My Discovery of America 1993 – 2004

Viktor Nikitin

My Discovery of America 1993 – 2004

My Discovery of America 1993 – 2004

INTRODUCTION

In June 1993, four my associates in America jointly invited me to visit the USA: David Audrey of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MA; Ralph Pennino, hand surgeon from Rochester, NY; John Winston of Mobil Oil Exploration and Producing, Dallas, TX and Jim Hildrew of Mobil Oil Environmental Solutions, Princeton, NY.

I assigned a travel agency to arrange for my Russian international passport and to apply for a visa at the US Embassy. For some reason, the passport was issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the seal of Consular Department No. 1 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the now defunct Soviet Russia (RSFSR). In those years, there was complete chaos with official documents. Blank passport forms were bought and sold in the street, in underground passages and elsewhere. Instead of an official passport form, they could slip me a fake one. On June 15, 1993, the US Embassy returned my passport with the stamp: "Application Received. U.S. Embassy Moscow". This could have meant a refusal, and it would not have been surprising. I could have been denied an entry visa to the USA, since I served as a military officer of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, or under some other pretext. That same day, Jim Hildrew called me and said that he had personally spoken with the consul in Moscow, and two days later, on June 17, the US Embassy issued me an American entry visa for a 6 months stay in the US. Jim, like a caring father, provided me with air tickets to New York and met me at John F. Kennedy Airport a few days later.

My first long transatlantic flight passed easy, but jet lag took its toll. After leaving Moscow, the first day in America lasted more than 24 hours. Jim took me to his car and we immediately drove to the Battery Park on Manhattan, from where we watched the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor.

PLACES

Thus began my discovery of America, which lasted for more than 10 years. Of the 50 states, I visited nine for vacation or on business: California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Virginia.

The most memorable places were:

New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, and Niagara Falls in Upstate New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Falmouth, and Plymouth in Massachusetts, Chicago and Naperville in Illinois, Houston and Dallas in Texas, New Orleans in Louisiana, Miami, Orlando, and Cape Canaveral in Florida, San Francisco in California, Princeton in New Jersey.

The USA is a country of never-ending sights and attractions, from Inn at One Main in Falmouth, Cape Cod, where I stayed for a month in summer 1993 during my first trip to the US, and I never knew better, to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida during my last trip to the USA in 2004.

It is hard to miss and to forget open-air living history museums in Plymouth, Massachusetts, formerly known as Plimoth Plantation. I will always remember celebrations in Boston Common and the Freedom Trail through Boston that passes by significant locations of the city on the July 4.

I recall West End Historic District in Dallas, Galveston Island near Houston and Space Center Houston museum of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. Niagara Falls on the Niagara River in Upstate New York.

How can I forget New York City with the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Garden, where I watched a hockey match between the New York Rangers and the Winnipeg Jets? Broadway Theater, where I listened to the Miss Saigon musical, Times Square and Fifth Avenue, Central Park and Grand Central Station, the Russian neighborhood of Brighton Beach – my dear Little Odessa – and Coney Island?

Paraphrasing a verse by a famous Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893 – 1930): “I would want to live and die in New York City if there had not been such a place as Moscow.”

I recollect my 30-hour ride in 1993 from New York City to Miami on a historic Amtrak Silver Star train via Washington, D.C.; Richmond, Virginia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Jacksonville, Florida; and Tampa, Florida.

I reminisce Disney World – the largest and most visited amusement park in the world, consisting of four theme parks with the four icons: Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom, Spaceship Earth at Epcot, Hollywood Tower Hotel at Hollywood Studios and the Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom.