Last Day In Russia, First Night In Jail 10/08/2009
Leaving Moscow was refreshing, although we were both struggling with colds, we were excited to be back on the road and looking at Ukraine as our next destination. As soon as we hit the outskirts of Moscow, we knew things had changed, it was officially fall, the trees were yellowing and the streets filled with fallen leaves and babushkas gathering them. Over the first few days out we quickly realized why so many books begin with the phrase "It was a windy fall day" but luckily we no longer really care, we have cut our riding back and only do about 100km a day so even in the wind it is not too bad. This section was the determined section, our eyes fixed on the road in front of us as if we could see Ukraine getting closer. It was fascinating to be riding out of Moscow through Western Russia, a place that you can't help but look around and think of both Hitler's and Napoleon's Armies being beaten back slowly along the roads, the war memorials have a little more significance on this side of the Volga.
After two days we came upon Yasnaya Polonaya, the estate of Tolstoy, it was very beautiful, rolling hills, birch forests, wonderful rivers all at the height of fall. We went to see his grave, which is a simple grass mound in a secluded corner of the estate, very cool. We camped just outside the grounds of his estate and got to watch one of our last Russian Sunsets.
We were almost beginning to get nostalgic about leaving Russia, until the next day arrived and the roads once again disintegrated into a shoulderless, maniacal highway with more potholes than road. I spent the day thinking in my head about how for my next post I wouldn't even write a summary of our trip out of Russia, instead I would write "Russia. A Retrospective" finally not pulling any punches, letting the Russians know that their "roads" were an insult to the word. However 2 days later we arrived in Kursk, where the Germans and the Russians fought the biggest tank battle of WWII, and events took a different turn, I was forced yet again to write a summary of our trip out of Russia.
It started better than any city I can remember, the roads were smooth, the traffic light, and the tank Memorials wonderful, I immediately took a shine to Kursk, and was happy to be spending a night in a hotel downtown. I had always said to Levi before we started this trip, that we would be crossing so many towns that eventually we would hit a few on their name day, but so far we had missed every one, we missed Moscow by just a few days. But on entering Kursk we found out that we had finally hit one, everyone walking around in silly hats and wigs, little carnivals taking place on every street corner. "Let's get to the hotel and get out their, I want a corndog and some cotton candy"
"I can't wait to get one of those cheesy American Cowboy hats and a plastic saber!"
It was going to be one of those great evenings on the bike trip, you had just ridden 130km and it had made you kind of giddy and excited to see a town and a fair.
We walked into the Centralnaya hotel, an old but refurbished Soviet hotel, (the kind we usually try and avoid because their bedding is always geared towards a person of 5 foot 1) Levi handed the woman his passport because he is the only one who still has his immigration card (it is a small piece of paper that they give you on entering the country, which you must keep with you the whole time, a hotel back around Baikal lost mine, so I have been going without it). The woman filled out the first 5 minutes of paperwork (god I hate old Soviet hotels) and looked at me "passport?"
"Sure" And I handed it over, Levi and I looked at each other "here we go again" For some reason it is only the Soviet hotels that even care about the immigration card, no one else even looks at it.
"Where is you Immigration card?"
"I don't have one, a hotel lost it"
"Well you can't stay here, I can't let you."
"We have ridden our bikes from Vladivostok, I didn't lose my immigration card, a hotel did, I have a passport, I have a visa, please let us stay."
This is usually when the woman capitulates and says she can make an exception. "Sit down" She says.
Levi and I smile at each other, works every time. A few minutes go by, we sit joking about the situation and our last night in Russia.
"Cops will probably be here in a minute" I joke
"Man I can't believe that tomorrow we will just be out of Russia, just like that."
