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Follow the Rules. After clearing customs and converting currency at the State Bank window (official rate: 1 ruble = $1.11; there are 100 kopecks to the ruble), the visitor checks in with Airport Intourist, then heads by car for his hotel. There he will be relieved of his passport, but he shouldn't panic. It will be returned before the end of his stay. Next morning, promptly at 9, the car and Intourist guide arrive to start the sightseeing. The guides are most often attractive, bright, well-trained single girls in their 20s, eager to point out Soviet accomplishments, and thoroughly indoctrinated. The tourist picks up a fresh one in each city, keeps her for the duration of his stay.
On balance, Intourist shapes up as a remarkably efficient, if fairly rigid, organization (in Moscow there is even a special clinic to care for ailing foreigners). But even so, the American who visits Russia should be prepared for frequent frustration. Mail from the U.S. takes seven to ten days. No telephone books are available, and the only way to reach a Russian is to know his number in advance.
No legitimate tourist need fear harassment if he obeys the rules: Do not pinch souvenirs, no matter how insignificant, do not take photographs from planes or within the 15-mile border zone, and do not take shots of military and scientific installations, dams, bridges and tunnels. Above all, do not change money in the flourishing black market.
Slow-Motion Service. Language, rather than ideological hostility, is the main barrier and, as a result, a trip to Russia is longer on sights than on personal contact. When the custom of seating strangers at the same restaurant table does bring the tourist face to face with an English-speaking Russian, the American will usually be grilled about his income and his car, and sometimes about integration, Viet Nam and the Middle East.
The Russians are a well-disciplined people, and they get lots of practice; they stand in line for everything. For impatient Americans, particularly at mealtimes, the slow-motion service can be intensely frustrating. Lunch and dinner are two-to three-hour affairs. When a lazy waiter waves you off with the explanation that the dining room is reserved, simply say "delegatsia" without quavering and you will probably be seated. If all else fails, take a hint from an Intourist guide who, when confronted with a Moscow restaurant so full that the door was locked, summoned the manager and, pointing to his American companion, uttered the magic word, "Rockefeller," and in they went.