First in a series — Oak Ridge delegation travels to Russia

Reprinted from the Oak Ridger - Date: July 26, 2006 Section: News

The city of Oak Ridge and the city of Obninsk, Russia, have maintained a sister city relationship since the mid-1990s. The mayor of Obninsk invited a delegation from Oak Ridge to visit this week to help celebrate Obninsk's 50th anniversary as a city.

The delegation traveling from Oak Ridge today includes myself, Oak Ridge City Manager Jim O'Connor, Jim Campbell of the East Tennessee Economic Council, Tom Row and Dr. Ken Luckmann of the Oak Ridge Sister City Support Organization.

As this is my first trip ever outside of the United States, I am learning the basics. For example, to get a passport, you need your state-certified birth certificate, which is available for a nominal fee from the Anderson County Health Department in Clinton.

You can obtain your passport from many places; I chose the U.S. Post Office (they will even take your picture!). My passport was back in about two weeks and cost about $200. Once I obtained my passport, I needed a visa for actual entry into Russia. This requires a Letter of Invitation, which the mayor of Obninsk provided. The final invitation letter is written entirely in Russian; I'll have to have the mayor translate it when I get to Obninsk.

Since I have never been to Russia, everyone who has been before offers good advice. The most interesting piece of advice is to bring cash for exchange to rubles (the exchange rate is about 26 rubles for every dollar). The catch is that the cash must be near mint $100 bills. Apparently, when dollars are changed to rubles, tattered bills draw a significantly discounted exchange rate compared to new bills.I also was advised that blue jeans are expensive in Russia (about $100 or 2,600 rubles per pair) and that children love marshmallows. So, in addition to city lapel pins and official resolutions, my family gathered an entire roll-on suitcase full of marshmallows and children's blue jeans to give away when we visit the orphanage in Obninsk.

Our flights to Russia are relatively straightforward: Knoxville to Atlanta to Moscow. It is somwhat intimidating when you arrive at your departure gate in Atlanta and the display destination states, in bold letters, MOSCOW. The Atlanta to Moscow leg is nearly 11 hours and 5,300 miles in the air in a big Boeing B-767 300 ER. There is a neat electronic display in the plane that shows a map of our progress — I note that we came within about 250 miles of Reykjavik, Iceland. My seatmate on the very full plane is Vasiliy, who came to the United States on an English as a Second Language exchange program at Aliant International University in San Diego. He is returning to Moscow to earn an MBA in graduate school.

He speaks perfect English. He does tell me that his girlfriend lives in San Diego — by my calculation, that is an eleven time zone, nearly 7,000 mile, long-distance relationship!

We arrive exactly on time in Moscow. It is mid-morning, the day after we left (Moscow is eight hours ahead of Oak Ridge). The trip through the passport check and customs is amazingly quick and not nearly as intimidating as I expected.

We have a car waiting, but it is too small for all of us and our luggage, so our driver calls a second car. In about an hour (traffic is just as bad in Moscow as it is in Knoxville), we travel about 20 miles to our hotel (the Marriott Tverskaya), where I am typing this report.

I wondered about computers in Russia — would the keyboards only have Russian characters, for example? (They have both Russian and English characters on every key.) However, connectivity is about as easy as it is in Oak Ridge.

I am at a free public computer using Comcast email and Internet Explorer (the world truly is a very small place!). The subject of tomorrow's report is Red Square and downtown Moscow. We will get there on our own by trolley, and my report could be interesting!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Oak Ridge Mayor David Bradshaw is offering readers of The Oak Ridger a day-by-day account of the Oak Ridge delegation’s trip to Obninsk, Russia. Obninsk is one of Oak Ridge’s ‘sister cities.’