Now it must be mentioned that we had a bit of a problem to face at the border, our visas, although 1 year in duration only allowed you to be in the country 3 months at a time, every 90 days you had to leave the country for 90 days. This was a brand new rule that the Russians had introduced I guess to be more like the US. We had asked the Russian Consulate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the company who had sponsored our visa about the new rule and whether we would get in trouble, they all said no, our sponsor gave us the great quote "Don't try and follow all the rules in Russia boys, it is impossible." Since our entrance we had received some warnings that we might have to pay a bribe or get fined, we could even face a five year ban from Russia, all this we have joked about for quite some time.
Finally a man appeared, he seemed to be the manager, him and the woman both expressed astonishment that we had gone the whole way across Russia (Kursk is 55 miles from the border) without running into trouble because of the lack of Immigration card.
"We can let you stay here tonight, but would you like an immigration card? You won't be able to leave Russia without one."
I was not really very worried about getting a new card, generally Russians are more afraid of their bureaucracy than is warranted, but this guy seemed nice and I figured it wouldn't take very long.
"Sure, why not"
I believe that it was just about this time that the first set of police officers arrived on the scene, and the Kursk Day Fireworks started (set to Tchaikovsky). The cops seemed to be in a good mood, but we were beginning to fade, we had ridden 130km and had sat in a hotel lobby for over an hour and a half, we were tired and wanted to go to bed (at this point I was willing to forgo the corndog, begrudgingly) The two officers were really not to be missed, we watched them with much amusement while they commented about the beauty of the American Passports, had a good chuckle at the thought of two Americans riding bikes across Russia. From time to time other Police Lieutenants passed through the lobby in packs apparently having rented "Party Rooms"(It was a holiday after all, and Russians have the incredible ability to continue partying in the exact style and manner you remember partying as a teenager even in old age) "our" officers would hail them over and let them in on the joke, roars of laughter would erupt.
"Well on the bright side we are getting our problems out of the way tonight, tomorrow we will be able to just cruise through the border."
Suddenly we heard words that made us break out into a cold sweat, "90 out of 180 days"
"Oh Shit they figured it out"
"Why haven't you left Russia? Your visa says you must leave every 3 months."
"well we wanted to ride bikes across, and it took longer than we thought."
"How long"
"Seven Months"
"BAHAHAHAHAHA" They broke out again in jovial laughter.
"Well maybe I imagine they will call their buddies at the border and tell them we are on our way tomorrow and just wave us through."
Indeed the manager came over, he spoke a little bit of English and he told us "they are calling the Border, what time do you think you will be there tomorrow?" Nothing could be better, it was really like a dream.
"4 or 5" We said, glowing with excitement.
By now the police officers were on the paperwork point of the investigation, everyone had to be a witness, the guard, the woman behind the desk. Two new men had arrived as well, no uniform, I assumed they were just from another type of Police force, as Russia seems to have all different levels of cops and all with different types of forms to fill out. It turned out they were from immigration. The two new guys could hardly get their investigation underway because they had to stop every three and a half minutes to smoke cigarettes, the lead officer reminded me of an character out of a bad Sylvester Stallone film, the guy who wanted to be a real cop but had failed and now took his current job way to seriously, he had a huge mustache and was constantly struggling to come off as friendly. The other guy was young and seemed to be more interested in the bike trip than anything else.
"Why didn't you leave after 90 days" The old man asked us in an unfriendly tone.
We explained again, he seemed unimpressed. We were still in the lobby of the hotel, by now the police officers were on the stamping level of their interrogation (most of them seem to carry a rubber stamp in a holster by their gun for easy paperworking), but we seemed no closer to getting into our room. It had been 4 hours. All of a sudden Maigret, as we took to calling the old man summoned us "grab your stuff and follow me."
