Food for Thought on the End of an Era

Re “Moscow Hotel, Grand Lady of Soviet Era, Checks Out,” July 24: Several of my friends and I went to Moscow in 1994, just after the Soviet Union had collapsed. We stayed at the Moscow Hotel -- everybody called it the “Moskva” -- for a week. The place was a pile, a shabby dump. We ate breakfast each day in the main dining room, a vast hall with 30-foot ceilings and curtains that looked as though they hadn’t been cleaned since Nikita Khrushchev’s time.

The staff was surly and unresponsive. Breakfast was the same every day; there were no choices. After four days of this, Jan, our Russian-born traveling companion, asked our waitress why the menu didn’t vary. Her reply was: “It hasn’t changed since 1936. If it was good enough for Comrade Stalin, it’s good enough for you.” That shut us up!

Les Hardie

Calabasas