A militia officer (aka the Russian police) with a sub-machine gun on his chest yells out to our hero and asks him for his documents and starts firing questions rapidly at him in Russian. As the hero cannot answer, it is clear he is a foreigner. The hero is not happy about this because being stopped by the police is always a problem, but he knows it is going to be a bigger problem for him because the school’s visa manager has been on vacation and his passport has not been registered with OVIR (some ministry of something for control of foreigners).
The hero reluctantly relinquishes his passport. As usual, the police are not satisfied with things. They yell at him to open his bag. He does, but the police are not mollified. Of course they look at his documents and see that his passport is not registered; and the fun begins.
Our hero feigns total ignorance of Russian, even though he can understand some of what the police our saying. Like he has read in the guidebooks, our hero asks for the badge number and name of the police officers. They refuse. The hero asks them to call the school emergency number. They also refuse; they have no phone—nor does the hero. He has just arrived...
The police are not happy about this and tell the hero to lower his voice. Our hero decides that it might be a better idea to be chummier with the police with the big gun. The hero relaxes and tells the policeman, lets call him Oleg, is a nice man and this is all the school’s fault—not the police’s.
Our hero is then escorted to the Night Flight Nightclub, where flathead mafioso types abound. They and the police are clearly goods friends, and the police get a sleazoid manager with a hideous tie and a cashmere sweater-vest to translate what our hero already knows: the passport is not in order. The translator’s hair, however, is very well coiffed.
The police continue the spiel saying that they will take the hero to the station, and the hero is escorted to a new Lada police car. We start driving. The police, in very broken English, say we are going to police station to do an “akt, yes ofitsial akt must police.” Our hero nods his head. He relaxes a little, but is still not very relaxed.
We drive some more. Then they offer me a “no offitsial akt.” “Now 2000 ($70) Ruble no problem, no akt.” Our hero laughs. This is the total Russian experience.
Our hero does not want to pay 2000 unofficial Rubles, and decides that he would prefer an official one he could get reimbursed for. He says he want an official act.
The police don’t seem to like this. After driving around some more our hero is let out of the car. However, our hero is quite discombobulated (understatement) at this points and his passport remains in the police car. This causes whole new set of problems much bigger than the police problems.
Posted by Aaron at February 28, 2004 11:48 AM