He led us out to his small hatchback which we proceeded to jam all of our belongings in. He drove us directly to the police station. We haven't been major celebrities since the Far East of Russia, where they rarely see Americans, the same principal applied here, I think we might have been the first Americans in the Kursk Police Station. Everyone wanted to know what we were in for, we spent about 40 minutes waiting around for the interpreter to be woken up (it was now midnight) which gave us plenty of time to bask in our glory and answer questions from our fans (on duty police officers and teenagers caught for underage drinking) no one could believe that Maigret had pulled to guys who had bicycled across Russia into the Police station. We still felt pretty confident that this would result in our being fined and everything being alright, we weren't spies, we weren't terrorists, we were simply cyclists. Plus one of the officers on duty had a sister who lived in Maine!!! Eventually the translator arrived, from the moment I met him I knew he was on our side, he seemed to feel genuinely bad for our current situation. Quickly they read us the Russian version of Rights "Are we under arrest?" I asked (It is a phrase that looks good in books and sounds good on television, but turns your stomach when you actually have to use it.)
"Oh no, they just want your statements" answered the interpreter.
Maigret then wrote down our side of the story with the aid of the interpreter, which I though I gave pretty well, we had asked everyone we could about the visa problem before we left, everyone said it wouldn't be a big deal including the Ministry of Foreign affairs and the Consulate in New York. We got business visas because they were the only ones that lasted a year and again that was what the consulate said to do. I lost my immigration card at a hotel. We asked at the American Embassy in Moscow about any troubles we would have and they said it was too late to do anything about it and that we would probably just pay a fine and maybe face a ban from Russia. But as everyone knows cops have an amazing ability to twist ones words. We chose to ignore the visa regulations, we got business visas even though we were travelling for tourism, I lost my immigration card but chose not to make any attempt to get a new one, and we ignored the warnings of the American Embassy and continued on riding. Right, exactly. We ironed out some of the details needless to say before we signed anything, by now the paper count was probably one whole tree.
We asked the interpreter "So what do you think is going to happen to us? A fine?" still assuming we would be out of this after the last stamp dried.
"Oh well tonight you stay here and tomorrow you go to court." I think at that moment an actual jail cell door slammed, or perhaps it was my imagination.
Things closed up for the night pretty quickly after that, we did our best to sound friendly when we said see you tomorrow to the two immigration officers. Suddenly it was just us, a bunch of drunk teenagers and the officer with a sister in Maine. He informed Levi that he couldn't have his glasses for the night, he did however allow us our waters and jackets. We were given a opportunity to use the bathroom, which made me wish for the outhouses of Siberia, I guess Levi got off easy because he couldn't see, then we were put in a room with another guy, 3 guys, 3 eight inch wide benches and a bright light. All things considered I think we both slept fairly well, the key for jail sleeping is to either be blackout drunk (as the man next to us was judging by the black eye and severe scratches that screamed I fell on the ground tonight) or have ridden 130km and stayed up half the night answering questions in a foreign language.
I woke up around 7 to the sound of the other guy pacing the room, probably trying to put the pieces of the night back together. Eventually 9am came and we were let out. Levi got his glasses back and we headed up to meet a police sergeant, the police of course had to make a report as to why we spent a night in their cell, he might have been the least friendly and most frustrated of everyone, we absolutely could not communicate, and to make matters worse, the immigration officers had taken our passports which has everything about us written in Russian. We spent about a half our with this guy yelling at us and accomplishing little more than our name and addresses, we were shockingly happy to see Maigret open the door and whisk us away. Not before we took our first mug shot though, a moment I could not help laugh at and wish I could get them for www.paneurasianbiketrip.com, it would make a good opening page.
We gathered up all of our stuff and got in a van. Finally we were allowed to eat some of the food we had bought the night before, we tore into our baguettes and cheese, regretting having not bought more, but it brought us back from the edge of delirium. Soon we found ourselves inside the Kursk Immigration office, where these two men accomplished virtually nothing for about 4 hours other than taking our case file from maybe 60 pages to maybe over 250, we were fingerprinted as well, and there were about 10 copies of those floating around by the end. Finally around 2 we found ourselves outside of the courtroom, with our translator back by our side. In the mean time we had somewhat struck up a friendship with the younger immigration officer, we now took up the opportunity to ask through the interpreter: "What do you think will happen to us?"
The guy sighed, a bad sign.
"Oh he is quite sure you will be deported."
"Deported?"
"Yes, the judge could take another decision, but it seems that you will probably be sent back through Moscow and sent back to the United States."
Disbelief is all that could describe the Idiots faces at that point.
"So it is over, we are going home."
We sat their joking around as only one could in a situation like this, "well I guess I'll be getting that Cappo sooner than I thought."
"Can I get deported to a country other than the US?"
Talking to the translator calmed us as we waited for Maigret to get through with his meeting with the judge, he came out angry and took off in the van.
"What is going on now?"
"Apparently in order to deport you they need all the paperwork in English as well as Russian, because you don't speak Russian. So now he is going to a meeting with his boss to see if they can just let you off with a fine, which in my opinion is what they should have done last night."
Finally Maigret came back, said something to his younger partner, and the partner in the few words of English he knew said "Welcome to Ukraine!!!"
Finally not knowing a language pays off, if we had known more Russian we would be in Moscow in a detaining cell (apparently deportation can take up to 3 months). However we still had to spend another 2 hours getting our fines (more paperwork). It was 5 o'clock before Maigret was closing the van door on us and saying "okay go to the nearest bank and pay this fine and then get out of the country, next time don't break the rules."
We looked around, it was getting dark and all the banks had closed, it was Saturday night, how the hell were we going to pay this fine and get out of the country? We figured they would let us wait, we would just lay low. We tried to get a hotel room in town, but everyone knew about us, no one would let the convicts stay, we were exhausted and delirious and now we were going to have to ride out of the city. One woman started shouting at us that it was only 3 hours to the Ukrainian Border just go and ride it, get out of Kursk, we had come a long way since the Russian Far East.
We rode out of town, we found a hotel on the side of the road, as usual, they didn't ask about my immigration card (I still didn't have one), we took showers to wash the guilt of jail off, and slept like innocent babies.
We spent another day riding to the border, camping in the town before it and in the morning going to the bank to pay the fine, finally we were legal. We rode to the border, they looked at our fines and certificates of payment like they were three headed dragons, it was clear if we had just made it 55 miles further these guys would have laughed us through the border. Oh and my lost Immigration card? one of the guys at the border handed me a knew one and told me to fill it out, then decided it was easier to fill it out himself. Appropriately enough according to Russia Ellery Althaus Born 01/27/83 entered Russia on the 26th of January 2009, Pol Althaus, born 03/25/88 left Russia on 28th of September 2009
Polski
After two days we came upon Yasnaya Polonaya, the estate of Tolstoy, it was very beautiful, rolling hills, birch forests, wonderful rivers all at the height of fall. We went to see his grave, which is a simple grass mound in a secluded corner of the estate, very cool. We camped just outside the grounds of his estate and got to watch one of our last Russian Sunsets.
We were almost beginning to get nostalgic about leaving Russia, until the next day arrived and the roads once again disintegrated into a shoulderless, maniacal highway with more potholes than road. I spent the day thinking in my head about how for my next post I wouldn't even write a summary of our trip out of Russia, instead I would write "Russia. A Retrospective" finally not pulling any punches, letting the Russians know that their "roads" were an insult to the word. However 2 days later we arrived in Kursk, where the Germans and the Russians fought the biggest tank battle of WWII, and events took a different turn, I was forced yet again to write a summary of our trip out of Russia.
It started better than any city I can remember, the roads were smooth, the traffic light, and the tank Memorials wonderful, I immediately took a shine to Kursk, and was happy to be spending a night in a hotel downtown. I had always said to Levi before we started this trip, that we would be crossing so many towns that eventually we would hit a few on their name day, but so far we had missed every one, we missed Moscow by just a few days. But on entering Kursk we found out that we had finally hit one, everyone walking around in silly hats and wigs, little carnivals taking place on every street corner. "Let's get to the hotel and get out their, I want a corndog and some cotton candy"
"I can't wait to get one of those cheesy American Cowboy hats and a plastic saber!"
It was going to be one of those great evenings on the bike trip, you had just ridden 130km and it had made you kind of giddy and excited to see a town and a fair.
We walked into the Centralnaya hotel, an old but refurbished Soviet hotel, (the kind we usually try and avoid because their bedding is always geared towards a person of 5 foot 1) Levi handed the woman his passport because he is the only one who still has his immigration card (it is a small piece of paper that they give you on entering the country, which you must keep with you the whole time, a hotel back around Baikal lost mine, so I have been going without it). The woman filled out the first 5 minutes of paperwork (god I hate old Soviet hotels) and looked at me "passport?"
"Sure" And I handed it over, Levi and I looked at each other "here we go again" For some reason it is only the Soviet hotels that even care about the immigration card, no one else even looks at it.
"Where is you Immigration card?"
"I don't have one, a hotel lost it"
"Well you can't stay here, I can't let you."
"We have ridden our bikes from Vladivostok, I didn't lose my immigration card, a hotel did, I have a passport, I have a visa, please let us stay."
This is usually when the woman capitulates and says she can make an exception. "Sit down" She says.
Levi and I smile at each other, works every time. A few minutes go by, we sit joking about the situation and our last night in Russia.
"Cops will probably be here in a minute" I joke
"Man I can't believe that tomorrow we will just be out of Russia, just like that."
Now it must be mentioned that we had a bit of a problem to face at the border, our visas, although 1 year in duration only allowed you to be in the country 3 months at a time, every 90 days you had to leave the country for 90 days. This was a brand new rule that the Russians had introduced I guess to be more like the US. We had asked the Russian Consulate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the company who had sponsored our visa about the new rule and whether we would get in trouble, they all said no, our sponsor gave us the great quote "Don't try and follow all the rules in Russia boys, it is impossible." Since our entrance we had received some warnings that we might have to pay a bribe or get fined, we could even face a five year ban from Russia, all this we have joked about for quite some time.
Finally a man appeared, he seemed to be the manager, him and the woman both expressed astonishment that we had gone the whole way across Russia (Kursk is 55 miles from the border) without running into trouble because of the lack of Immigration card.
"We can let you stay here tonight, but would you like an immigration card? You won't be able to leave Russia without one."
I was not really very worried about getting a new card, generally Russians are more afraid of their bureaucracy than is warranted, but this guy seemed nice and I figured it wouldn't take very long.
"Sure, why not"
I believe that it was just about this time that the first set of police officers arrived on the scene, and the Kursk Day Fireworks started (set to Tchaikovsky). The cops seemed to be in a good mood, but we were beginning to fade, we had ridden 130km and had sat in a hotel lobby for over an hour and a half, we were tired and wanted to go to bed (at this point I was willing to forgo the corndog, begrudgingly) The two officers were really not to be missed, we watched them with much amusement while they commented about the beauty of the American Passports, had a good chuckle at the thought of two Americans riding bikes across Russia. From time to time other Police Lieutenants passed through the lobby in packs apparently having rented "Party Rooms"(It was a holiday after all, and Russians have the incredible ability to continue partying in the exact style and manner you remember partying as a teenager even in old age) "our" officers would hail them over and let them in on the joke, roars of laughter would erupt.
"Well on the bright side we are getting our problems out of the way tonight, tomorrow we will be able to just cruise through the border."
Suddenly we heard words that made us break out into a cold sweat, "90 out of 180 days"
"Oh Shit they figured it out"
"Why haven't you left Russia? Your visa says you must leave every 3 months."
"well we wanted to ride bikes across, and it took longer than we thought."
"How long"
"Seven Months"
"BAHAHAHAHAHA" They broke out again in jovial laughter.
"Well maybe I imagine they will call their buddies at the border and tell them we are on our way tomorrow and just wave us through."
Indeed the manager came over, he spoke a little bit of English and he told us "they are calling the Border, what time do you think you will be there tomorrow?" Nothing could be better, it was really like a dream.
"4 or 5" We said, glowing with excitement.
