232 Chapter 6
passengers participated in a nighttime hike to a picturesque pass; another
350 opted to visit Lake Ritsa, always one of the highlights of any Caucasus
package tour.^64 The itineraries also scheduled opportunities for swimming
and sunbathing in the sea, lakes, or along rivers. Like tourists at stationary
tourist bases, they engaged in sporting competitions, evening dances, and
sing-alongs.
Passengers took their meals, in multiple shifts, in the dining cars provid-
ed by the railway administration. Expectations exceeded the capacity of the
trains to serve their customers, and tourists complained about the sameness
of the diet and especially the lack of fresh vegetables: a sample menu for a
1960 trip, for example, featured goulash for breakfast and dinner, with the oc-
casional salad of tomato and cucumber. The men on the trip to the Carpath-
ians particularly relished the excursion to a historic wine cellar, complete
with tasting. In comments, tourists requested that more meals be arranged in
local restaurants and cafés so that they could sample more of the local cui-
sine.^65 They wished not only to see different parts of the Soviet Union but to
taste those differences.
These fi rst train trips represented an experiment in large group travel, so
organizers applied the prevailing norms for tourist bases, including a regime
with its rules. It was one thing to maintain discipline over groups at a station-
ary tourist camp, but the mobility of the train presented special challenges.
Train tourists would organize themselves into groups, and each would elect
a group leader and an assistant leader. They were responsible for cleaning
their own bed area in the morning and after the obligatory rest hour; they
could leave the train only with the permission of the train director; and they
could swim only in designated areas. If they were late, the train would leave
without them. Any tourist who violated the rules would be expelled from
the train and lose any remaining days of the tour. Such rules were tested on
one of the very fi rst trips when two women left the group in Tbilisi in the
company of four local Georgian men. Their good time turned sour when they
became victims of a group rape; trying to conceal the incident, one of the
tourists caught up with the train by catching a bus, but the other wandered
by accident into a military reserve, where she was arrested. In another case of
tourist misbehavior, the authority of the group prevailed to overturn the rules
of the trip. When two women tourists on a train through Ukraine returned
drunk, under police escort, from an evening on the town, the rest of the group
defended them against the normal punishment of being expelled from the
train. Thanks to the solidarity of the tourists, the two young women were let
off with only a reprimand and allowed to continue their journey.^66- TsAGM, f. 28, op. 1, d. 17 (tourist train reports, August–September 1961), l. 2; GARF,
f. 9520, op. 1, d. 386 (tourist train comment books, 1961), ll. 72–72ob.; TsAGM, f. 28, op. 1,
d. 31 (tourist train report, 1962), ll. 67, 73. - TsAGM, f. 28, op. 1, d. 12 (tourist train report, 1960), l. 5, d. 17, l. 3; GARF, f. 9520,
op. 1, d. 386, l. 26ob. - TsAGM, f. 28, op. 1, d. 9, l. 12; d. 10, ll. 14–15; d. 17, l. 3.