from Shepetovka through Warsaw, Berlin, to the Hook of Holland, and so to London. This journey took three days. But it was a journey outside the Soviet border, and so I had to pay the usual international prices. The three days’ train fare, second class, cost me, without sleeping-cars, just under £10, and with sleeping-cars just under £12. I had to have meals for three days—meals are always expensive in international
wagons-restaurants
, and another £2 only just covered them.
    This implied that my three days’ European travel
outside
Russia, in precisely the same class and comfort that I had been having in Russia, had cost me £15—or the equivalent of £5 a day. It was a sad change after my former £1 15s.
    All the above figures of inclusive costs are referring to thespring, summer and autumn months, and not to mid-winter. The easiest, cheapest and (according to me) pleasantest route to Russia is by the Soviet boat, which sails from London Bridge once or twice a week, and takes one through the North Sea, through the Kiel Canal, and through the Baltic, straight to the docks in Leningrad. The boat is run (and well run) on the Soviet principle, and a five-day voyage in her makes in itself an interesting experience. The food is good. The North Sea and Baltic—though not rigidly guaranteed to be so by the Soviet Government—are usually fairly smooth in the summer. And if as it happens one has been working hard in England up to the last minute of departure for the holiday, the voyage, with its accompanying lounging and basking on deck, is a pleasant rest before the comparative strenuousness of one’s first tour in modern Russia. (Also, as I have mentioned, the official price of £1 to £3 a day, according to one’s cabin, comes into the inclusive trip, and makes the boat the cheapest means of getting there.)
Quicker Routes
    Against the idea of the voyage is the fact that it takes more time—roughly five days as against less than three in the train, and only sixteen or seventeen flying-hours from London by air—and that during four winter months it is altogether unavailable, as the mouth of the River Neva, the entrance to the Port of Leningrad, is frozen solid with ice.
    If one wants to go to Russia in the months between late November and March or April, one has to go by one of the several overland train-routes, or by air. And alternatively, if one wants to go in the summer and one’s time is so short that a five-day boat voyage takes up too much of it, one again has to go by train or by air.
    During the recent winter, as the boat was unavailable through Leningrad harbour being frozen up, I went an amusing and rather unusual way to Russia. It consisted in taking a boat from Harwich to Esbjerg in Denmark—across Denmark by train to Copenhagen—from Copenhagen by train and ferry to Stockholm in Sweden—from Stockholm by boat to Abo in Finland (a harbour nearly,but not quite, frozen up with ice at that time of year)—from Abo by train to Helsingfors, and from Helsingfors again by train across the border to Leningrad. The fare itself, second class on trains and first class on boats, came to just under £10. It had the advantage of taking one through the three capitals of Denmark, Sweden and Finland, in each of which one could stay a day or two according to one’s convenience, but it also included the privilege of paying for one’s meals on trains and boats, and for one’s hotel accommodation wherever one made a break.
    Altogether, it was not a cheap way, but it was an interesting variant, and I found it well worth the money. The same route is, of course, equally available in the summer.
    A note should here be put in. I have dwelt upon the excessive cheapness of all travelling and essential services now provided by “Intourist” in Russia. Up to the beginning of the present year one could have included all services
not
provided by “Intourist.”