By now the police officers were on the paperwork point of the investigation, everyone had to be a witness, the guard, the woman behind the desk. Two new men had arrived as well, no uniform, I assumed they were just from another type of Police force, as Russia seems to have all different levels of cops and all with different types of forms to fill out. It turned out they were from immigration. The two new guys could hardly get their investigation underway because they had to stop every three and a half minutes to smoke cigarettes, the lead officer reminded me of an character out of a bad Sylvester Stallone film, the guy who wanted to be a real cop but had failed and now took his current job way to seriously, he had a huge mustache and was constantly struggling to come off as friendly. The other guy was young and seemed to be more interested in the bike trip than anything else.
"Why didn't you leave after 90 days" The old man asked us in an unfriendly tone.
We explained again, he seemed unimpressed. We were still in the lobby of the hotel, by now the police officers were on the stamping level of their interrogation (most of them seem to carry a rubber stamp in a holster by their gun for easy paperworking), but we seemed no closer to getting into our room. It had been 4 hours. All of a sudden Maigret, as we took to calling the old man summoned us "grab your stuff and follow me."
He led us out to his small hatchback which we proceeded to jam all of our belongings in. He drove us directly to the police station. We haven't been major celebrities since the Far East of Russia, where they rarely see Americans, the same principal applied here, I think we might have been the first Americans in the Kursk Police Station. Everyone wanted to know what we were in for, we spent about 40 minutes waiting around for the interpreter to be woken up (it was now midnight) which gave us plenty of time to bask in our glory and answer questions from our fans (on duty police officers and teenagers caught for underage drinking) no one could believe that Maigret had pulled to guys who had bicycled across Russia into the Police station. We still felt pretty confident that this would result in our being fined and everything being alright, we weren't spies, we weren't terrorists, we were simply cyclists. Plus one of the officers on duty had a sister who lived in Maine!!! Eventually the translator arrived, from the moment I met him I knew he was on our side, he seemed to feel genuinely bad for our current situation. Quickly they read us the Russian version of Rights "Are we under arrest?" I asked (It is a phrase that looks good in books and sounds good on television, but turns your stomach when you actually have to use it.)
"Oh no, they just want your statements" answered the interpreter.
Maigret then wrote down our side of the story with the aid of the interpreter, which I though I gave pretty well, we had asked everyone we could about the visa problem before we left, everyone said it wouldn't be a big deal including the Ministry of Foreign affairs and the Consulate in New York. We got business visas because they were the only ones that lasted a year and again that was what the consulate said to do. I lost my immigration card at a hotel. We asked at the American Embassy in Moscow about any troubles we would have and they said it was too late to do anything about it and that we would probably just pay a fine and maybe face a ban from Russia. But as everyone knows cops have an amazing ability to twist ones words. We chose to ignore the visa regulations, we got business visas even though we were travelling for tourism, I lost my immigration card but chose not to make any attempt to get a new one, and we ignored the warnings of the American Embassy and continued on riding. Right, exactly. We ironed out some of the details needless to say before we signed anything, by now the paper count was probably one whole tree.
We asked the interpreter "So what do you think is going to happen to us? A fine?" still assuming we would be out of this after the last stamp dried.
"Oh well tonight you stay here and tomorrow you go to court." I think at that moment an actual jail cell door slammed, or perhaps it was my imagination.
Things closed up for the night pretty quickly after that, we did our best to sound friendly when we said see you tomorrow to the two immigration officers. Suddenly it was just us, a bunch of drunk teenagers and the officer with a sister in Maine. He informed Levi that he couldn't have his glasses for the night, he did however allow us our waters and jackets. We were given a opportunity to use the bathroom, which made me wish for the outhouses of Siberia, I guess Levi got off easy because he couldn't see, then we were put in a room with another guy, 3 guys, 3 eight inch wide benches and a bright light. All things considered I think we both slept fairly well, the key for jail sleeping is to either be blackout drunk (as the man next to us was judging by the black eye and severe scratches that screamed I fell on the ground tonight) or have ridden 130km and stayed up half the night answering questions in a foreign language.
