Peanuts, sausage, beer, and wet hair. Inwardly I groaned. This was my fifth meal of the day.

I had woken up that morning in a Soviet hotel in post-Soviet Russia in a small town in the Leningrad Oblast called Pikalyovo. The only hotel was everything you would imagine a Soviet building would be. The night before, we were told room 105 was on the second floor, and room 107 was on the third. In my bathroom, excess grout was used in corners and around the fixtures where the tile normally would have been cut. The bedroom was sparse, with no rugs, cheap lace curtains, and concrete walls.

Breakfast was served in the only restaurant in town, an echo-y linoleum-floored room with about ten tables covered in plastic tablecloths. We were the only patrons. Coffee and vodka were served. As the sole woman, I was offered white wine instead of vodka. Luckily, the wine came in a small cut glass stemmed vessel, so it wasn’t a large serving. The men had three shots of vodka. I was able to put my lips to the glass and not really drink anything.

At 27, I was leading a diplomatic delegation to the Oblast as part of the Maryland-Leningrad Sister State relationship. My two fellow Marylanders were older volunteer gentlemen who had expertise in transportation and law. However, we weren’t in Pikalyovo for either of these. This was all about trade and investment.

Olga, our translator from St. Petersburg, had not traveled to this little town with us. Sergey, the mayor, and his translator were having breakfast with us. I ate the pickles and meat and avoided the vegetables. It was January and they had trouble keeping produce fresh in the winter.

After breakfast, we headed to a lumber mill that even in the cold smelled of fresh sawdust. I love manufacturing processes so through the translator I asked lots of questions – how much they processed, how far away the end customer was. All of this information would be used for future collaboration.

Sister Cities International was one of the outcomes of Dwight Eisenhower’s people-to-people initiatives designed to prevent another world war. After doing international relations and fundraising for another Maryland ambassador, the tall ship, Pride of Baltimore II, I had become Executive Director of Maryland’s program. Many of our Leningrad exchanges were aimed at helping them modernize their processes and create investment opportunities for optimistic Maryland investors who believed in the potential of a capitalist economy in post-Soviet, resource-rich 1996 Russia.

Despite the relative warm spell for that region in January, it was still just below freezing and it started to snow while we were at the lumber mill. I was grateful for my thermal tights and my first pair of weatherproof black heeled suede boots. My fingers and toes got cold easily, and I had packed carefully to be both warm and professional. We walked in and out of various buildings, shaking off the snow when we entered the open sheds.

In the main office, made entirely of wood, unlike the concrete buildings in town, the heat was blasting and the executive offered us pastries, coffee, and yes, more vodka. Meal number 2. I followed my breakfast strategy and pretended to sip.

Pikalyovo had been built to take advantage of naturally occurring clay and limestone. The alumina and cement plants also benefited from each other’s waste streams.

At the cement plant tour, we were joined by Valentina Dmitrieva, the assistant mayor. The translator told me it was unusual for a woman to have that role, and that she was quite accomplished. The mayor clearly respected her more extensive experience. She led the conversation at times.

We headed back to the administration offices for lunch. As we walked inside the building, we stamped our feet and brushed snow off the shoulders of our coats. Before I could take my hat off, Valentina smiled, pointed at both our hats, and gestured toward a door. I followed her, and we walked into her office without a translator. I had no idea what this was about. She closed her door, and on the back, she had a mirror. She took off her hat and adjusted her hair in the mirror, gesturing for me to do the same. She offered me a comb, which was not going to have any positive effect on my curly hair. We both laughed.

After lunch served at their offices with more vodka, we met with a local entrepreneur, the best-dressed we’d met all day. He spoke English and served vodka with tea and pastries, and gave us bottles of vodka as gifts to bring home. At home, I would have called him “slick.”  He wanted investment but had little in the way of a business plan, smiled easily, and talked about returns and friendships. He hinted that bribes would be involved. I struggled to think of who I could introduce him to.

After dinner back at the restaurant, with vodka and food very much like breakfast and lunch, we were being treated to a swim at “the Dolphin” – their swimming complex famous for international records. The translator told me that because our private session would be after it closed to the public at 9, he would not be coming. But, he reassured me, all the men would be wearing swimsuits in deference to our American customs.

So there I was: wet hair, peanuts, sausage, and beer. They’d told me to bring a suit in advance. I only had bikinis. I jumped off their high, bouncy diving board and swam some laps in water so cold I gasped. The hot sauna was a welcome contrast. Afterward, sitting on wooden benches, I faced the food in my bikini and enjoyed that between gestures and my limited phrase book, the mayor and I could joke with each other.