Episode 25: Other Salisbury Adventures: Jen's 1996 Moscow Adventure
Summary
The year is 1996. No social media. Some old-school internet. MTV and the Macarena are the rage. Jen gets an invite from an astronaut to visit Star City outside Moscow, Russia. In today's episode, we talk about how this trip happened, WHAT I saw, and the treasured journal that captured daily events and reflections. Learn how I got out of the "American Box" for the first time!
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Full Episode Transcription
Welcome to my life as a Landlord, where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If
you're looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the
right show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.
Welcome. Welcome to my life as a landlord. I am so happy that you have joined us today. I'm your host
and guru, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. And for those of you new to my life as a Landlord, we have five
predictable rotating topics, one each week on Saturday, and you can receive notifications right in the
program that you're listening to this podcast in, which is probably Spotify or Apple podcast. But thanks
so much for joining me today. I'm super happy to have you along. This is episode number 25. I know.
Can you believe it? Oh, my gosh. This week's topic is other Salisbury adventure. And today we're talking
about the Moscow Shock. This is when I traveled to Moscow on an amazing invitation and pretty
incredible story that I'm going to tell you about and about the first time that I was outside of North
America, first time I was off the continent and I was in shock. That's appropriately named this title of this
podcast, the Moscow Shock. So let's get right into it. How did this even happen? Like, how did I get
invited to Moscow? How did this work? So let me tell you the backstory a little bit. In a previous
episode, I explained to you my connection with the Lawrence family. They were my sponsor family, the
local family, Indianapolis, who sponsored me at the United States Naval Academy, the Lawrence family,
bill Lawrence, the Patri Triarc had three children, including US NA distinguished 1981 graduate Captain
Wendy Lawrence, who is now retired. But she was one of the first female and one of the first talented
helicopter pilots, which is pretty incredible. She was in the second class of women to graduate from the
Naval Academy, and at some point, she shifted from being a helicopter pilot into the astronaut program.
And while I was a midshipman, she was chosen to start training for a mission to go up on the former
space station russian space station that was called Mir M-I-R. Now, for my younger listeners, you may
not remember what that is. You can Google it, but it was a very relatively small space station compared
to the International Space Station, which we have now. But during this time, Wendy had she had been
chosen, and so she I remember when this happened, and she had to go immediately into learning Russian.
She was in full time Russian language lessons. I mean, this was a pretty incredible investment that NASA
and the Navy and that Wendy did to get her up on Mir. And she ended up going to Moscow to a place
called Star City, which is just outside Moscow. And Star City has an amazing history now. Captain
Wendy Lawrence Retired captain Wendy Lawrence distinguished Graduate she is a petite lady, but like
her dad, she commands respect. She is an amazing person, and I am so grateful to have had her in my life
and sphere of influence. And while I'm in midshipman, she's training to do learning Russian. She's
traveling to Houston. She's doing all this training, and then she goes to Moscow to start training locally
there. And I remember somewhere along the way, she had said, did you want to come over to to Moscow
when I'm training in Star City? And I was just taken aback, and I remember calling my mom. And
explaining what had happened, that Wendy had invited me to join her. And I just said, I have no idea
how I'm going to do this. I don't even know how I would afford a plane ticket. I don't know. I mean, I'm
in Midshipment at the Naval Academy. How is this going to work? And my mom was like, no, you're
going. We're going to figure this out. And you're going, this is something that is going to be an amazing
trip, and you need to go. And so I was taken aback, going, I have no idea how to do this. And so we
figured it out that somewhere in the summer, between my third class and second class year or my
youngster and second class year, which for normal people, that was between my about halfway through
my Naval Academy, tour my Naval Academy education just at halfway the summer in between, we
figured out about a two week time period that I was going to be able to go to Moscow and make this
work. But the problem was, I had to have permission from everybody to go on this trip. I had to get
permission from the Naval Academy, so I had to literally get permission from my entire chain of
command to the Naval Academy. Then I had to get a visa. And one of the problems, actually, that when I
graduation day of my third class year, which I'm trying to think, I guess that would be summer of 96, the
day of graduation, we actually had to travel, and I couldn't drive then because I didn't have that privilege.
So one of the upper classmen missed graduation second classmen missed graduation to take me to
Washington, DC. To get my visa. And when I was there, went to the Russian embassy in Washington,
DC. To get this visa. I was not actually allowed to stay for the two weeks that I had planned. They
allowed me to stay for ten days. But the. Interesting thing was, the reason they cut my request short was
because this was when Boris yeltsin was getting reelected, and the election was going to happen right
around when I wanted to be there. They did not want me to be present in Russia when the elections
occurred. Why not? Because they were concerned about rioting, and if rioting occurred in Moscow, they
could not offer me refuge, sanctuary, medical treatment, any protection of any kind at the US. Embassy
in Moscow. And so their solution was I could go to Russia, but I could only go for ten days, and then
three days before the election, I had to leave. This was all the start of a very sobering trip for me.
