ARCTIC CIRCLE TO TURKEY BY TE 12/50 ALVIS
Part 2 - Disaster behind the Iron Curtain
by PAUL REDFERN
ON THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER we crossed the Norwegian-Finnish frontier 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and pointed the Alvis south for the 3000 miles run to Persia
Immediately the character of the road changed. After the twisting, exciting, finely-engineered but badly surfaced Norwegian roads, Finnish roads are disturbingly monotonous in their straightness. Driven by compass through the dank and gloomy forest during the war, they are dead straight for tens of miles at a time. The surface is gravel, and has peculiar corrugations that set up a maddening vibration. it is worst between 25 and 35 m.p.h. so that, once again, driving technique in Finland is foot hard down. After the almost embarrassing courtesy of Norwegian driven, who several times stopped and pulled off the narrow road to let us pass, there is a healthy return to normality on Finnish roads. Nearly all cars are small, and predominantly Russian, with a fair number from East and West Germany.
As we drove through Lapland I was reminded irresistibly of the American Wild West, with forest and lake instead of desert and canyon. Wigwams cluster in fours and fives—although the Lapp owners were away in the North; and the towns and villages look as if they sprang up overnight, with clean new wood and stone buildings either side of the wide dusty road. There are even saloons with steps off the street up to a balcony. But there is no liquor in the saloon. A strong temperance movement organised by the Church has secured strict rules for the sale of liquor. It's legally difficult to get. But as the Church owns large breweries and distilleries, the temperance movement is not quite strong enough to prevent a flourishing black market in hard liquor. Un-labelled bottles are passed surreptitiously under the table.
Food in Finland is simple and sustaining. For our first meal in a restaurant where no English was spoken we had to barge into the kitchen to find out what was cooking. And there on a large stove watched by a fat old woman was a great pot of boiled potatoes. With meat balls or sausages, these are the staple food of the ordinary Finn.
The weather turned cold as we drove south: a constant wind blew steadily across our path, bringing alternately rain and dust. Mechanically, all was well with the car. There was a small oil leak and increased play in the steering. A cracked manifold was the worst symptom of a somewhat insecure exhaust system. The silencer was too low and got knocked about on the rougher roads. I planned to deal with these in Helsinki, when the wings would also have to be welded. They suffered worst of all the shocks and vibrations of rough roads: a supporting strut had broken and both wings had long splits.
The still strange beauty of the 60,000 lakes and the mystery of the deep dank forest soon changed to boredom as hundreds of miles passed with no change in the scenery.
Rovaniemi marks the southern border of Lapland: it is just south of the Arctic Circle. A boom town, echoing again the pioneer days of America, it derives its prosperity from copper, and it has been entirely rebuilt since complete destruction by the Germans in the early '40s.
My favourite building was the main hotel, the "Polar", which is faced in solid copper. Copper is everywhere inside, and it cost $2,000,000 to build—and has only 36 bedroom suites. But there is a banqueting hall for 400, from which they make their money.
We spent two nights in Vassa, a port half way up the side of Finland on the Gulf of Bothnia. We were entertained and fed in splendid style by the parents of a student we met on the boat, sleeping in a little house in the grounds of their summer villa on the sea shore, about 10km. from their apartment in the centre of this town of 50,000 souls.
At the Blomquist's we learnt about the sauna, but didn't go so far as to dive from the sauna at 65°C into the September sea. The Finns do.
Our host had a sauna at 6.30 every morning and then—into the sea.
From Vassa we motored south to Helsinki via Tampere. Main roads in the south are rapidly being completed with hard, fast surfaces, but there are several very bad stretches under construction, where you have to thread your way between spoil-laden lorries, dumper trucks, and earth movers.
On the last stretch into Helsinki we completed 75 miles in an hour and 20 minutes—an average of 59 m.p.h. It was a good road. By this time the crack in the manifold was making a hell of a noise, the wings were nearly dropping off, and it was time for a little servicing.
In Helsinki a garage was found with an engineer who spoke English, and I left the car for a couple of days for a much needed rest.
We arrived in Helsinki on Wednesday, September 6, and had three days in hand before we were scheduled to cross the Russian frontier on Sunday the 10th. We saw Ben-Hur with sub titles in Finnish and Swedish; we visited the famous Arabia pottery factory; and we were royally entertained by Elmer Cox, the U.S. Press Attaché.
On Sunday, September 10, our target was Leningrad. As we got nearer to the border, crossing the Iron Curtain became more and more meaningful, especially after reading the English papers in Helsinki. The Berlin situation had reached one of its crises; war seemed very much a possibility. Our feelings were mixed as we prepared to cross into what might well be hostile territory.
