Almost a full four months before the Berlin Wall teetered over the abyss, before freedom and souvenir hunters finally gave it a push with chisels and banners, Mike Bigornia and I were boarding Intourist buses and Russian trains to parts reachable within a thirteen-day tour. Kiev was unforgettable with its Open Air Museum—a real lived-in village showcasing native and classic Russian architecture and folk culture, where we trekked up and down steppe-like slopes lugging, with our guide Vladimir, a demijohn of beer which we purchased early morning at the roving trailer tap, lining up together with thirsty Ukrainians—now we were to be treated to the lavish memories and memorabilia of Tsarist Russia. The biggest “souvenir shop” was of course the museum called Hermitage, perhaps the second largest in Europe, next only to the Louvre. Our main guide (for Moscow and Leningrad), Dmitri, told us a six-day tour was needed to give justice to the curio-hoard of the museum complex, but we had only the whole afternoon before training back to Moscow. Thus we had a walking-running tour of the main building, the Winter Palace, playing hide-and-seek among galleries full of anything from quiet Egyptian antiques to the ecstasies of Murillo, or the red and blue periods of Picasso. But here is my short “journal entry” years later, made from the notes of a harassed tourist, but hopefully giving the smaller things their proper worth amid the opulence and inevitable awe we have for any new destination, the smaller things which for me are more the stuff of poetry.