Remember, I was a kid. I grew up in albuquerque. I'd been to Mexico a couple of times. Never been to
Canada growing up, never been outside the american box, as I call it. I'd never been away from an
english speaking world, and this was really sobering. When I picked up my visa, and I think it was two
days later, I left. But then the plane ticket. I remember talking to my mom, going, I have no idea how I'm
going to get this plane ticket. I don't know. Now, many of you might recall that my mom was one of the
founding programmers for the supercomputer on maui that helps drive the telescopes, and she commuted
quite a bit from the mainland. When Lori and I grew up, my sister and I grew up. And then when my
sister and I both went to the naval academy, my mom continued to commute back and forth, and so she
had quite a bit of mileage on delta. And so, unbeknownst to me, my mom had called delta, and she had
said that she said, I'm going to call delta, and I'm going to see what they can do to get you a flight to
moscow. Now, I was not very well traveled at this point, and I was scared to death, like, completely,
almost paralyzed when I traveled, because I just didn't roll with it like I do now. I'm still not the best at
traveling, but I'm better than I was then. So my mom ended up figuring out a delta flight. There's actually
a direct delta flight from new York's, JFK from kennedy airport in New York, directly to Moscow. Who
knew? A delta flight from JFK to Moscow, 15 hours long. Oh, my gosh. But no stops. There was no stop
in London or Amsterdam am, or anything like that. I cleared customs in Moscow. 1s The whole thing
was surreal. And flying into Moscow, going through customs, my luggage actually got redirected. It got
lost. It ended up flying through Paris. 1s And so I landed and Wendy and I think there was another
person there as well, maybe another astronaut had picked me up at the Moscow airport. And the next day
they had dropped off my luggage to Star City which was some ways away. And so that's the backstory.
That's how I ended up in Moscow. It was just this chain of events. And anywhere along the way, had one
thing not worked out, I would not have arrived in Moscow itself. Now, let me tell you about the trip. So I
stayed in Star City with Wendy and this compound. Well, it was very concrete. There was a lot of
concrete in the walls and the floors and it was amazing to see the workers there. There was a lot of pride
in this nationalistic country. You go to the subway stations in Moscow and every one of the subway
stations is different. One would be all in bronze and it would be all this incredible bronze work. The
entire station would be in bronze work. You go to the next station and it might be in inlaid tile or murals
or something. And it was just this incredible showman of pride of the skill of the Russian people. I'd
never seen it before like that. I mean, you go to New York or you go to Washington, DC. And you see
subway stations and you don't see bronze and tile, things like that. I mean, you can, but on a much
smaller scale. But you can see that the national pride that that the Russian people had in just one small
aspect of their subway stations, like I mentioned. But let's talk about where we stayed at Star City. It
was a compound. And in the compound, there was a centrifuge. There was a general store. There was a
huge pool and dive tank for the training of the astronauts to go in with a full mockup of the space station
in the pool. I mean, it wasn't a pool. It was sort of like a gigantic aquarium, like you see at Stanley Park,
vancouver aquarium, these huge aquariums. It was like that, only it had a space station in it, not sharks
and fish. Unbelievable. And just full mockups. It had a gym and it had a general store, which was
really incredible and had a post office, I believe. But remember, here I am, this American midshipman
fish out of water in every aspect that you could possibly imagine. I did not speak Russian at all. I knew
one word spaca. And every day I encountered the workers there at the compound who were very nice, but
they didn't speak any English, and I didn't speak any Russian. But ironically, I spoke a bit of German,
which I learned in high school, and they spoke some German. And so here we are in the middle of Star
City trying to converse in German, which was just amazing to me that they were so desperate to
communicate with me. And I with them. I really wasn't speaking a whole lot of English except with
Wendy and some of the other astronauts. And so I was communicating with the maintenance guys and
the maids. And I actually made one of the maids very angry one day because I made my own bed. And I
didn't understand why she actually came in. She yelled at me because I made my bed. And I asked
Wendy, and of course she's yelling at me in Russian. And so I'm like, yeah, I don't understand. But I
asked Wendy later that day because, of course, Wendy was training. And I said, Why did the maids get
mad at me for making my bed? And she said, if you do the job for them, then there's no need for them to
be here to do the job. And I was like, cool. If you want me to make a big old mess, I'll make a big mess. I
mean, I didn't say it like that, but here I was, thought I was being an obedient child, to be very thankful,
appreciative, have some humility and make my bed. And here I was. I was actually being disrespectful in
their eyes because I was pushing them out and doing their duties as an employee. Just a very weird,