The roads in the south of Finland are good, with fine bitumen surfaces that are well-banked. But the road to the Russian border gradually deteriorated into a dirt road that twisted its way up and down a range of small hills. Ten kilometres before the border is the last petrol station, where Esso is dispensed by a splendid character in a fur waistcoat. This large and friendly pirate spoke reasonable American, and was very interested in our journey. He presented us with a funnel to help fill the tanks, and with an alien sentimentality we accelerated bravely out of the tiny township with a motorcycle escort.
At the border the Finnish customs officers were very pleasant. One of them had a 1929 Ford coupé (which we couldn't photograph because it was a border area) and they had been expecting us since they'd seen a report of our journey in their local newspaper. The Finns, in smart, clean uniforms, were armed with pistols; the other side of the barrier stood, or slouched, a couple of slovenly soldiers with carbines.
We said goodbye to the Finns, the barrier was raised, and we drove into the Soviet Union.
There was no customs house on the Soviet side. We were stopped immediately, and waited 15 minutes while the guard telephoned from his box. Eventually a motor-cycle combination of old-fashioned design came chugging down the road bearing an officer of the Militia. He looked rather like an English postman, except that English postmen tend to be somewhat tidier. The Militia is one of the many sorts of police the Soviet Union needs to keep control. They carry out roughly the same duties as the uniformed English policemen—traffic, drunks, petty crime—but they also keep a tight rein on the movements of everybody—including tourists. We followed the motor-cycle a couple of miles to the customs and we'd changed our money and been passed out in about half-an-hour.
The nearest town, Vyborg, is 20 kilometres away and we pressed on to be there for our first Russian meal, a late lunch. Now that we were committed, now that there was no easy help if anything broke, all I could do was to drive on reasonably carefully and hope that vintage reliability would see us through. Alas, within 20 minutes, the engine started to miss, and then settled down to run on three cylinders. I stopped; opened the bonnet. An ominous curl of white smoke emerged from the oil filler—exhaust smoke in the sump. Clearly a ring had gone and maybe a small-end for I'd noticed a recurrence of the clanking noise we had before the start. Depressed, thinking the worst, I opened the other side to see if there were any other signs. Lo, a plug lead hung loose!
Jubilant, plug lead attached, we drove on. I found Russian roads disconcerting for the first few miles until I realised what was wrong. I'd driven over 2,000 miles on roads with every corner banked. Russian roads are laid flat. The surface is reasonably good, but I had to slow down for bends much more than I'd been used to in Scandinavia. As we got to the outskirts of Vyborg the road surface became appalling—very bad cobbles with great potholes. We made our way to the railway station where the Intourist office was. Here we were given camping tickets by a pleasant but undistinguished girl who recommended the station restaurant for lunch. The railway station had the typical Victorian architecture of most revolutionary building in the Soviet Union, and the restaurant followed suit. Great heavy dark red curtains hung by the windows, chandeliers hung from the high ceiling. Solid tables were covered with white cloths and laid with massive cutlery, thick white china, and heavy cut glass for wine. It was terrible, but we were hungry. We ordered Borsch which we knew about, and some fish dish, which we hoped about, from a menu in five languages, including Chinese. Shortly, a bowl brimming with a greasy red slush, containing floating grey things, was served. It was nearly cold—and quite inedible. It tasted of cold grease and rotting cabbage. We thought it was too early to start returning dishes to the kitchen; anyway, perhaps the Russians like their food this way. We left, unsatisfied but not hungry.
Russia, in those first few hours, had proved to be exactly as I expected it to be - and as I hoped it would not be. Dull, old-fashioned, dirty, poor —all those adjectives apply; but the most appropriate is squalid.
The road from the frontier was almost deserted, but from Vyborg to Leningrad it was busy with Sunday afternoon motorists out for a ride. Busy in the Soviet Union means three or four cars in a quarter of a mile. They are not seen in such frequency on working days. Models ranged from the little grey Opel made in the early 'forties to the new Volga. The presence of the Alvis induced a strange excitement in the breast of the Russian driver. He ambles along, as Sunday afternoon motorists do, between 30 and 40 m.p.h. The Alvis nips by at 55, and he starts to chase. If he's driving a new car, he can probably overtake, and he'll draw alongside matching his speed with while the windows are wound down and everybody, including the driver, leans out and waves. Then he pulls ahead, slows down, waves us on and settles back to his steady 35.
This interest was typical of that displayed throughout the Soviet Union. Whenever we stopped in a town or city—a crowd would gather, surround the car, and start asking the inevitable questions. "How old is it?" "How fast does it go?" "How much petrol does it use?" "Are you German?"—we very soon got tired of this one. Then they'd squeeze the bulb horn on the Trobike, kick all the tyres, test the wings to see if they'd fall off, and finally open the bonnet to look at the engine. And the verdict would be "harosha, harosha" —"good, good".
