For reasons that don't really matter, I had to go to Russia to do some work a while ago - actually in January a year or so back, and I wrote this at around the same time. If you've never been to Russia, I thought you might find it useful to have a handy cut out and keep guide just in case you're insane enough to think about visiting the god forsaken place yourself….
The Visa Most countries will let you get a visa when you get there, if you need to have one at all. But not Russia, oh no! First of all you have to be invited to go. Consequently, you have to pay good money (in my case about fifty quid) to some Russian organisation to send you an invite. You then go to several websites trying to find out where, when and how you can get your visa itself. Ignore all that you read, since it's either contradictory or just plain downright wrong. Do not go to the Consulate on a Wednesday. It's closed because of the summer rush. Quite why they feel it's necessary to close because it's busy is a little bit beyond me, to say nothing of the fact that it's not summer, it hasn't been summer for a long time and it won't be summer for just as long. When you do visit, make sure you get there early. Very early. Queues of people mill around, waiting to be invited in to make their application. Your turn will eventually arrive, and it's at that moment they decide to shut 25 minutes early. At this point, you have two choices, you can either go home again and come back and join the merry throng of the insane on another day, or you can wait around in the cold for 4 hours to try and get in and get the express visa. This will set you back 120 pounds. Yup… 120 quid. Oh yes, and it has to be in cash; the Russians don't let cheques or credit cards. I've been to some dodgy places in my time, but I've seldom seen such institutionalised money grabbing as I have here. You also need to take a bunch of other stuff with you as well – bank statements, travel insurance, a letter explaining why you're going there and so on. I was fully expecting that I'd have to drag my mother along, just so that she could vouch for me at one point. Anyway, you give them all this information (once you reach the head the queue of course), and then you get directed to another window to pay. Then you get directed to another queue outside where you have to wait for another hour or two before you can get to the head of another queue. Then you get told to wait – I sense a theme here – before the promised visa arrives in your passport.
Arriving in Russia
. Actually very straightforward indeed. Well, apart from having your passport checked in detail in London, then again when you get to Russia. Then again at the customs point. Don't forget to fill in the customs declaration that they don't actually want to see unless you haven't got one of course. Then before you can get out, prepare to have your bags searched. After you've got to the front of the queue of course.
Russian hotels. Well, I only stayed in one, so my knowledge is limited, I'll admit. However, this was, by all accounts, an excellent one. Once you check in you have to pay extra to have your passport registered with the local police, which the hotel does – at a price. My room was, how best to put this I wonder? It was interesting. I've stayed in a lot of hotels, but I've never had a view like this one before. Was it overlooking snowy roads? No. Perhaps it looked out onto some sort of Russian plain? No. I'll tell you what it looked out over – the inside of a shopping mall, that's what. Now, this was strange enough, but what was really a pain was the workmen, drilling and fixing and mending stuff. At 3am in the morning. This is really not what you want when you've arrived in a foreign country, and you're tired and jetlagged, trust me on this.
Another interesting thing with the hotel room was that it was not possible to turn off the bathroom light. I pressed every damn switch that I could find, but the bathroom light stayed on. All night. I could see it, through the gap in the door. Perhaps it was meant to be comforting, I'm not sure, having given up on trying to work out the Russian psyche by this point, but whatever – it was there. Another interesting thing with the bathroom was the shower. There were basically three settings – you could either have the water scalding hot, which isn't advisable, or you could brave the freezing cold setting, which isn't a good idea either. So you go for the middle option, which is brown. Being as it was a shower, it's difficult to see the colour, but I looked down at my feet and thought 'my God, I can't have been that dirty could I?' and then, as I waded around in the shower (since the drain wasn't actually that good, or perhaps my shower water had just joined another queue, I don't know), I could see that the water while warm, was brown. Curiously I sniffed the air, which was filled with a strong aroma of iron. Suffice to say, it was a quick shower. The loo paper was interesting as well, since it really was tissue paper. I just looked at the roll and I swear that one piece just fell off!