backward way of looking at it. But that's what happened. We went around to many locations in Star
City, and it was very evident that in the Cold War with the US. There was a lot of large monuments
everywhere, and there was evidence of the previous battles and war. Now, I record this in modern day
where Russia has invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine is now pushing back, and there's a lot of animosity, and
there's a lot of conspiracy theories with Putin and all of that. If you think back, this trip happened 25, 28
years ago, and it was a different world then, and it was much more calm, not exactly peaceful, because
remember my visa? They were anticipating some riots and some problems with the upcoming election,
okay? But as we drove around Moscow, there was the gigantic jacks, like playing jacks that they're
maybe 10ft tall, these steel jacks, and they were painted either black or brown. And you've seen these in
war movies, probably strung with barbed wire. And these were on city blocks, maybe two or three of the
jacks every once in a while. And what they were were they were reminders of the battles and the wars
that had been previously fought. And it was a stark reminder for me, because you drive around
downtown Dallas, there's not jacks on the city corner or in Manhattan. There's no jacks there. And anti
tank, anti personnel jacks. It doesn't happen. And so I was woken up going, oh, my gosh, these people
really know battles. They know difficulty, and they know hunger. And many times I'd already mentioned
the subway. Many times we went down and used the subway and the escalator to get down to. Was the
longest escalator I've ever seen, way longer than I've ever seen in, say, the Washington, DC. Metro or the
Chicago l goes up. I was really shocked at how deep the subway ran. And I remember asking Wendy, I
turned to Wendy and I said, why is this so deep? It goes way down. And she said, jen, we're pretty sure
this was a designated fallout shelter, that if the US. Had threatened or dropped nuclear bombs on
Moscow, the public would have pulled into the subway. And remember, we had gotten down to the
bottom of the escalator, got off the escalator, and there was these gigantic garage doors that, of course,
were closed. And behind these doors, she said, I think that's where the food and the water and the
generators and everything is behind there, just in case. And growing up in Albuquerque, new Mexico,
and realizing that I'm in Moscow and learning about this stuff for real, I didn't grow up too far away from
los Alamos. The home of the nuclear bomb. This is this is where I grew up and going, okay, so this is
the preparation for the potential defense for a nuclear weapon. Wow. Now, while I was there, we saw lots
of lots of things and lots of European style things that I'm not used to. Like eating dinner at 11:00 at
night. Never happened. I mean, we usually ate around 06:00, 630 and very late. Ate dinner very late. I
remember one time I was trying to make popcorn and the microwave was in degrees, and I turned it up to
like, I don't know, 180 degrees because I thought it was fahrenheit and it was centigrade and I burned the
popcorn. I probably ruined the microwave, honestly, and made a big mess for the maids, but was very
interesting. And I remember the first time, most of the time, wendy had aligned an interpreter to go with
me wherever we went, that I was not by myself. But I remember the first time that I didn't have an
interpreter and I was by myself in the compound. And I headed over to the post office, which I think was
closed. 1s And the general store. And I walked into the general store, and it was really interesting
because if you can imagine, it was just a relatively small room, maybe 30 x 30 room, with glass cases,
like jewelry cases, countertops. And then behind the glass cases was a walkway 1s for the attendant, for
the person selling the goods. And then behind them was these massive shelves that went all the way to
the ceiling, maybe ten or 12ft high with a ladder, and it was just nothing but goods and food and just I
mean, it was you could buy anything in this tiny little store. And so here I am. I think I was 19 at the
time. What did I buy? Vodka and cigarettes. Because I could so stole vodka, which had said imported
from Russia, but I was in Russia, which I thought was pretty funny. And the cigarettes I bought were
Apollo Soyuz cigarettes, which I thought was really interesting and a really interesting keepsake, because
guess where? Apollo Soyuz, which is an old 1970s space mission where the Russians and the Americans
came together to do a joined space event, well, guess where that all happened? At Star City. And so I
was right there. All this stuff was so interesting where I went I am right where I could be sleeping in the
same room that these astronauts and cosmonauts are sitting. And then I learned later that Valentina
Tereshkova, who is the first woman to ever go into space, who's Russian cosmonaut she was still
frequenting at the compound, she may have live there, I honestly don't know. But Wendy said that she
saw Valentina Tetrachkova several times in the gym. And I went oh my gosh. You just never know who's
going to be there. But I must tell you one thing about my trip is I kept a journal. I kept just a spiral
notebook. And every night I would completely download everything I had seen for that day. Everything
