Red Ticket: Searching for Dmitri Orlov
From 2008 In 1991, I was a junior at the University of Florida, majoring in Russian and religion. That summer, I spent 6 weeks in Moscow with 20 of my fellow students. They had flown over as a group, but I was very fortunate to have been able to spend several weeks in Europe before going to Russia. So, instead of flying as part of my school group, I took a train from London to Moscow when it was time for the program to start. This meant that at the end of our stay, I had to take a train back to London, to catch my flight home. I was dreading the 3-day train ride. I had never taken a train anywhere before this trip, much less to a Communist country, and had no idea what to expect. No one told me to bring my own food, for example, and if it hadn't been for the two Kazakh women I shared a compartment with, I would have gone hungry. At least this time I had packed food for the return journey back to London. I waved to my classmates as their bus to the airport pulled away, an...