Russian television is interesting. It's quite bizarre to see Mickey Mouse speaking Russian, I can tell you. However, not as strange as seeing Benny Hill leering at scantily clad women and saying the Russian equivalent of 'Come on darling, let me show you my big one' while waving a banana at them. Actually to be fair, that probably wasn't what he was saying, but they hadn't overdubbed, just turned his voice down a little. Other than that, Russian television is similar to ours – they have the Russian version of Big Brother (I kid you not) and Changing Rooms. Out of a strange sense of fascination I watched the show… basically they took one square room and painted it a different colour. That was it. Well, I suppose that it's fairly radical in its own strange way, though I'm not sure that lime green would be to my personal taste, but there you go. The addition of a yellow football field painted onto one wall and pictures of Manchester United players stuck on did give it a cosmopolitan feel. I did consider writing in to mention that Beckham didn't play for them any more, but quite frankly, my Russian isn't up to it.
Russian shops When I set off for work it was a 15 minute walk along the main shopping road. Russians appear to like shoes, a lot. Every other shop was a shoe shop. I also saw a shop that just appeared to sell kettles, that was all. They were stacked, gleaming in the morning gloom, on shelves. Not different types of kettle though, just the same one. Rows and rows of the same kettle. I also noticed that most people wore jeans, which was a little distressing since my plan of selling the 72 pairs that I'd brought with me went straight out the window. The shops that didn't sell shoes or kettles were Western shops; it's very odd to see MacDonalds in Russian, and I passed a Starbucks as well. Well, I presume that they sold stuff – they weren't open when I walked past in the morning at 9.30, nor again in the evening at 6pm.
Russian food. After a hard day I made it back to the hotel, and I thought I'd try the hotel restaurant. Foolish I know, but sometimes, you just have to try these things, even though they have 'Warning!' written all over them – but I guess because it was in Cyrillic I just didn't understand. 'Vegetarian' in Russian means 'no red meat', and 'salad' means cabbage. Lots and lots of cabbage. To be fair, you could have the cabbage in small chunks, or long strips. The bread was interesting too; it came in two types. Not as you might think, white or brown, or even sliced or unsliced. Oh no… it was either 'soap flavour' or 'salt flavour'. On the whole, I preferred the salt flavour; in actual fact I got used to it, since it made a change from cabbage.
Breakfast was interesting as well. Foolishly I tried the bread again, but this time they had one of those do it yourself toast making machines, where you slide the bread in at the top, it toasts both sides and slides out of the bottom. Only in Russia it doesn't. It just toasts one side, and you only know that it's been toasted because it gets hard. I mean really hard, so that when you try and bite into it you get soggy salt bread on one side and the other side just splinters. Quite remarkable.
Leaving Russia
. It's important to know that Russian taxi drivers don't understand. They don't understand anything. Actually, they probably do, but they just like making foreigners do bird and aircraft impressions. They also, by default, take you to the wrong airport. They know it's the wrong airport, because when you get there, and get out of the taxi, and drag your bag onto the pavement they point at the airport and say in perfect English 'Domestic, not International'. So you put your bag back inside and try again. There is then a long sigh and a conversation on the radio back to base. I don't understand Russian, but I can tell you what he was saying, and it goes something like this: 'Hallo, taxi driver to base. I got another one! You should have seen the aircraft impressions this one made, they were hysterical. What's that? Yes, of course I took him to the wrong one – you should have seen the look on his face, it cracked me up. Yes, I'm taking him to International departures now, but I'm going to drive slowly, just so that he thinks he's going to miss it.'