we ate, I drew little pictures because of course we didn't have cell phones back then. So I would draw if
we had something really interesting with a bunch of layers or it had a recipe or something, I wrote it all
in the journal and then I would reflect on it. I reflected on these jacks, these war jacks that we saw and I
reflected on the monuments that we saw and I would compare them to the American version of this. And
it was a lot of work. Every night I would write two or 3 hours of every bit of my reflection. And here it
is. 27 years later I still have that Russian journal and every once in a while I'll read it. Now it's in Canada
and I'm recording this in the US. Otherwise I'd have read you some excerpts but maybe in a future
podcast I can read some excerpts from my Moscow trip. It was a really incredible thing. So told you the
backstory, telling you about the trip and I've just glossed over it a bit. But let me tell you what happened
after Moscow. So as I mentioned, Wendy is a petite lady and she had done all her training and all her
work on Mirror and worked on the mockup that they had in Star City and the Centrifuge and all that and
she ended up not going up on Mirror. And what ended up happening was she went on the space shuttle,
various space shuttles. She went up four times. And to my knowledge there's only one other astronaut
that had been up four times that I could find and that was Story Musgrave and. 1s It's pretty remarkable
when you think of how much effort goes into just one space shuttle mission. And she went up on four.
And I'm happy to tell you that she had extended an invitation one more time to me that when I graduated
the Naval Academy, she was going to be up on the space shuttle Discovery during when I was going to
be graduating. And she said, would you like me to fly your ring? Your Naval Academy ring? And I said,
oh, my gosh. And I just about ripped my finger off with the ring, gave it to her right then and I wouldn't
see it again for three months. And so she flew my ring. And I treasure that ring for lots of reasons. And I
love the story and I love telling, especially the children. When I meet children and they marvel at my
Naval Academy ring, I get to tell them this story and I get to say that's been in space. And usually the
parents start to freak out going, they're going to drop it. And I said, I guarantee you that's the most
important item in the entire world right now. They're not going to drop my ring and they don't. Pretty
incredible. Wendy has since retired and she's going to keep busy. I have a feeling she's still working with
NASA on mission to Mars or something. I'm sure she's keeping busy. But me, I ended up graduating the
Naval Academy two years later. I served aboard two ships and and I loved learning about both
conventional and nuclear engineering. Lots of degrees and lots of humility, but Moscow got my mind and
my body, but it got me out of the American box. 1s There, I learned that the entire world thinks that the
US. Is US. Centered and that nowhere else in the world do they have a Second Amendment where you
can carry a gun around. And that's unusual. A lot of the media in the world is US. Based, and so a lot of
what's broadcast is US. Based. And the rest of the world actually has this credible life when you take the
US. Aspect out of it. But you would never see it because most of my listeners, I suspect, are in North
America, in US. And Canada. All right, here's your call to action. Your call to action is when you're
doing something memorable, whether it's day to day or you're going to go on a trip, keep a journal. Get a
journal. Even if it's a simple yellow legal pad, it doesn't matter. You sit down. If you write or record, you
can also put them in your phone. But you keep a journal. You capture your thoughts now, and what
you're doing is you're creating mental equity. And that mental equity is so precious, you won't have any
idea how precious it is until sometime later. You'll review that journal and you'll go, wow, I had no idea.
I do the same thing when I read that Moscow journal. I go, wow, I had no idea that's what it was like.
And as we close out this week's episode, let me know your thoughts on our Facebook group. Maybe
you've been to Moscow or you've been somewhere that has really affected your life, but I'd love to hear
some of the stories that you've had in your life and your encounters. Maybe I need to shift perspectives
on this topic. Maybe I need to do another podcast looking at some of the other Moscow viewed items,
and maybe I should read some of that journal. I think that's something that's going to be fun. But
remember, I take my new podcast episode ideas from my comments and questions that I get most, and
that's what I will spend the next podcast on. Speaking of which, next week's topic is Landlord. We're
going to close out a three part series of Landlords, and we're going to talk about animals. Part three
wildlife. Wildlife, non pet, non service animal. Animals with the aspect of Landlord. That's it.
Thank you so much for joining me today on my sharing of the Moscow shock of my trip to Moscow.
Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes and all the
links mentioned in today's episode, visit our website at www.mylifeasalandlord.com. If you're looking
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Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury, in this episode of My Life as A
Landlord. I'll see you next time.