I woke up around 7 to the sound of the other guy pacing the room, probably trying to put the pieces of the night back together. Eventually 9am came and we were let out. Levi got his glasses back and we headed up to meet a police sergeant, the police of course had to make a report as to why we spent a night in their cell, he might have been the least friendly and most frustrated of everyone, we absolutely could not communicate, and to make matters worse, the immigration officers had taken our passports which has everything about us written in Russian. We spent about a half our with this guy yelling at us and accomplishing little more than our name and addresses, we were shockingly happy to see Maigret open the door and whisk us away. Not before we took our first mug shot though, a moment I could not help laugh at and wish I could get them for www.paneurasianbiketrip.com, it would make a good opening page.
We gathered up all of our stuff and got in a van. Finally we were allowed to eat some of the food we had bought the night before, we tore into our baguettes and cheese, regretting having not bought more, but it brought us back from the edge of delirium. Soon we found ourselves inside the Kursk Immigration office, where these two men accomplished virtually nothing for about 4 hours other than taking our case file from maybe 60 pages to maybe over 250, we were fingerprinted as well, and there were about 10 copies of those floating around by the end. Finally around 2 we found ourselves outside of the courtroom, with our translator back by our side. In the mean time we had somewhat struck up a friendship with the younger immigration officer, we now took up the opportunity to ask through the interpreter: "What do you think will happen to us?"
The guy sighed, a bad sign.
"Oh he is quite sure you will be deported."
"Deported?"
"Yes, the judge could take another decision, but it seems that you will probably be sent back through Moscow and sent back to the United States."
Disbelief is all that could describe the Idiots faces at that point.
"So it is over, we are going home."
We sat their joking around as only one could in a situation like this, "well I guess I'll be getting that Cappo sooner than I thought."
"Can I get deported to a country other than the US?"
Talking to the translator calmed us as we waited for Maigret to get through with his meeting with the judge, he came out angry and took off in the van.
"What is going on now?"
"Apparently in order to deport you they need all the paperwork in English as well as Russian, because you don't speak Russian. So now he is going to a meeting with his boss to see if they can just let you off with a fine, which in my opinion is what they should have done last night."
Finally Maigret came back, said something to his younger partner, and the partner in the few words of English he knew said "Welcome to Ukraine!!!"
Finally not knowing a language pays off, if we had known more Russian we would be in Moscow in a detaining cell (apparently deportation can take up to 3 months). However we still had to spend another 2 hours getting our fines (more paperwork). It was 5 o'clock before Maigret was closing the van door on us and saying "okay go to the nearest bank and pay this fine and then get out of the country, next time don't break the rules."
We looked around, it was getting dark and all the banks had closed, it was Saturday night, how the hell were we going to pay this fine and get out of the country? We figured they would let us wait, we would just lay low. We tried to get a hotel room in town, but everyone knew about us, no one would let the convicts stay, we were exhausted and delirious and now we were going to have to ride out of the city. One woman started shouting at us that it was only 3 hours to the Ukrainian Border just go and ride it, get out of Kursk, we had come a long way since the Russian Far East.
We rode out of town, we found a hotel on the side of the road, as usual, they didn't ask about my immigration card (I still didn't have one), we took showers to wash the guilt of jail off, and slept like innocent babies.
We spent another day riding to the border, camping in the town before it and in the morning going to the bank to pay the fine, finally we were legal. We rode to the border, they looked at our fines and certificates of payment like they were three headed dragons, it was clear if we had just made it 55 miles further these guys would have laughed us through the border. Oh and my lost Immigration card? one of the guys at the border handed me a knew one and told me to fill it out, then decided it was easier to fill it out himself. Appropriately enough according to Russia Ellery Althaus Born 01/27/83 entered Russia on the 26th of January 2009, Pol Althaus, born 03/25/88 left Russia on 28th of September 2009
Polski
Comments
Human
10/08/2009 15:41:37
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