Eventually you get to the right airport, and think that finally you might be getting somewhere. Wrong. Totally utterly and completely wrong. First of all, you get interrogated by 2 Russian soldiers, toting big fuck off machine guns. It works like this; the first Russian says something that you don't understand, so you get out your passport and your plane ticket. Then he says something else that you don't understand, so you say slowly (why I have no idea, it's just what you do) 'I'm going to London you know, I'm not from around here'. At this point the second soldier says, in perfect English 'Did you stay in a hotel?' At this point various smart answers jump into your head, or at least they do in mine, but then you look down at the machine gun and just nod, and you're on your way. Only of course you're not, you're on your way to the back of another queue. Did I mention that the Russians like queues? If there was an Olympic sport for queuing, they'd get a gold, no question about it. Anyway, you stand in this queue to have your bag scanned. And your jacket scanned. And your overcoat scanned. And then you get body searched. Thankfully just the pat down, rather than the full works, but it's enough. So, you're finally in the airport, hurrah! Only of course it doesn't work like that. You have to queue to get through customs.
Now, maybe I'm wrong, but you'd think that, at an airport, where you get lots of international travellers, they might employ people who speak something other than Russian. I mean, it's logical isn't it? Well, it is everywhere except Russia. So this customs person says something to me. I have no idea what she said, so I just smiled and nodded. I suspect that she said 'I bet you had to do bird impressions to get here didn't you?' Anyway, you get passed this point and go to queue up for your boarding pass. Before you get the boarding pass, there's another security check. By now, I was ready to deck someone. The only reason that I didn't was that I really didn't fancy having to queue to get into a Russian jail for the 7 days you get if your paperwork isn't correct. It's probably a lot more if you hit a security guard and jump up and down on his body shouting 'how's this for bird impressions you bastard!' However, I digress. After you get through this queue, you get your boarding pass. After this, and I'm gritting my teeth while I write it, you join another queue to get your passport stamped. The female customs officer looked strangely familiar, and then I realised, and just stopped myself in time from saying 'has anyone ever told you that you look just like Rosa Krebb in the Bond film 'From Russia with love'?' I swear if it wasn't her it must have been her mother.
Eventually you get through the other side, into departures. In most departure lounges you get a little board or two that tells you what planes are going where, when they're taking off and what gate you go to. But not in Russia, oh no. You have to wait for the announcements. This wouldn't be so bad, but the announcements are in Russian. Consequently you wander up and down the departure gates, which isn't so difficult since there are only seven, looking for British Airways crew. Only of course you don't see any. Eventually a woman from some Spanish Airline took pity on me and pointed me to a gate. So off I toddle, to join the back of another queue. When I got to the front, it was another security check. This time they wanted to see inside my bag, in my jacket, in my overcoat and my shoes. I had to take my shoes off, and put them on the x-ray machine, and collect them on the other side. Meanwhile, other people are cramming through behind you and your bag and most of your clothes shoot out of the other end of the x-ray machine. Consequently you're trying to put your shoes on (which of course come out last), while hopping along on one foot trying to catch your belongs before they pile up with everyone who was in front of you. Eventually you manage to get everything from under the watchful gaze of another Russian security officer. I'm sure his job description must include 'You should either laugh at passengers coming through security or sneer at them, ideally both at the same time' because he certainly didn't look as though he was doing anything else.
Finally you sit and wait. Then you wait some more. And then a little longer. Finally you board the aircraft and settle down. The captain then says 'There will be a slight delay while the ground staff shovel the snow off the wings'. Not 'brush' you notice – 'shovel'. The damn aircraft has only been on the ground for about 30 minutes, and they're shovelling snow off the wings! I felt like going forward to the captain and saying 'look, I've got this really good idea… we all know how to flap our wings.. what if we all give it a go at the same time, will that help?'
Eventually the plane took off, and I left Russia behind. It's a sad country – dark and miserable and cold, and the people trudge along with their heads bowed, looking down at the pure white snow that's turned to black sludge. I can't say that I was sorry to leave, and I won't be going back in a hurry – it's now in second place on my list of 'Countries never to visit again'. But, when all is said and done, it was an experience.