The most common vehicles, of course, are trucks. They all appear the same in a nondescript grey-brown paint, old and battered. I don't remember noticing a new Russian truck, nor was it possible to say one is older than another. They all look dirty and badly maintained. Often I saw a truck with one of the double wheels on the rear axle missing.
Every three or four miles on the main roads there is a truck which has stopped for repair of some sort. Tyres, which are probably not up to Dunlop standards anyway, arc used till they fall to pieces. One of the most frightening things about driving in Russia is the lack of lights on some trucks and the strange behaviour of those with lights. I don't believe it is compulsory to have lights on at night, certainly it is not enforced. Several times I was caught out on a narrowish road by suddenly seeing in my own headlights a truck without lights coming straight at me.
In Leningrad we did an official tour of the town, visited the Hermitage Museum, and went to a jazz club! The drive on to Novgorod was uneventful, and we passed through the dull and miserable town in the rain at dusk and found the campsite 10 miles out on a river bank. The canteen was shut—no food was available. But we were invited to share a meal with the only other campers, a Russian couple with a four year old child. Again with only the phrase book to help us, we carried on a conversation of sorts. They were very friendly, and proud of their country and the job they were doing. The man was an engineer and has owned his 1941 Opel for 16 years, carrying out maintenance himself and keeping the car in good condition. They were returning to Leningrad from a holiday in the Crimea. He insisted on giving us his road atlas of the Soviet Union, something we had been unable to get hold of.
Our schedule called for a two-day run from Novgorod to Moscow, but it is only 320 miles and I reckoned this could be done in one day. It was worth trying. We left on a fine bright morning at about 9 o'clock. At about midday 130 miles were behind us when without warning an awful bang and loud rattling noise came from the engine. I threw her into neutral and switched off before coasting on to the verge. Opening the bonnet I expected to see a mass of mangled machinery, but nothing— no rod protruding from the block, no smoke, no oil. I turned the engine over, and heard a little tinkling sound. It could have been a con-rod falling from side to side. Removing the plugs revealed that number three piston was stuck at the top of the compression chamber.
What to do? I had a spare con-rod of course, but I didn't fancy tackling the job there and then, and it was clear that we wouldn't make Moscow or even Kalinin, our scheduled stop 100 miles away. I decided that we had to report to Intourist and see what they suggested. Unstrapping the Trobike, I had started up the road to find an English-speaking telephone (!),. when a truck pulled up. One of the passengers was a Militiaman, another was some sort of official because he wore a tie. Nobody spoke English but it wasn't difficult to demonstrate the breaking of a con-rod. Eventually they towed us about 20 miles to a village called Vishny Volochek Here they slipped the tow, and made signs that they would telephone the official garage. At least that's what we thought. But two hours later nothing had happened and the local Militia were getting agitated. In the meantime Fred had taken a few photographs of peasants lying about. This caused some trouble with members of another police force, the People's Police, which is supposed to be secret, but all its members appear to be characterised by a blue mackintosh and blue cap.
They can often be seen hanging on the outskirts of any crowd, listening. They are even likely to stand behind you while you have a conversation in the street. I don't think their powers are very great, but they can cause some trouble. Anyway much use of the dictionary and phrasebook (they read very slowly and painfully) elicited the fact that they wanted the film exposed. They had taken us into a little room in the bus-station for this interrogation, and at this moment I saw through the window, which was carelessly unbarred, a large truck backed up to the Alvis and three or four Militiamen binding the two together. Thus ended our interrogation. You can't interrogate a vintage motorist while his car is being removed.
Their intentions were relatively harmless. I was still supposed to take the wheel. The truck turned out to be a magnificent six-wheeled Skoda in nearly new condition. These are the only other trucks on Soviet roads, and it's a joy to see them with proper brakes and lights and powerful engines. We were towed to a nearby garage, where a towbar was commandeered, in the same way that the truck was. While this was being adapted to fit the Alvis an educated English-speaking Russian couple stopped and we were able to communicate with the police at last. It appeared that we were being taken to Kalinin that night (so we would be on schedule after all) and there we could have repairs done by the official Intourist Service Station.
Off we went into the darkness. I sat behind the Skoda watching the tail-board with its registration LH 14 28 being drummed into my mind.
For three hours I turned the wheel and froze as we drove hard. On that run we achieved our maximum speed of the whole journey, for at one point we were travelling at 65 m.p.h. Stones showered up from the Skoda's wheels smashing the sidelights and covering the front of the car with mud.
(to be continued)... see Part 3