Russia tip to tip;

              RUSSIA
FROM Tip TO Tip
* by Howard I. Ross
I went on an eight-day trip to
Russia with a hundred fellow citi­zens,
described as "prominent Cana­dian
business men," in connection
with the inauguration of Air Cana­da's
new service from Montreal to
Moscow via Copenhagen. We had a
marvellous time. Everyone asks for
"impressions," but it is not easy to
sort out impressions from the con­fusion
and excitement of travelling
13,000 miles, in eight days, through
totally unfamiliar country without
knowing the language. It would even
help to understand the alphabet, so
that one could read signs.
How shocking it is that we know
and understand so little about onu
of the most powerful nations in the
world, with a population of a couple
of hundred million and competence
in nuclear explosion. It would be
ludicrous to attempt to compare the
Russian way of life with ours, or as­sess
our relative economic poten­tials,
after such a brief exposure to
the country. But surely we should
start to demolish the terrible barriers
to communication between us; and
one way to do this is to encourage
more Canadians to visit Russia.
Our group's experience can hardly
have developed many Russian ex­perts,
but it certainly proved that a
trip to Russia can be a stimulating
experience. Travel conditions, while
not as comfortable as those we have
become accustomed to on this con­tinent,
are quite satisfactory to any­one
except the types (why on earth
do they travel anyway?] who com­plain
if they do not find everything
abroad exactly the same as it is at
home.
Travel to Russia is still not so com­mon,
but you soon find out, in pre­paring
for your trip, that enough
Canadians have been there for a cer­tain
mystique or know-how to have
developed, and you find yourself
getting quite a bit of free advice.
An intriguing subject is tipping.
Everyone seemed to give this a high
priority. It caused me more trouble
than any other aspect of the trip, and
I propose to deal with it at some
length, although I hesitate to raise
doubts about advice so consistently
given by the experts.
What everyone said was that tip­ping
was not done; that Russians
would be offended if tipped. The
thing to do was to bring a supply of
small gifts, as these were "acceptable
and appreciated" for little services
rendered. There was marked agree­ment
on what to select as gifts—a
curious list, it seemed to me, but so
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