First Passenger Train Travels from St. Petersburg to Crimea, Gets a Very Russian, Very Jolly Welcome (Russian TV News)
Russians are the world champs for staging sentimental train station and airport arrivals and send offs, frequently featuring flowers and champagne. To foreigners it often seems wonderfully ‘old world’. For example, for many trains leaving Moscow or St. Petersburg, the old patriotic WW2 song ‘Farewell Slavic Woman’, blares tinnily from the anouncement speakers, and many an eye becomes moist both on and off the platform.
They pulled out all the stops on this first train, with the governor and his suspiciously lovely companion joining in on the joviality.