naturalplastic wrote:
Dear_one wrote:
My friend Rick was on the train to Churchill, Manitoba, on Hudson's Bay when the engineer appeared in the passenger area at a station and asked if anyone wanted to ride up front. Rick jumped at the chance, and got to hear all about the route, and blow the whistle for road crossings (rare.) When they got to Churchill, Rick asked if the ride was allowed by the company. "Heck no! But, I've been driving it alone for 30 years, and this was my last run."
The dad across the street that I grew up on (in suburban Washington DC), was a career Russian expert for the State Dept. who often returned from government business trips to the USSR.
He told us all about how on one trip he was a passenger on a midsized prop airliner between two towns in rural USSR, when the plane just started to...rock back and forth in mid air. He asked them what was happening. And they told him "oh...the pilot invited a passenger into the cockpit, and is letting the passenger sit at the controls and steer for awhile." Like it was no big deal.
We were all like

!
A train engineer doing that I could deal with, but not a plane pilot.
We all sorta concluded that "Russians have less freedom than us in some ways, but must have more freedom than us in other ways...like to do stupid s**t that would violate our FAA rules like that.
I saw an episode of those shows about air disasters once that the cause was the russian piolets let two children fly the plane...
Russians really do have their own way of doing things. There seems to be a pervasive attitude of just not giving a Блядь.
I have only ever been in russia once, for 3 days as a child in St. Petersburg, but that was certainly an eye opening experience and a fascinating glimpse into that world. Taking the train from Helsinki really added to the experience significantly.
At some point, after regime change of course, I would like to visit again. I have always wanted to ride the Trans -Siberian Railway.