These tourists or: Moscow retour!
02/16/2025
Some tourists take it to the extreme. I recently identified license plates on old pictures for a colleague who has been living in Germany since spring 2022 but comes from Russia. They were taken by two car-crazy guys in Moscow in the 1960s and 1970s and, without exception, show Western cars with corresponding registrations. Most of them are large, heavy American cars, and it appears that they were driven by embassy staff or people from the respective missions.
In other examples, however, it is probably Western tourists who made the journey to Moscow in the 1970s. So I think that the St. Gallen man in his Renault 5 Alpine Turbo - with a fully packed trunk and folded-down rear seat - is also a tourist. "The Swiss formed the largest group of Western automobile travelers in Moscow in the 1970s," says my colleague Konstantin Beliaev. Perhaps the adventurous Renault driver will recognize himself and have a great story to tell? With so much luggage, the border crossings must have taken a while. Judging by the dust on the bodywork, the journey was certainly no mean feat. It can also be assumed that he didn't come across another Renault 5 Alpine Turbo on the way from the Gallus city to the Russian capital...
Image via Konstantin Beliaev
