Quote from current reading

Today when I came in there was only a man at the desk writing letters, he just left. He asked me for a light, and when he heard my American accent he told me he'd lived in New York for a year.

"And then one day I was walking down Fifth Avenue with an American friend and I said to him: 'Why are you running?' And he said: 'I'm not running!' And then I knew it was time to come home."

"The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street", Helene Hanff

Puzzle

So, the year is 1971 (or thereabouts) and Helene Hanff is making the following observation about the hotel she is staying at while visiting London:

Lots of Russian and Czech tourist families here, with blond, well-behaved children.

Huh? Don't know about Czechs but lots of Russian tourist in London in the seventies? Families... with children... In what alternate reality is this taking place?