From now on, whenever anyone makes a big, tough boast, I can probaly trump them. "You once beat up seven guys? Yeah, well, I'm not allowed back in Russia."
No, really. Okay, truthfully, their immigration isn't organized enough to make this a truly permanent state of affairs, and it likely wouldn't remain this way with much of a challenge, but for now...
Jamie, Sup, and I are barred by the authorities from getting off the ship in a Russian port. We tried to smuggle plans for their new caterpillar submarine drive back to the US in hopes of... no, that was Hunt for Red October. Surely what WE did was equally heinous, an equal threat to Soviet... oops, I mean Russian security.
In the case of Jamie and I, we were trying to go to a Jazz Club and one of the authorities at the gate, a large woman who obviously wanted money, would not let us pass because we somehow had the wrong credentials. We were luckily with the only person on the ship who speak fluent Russian, and while we watched them talk I lost my motivation to go to the stupid bar. Jamie, on the other hand became visibly incensed that he wasn't being allowed to do what he wanted to do. He began shouting and puching at the air. This didn't help. I told him he wasn't helping, and the woman who was barring our way out of the port gate called and put an alert out for us. We didn't really know that. Basically, it meant that everyone would be on the lookout for us.
We went outside and tried to get a cab to take us out - in which case we could just go through, no having to walk through the checkpoint. Even the cabbie knew we were persona non grata, and offered instead to drive us back through the port and back to the ship. We did that. Then we hopped on one of our tour busses right in front of our ship, and thought we could get out of the port that way and grab a cab. I did not think this was a good idea. I was saying that when the immigration authorities came onto the bus and made us get off. They asked for our passports - even the Russian's - and Jamie continued to mouth off. Though the woman in charge there couldn't understand what he was saying, he was pissing her off. I was telling him to stop it and our friend to tell the Russians that he didn't speak for us, but it did no good. They were resentful idiots, and they tried to actually do worse ( I learned later) but reached the limits of their power at barring us from re-entering Russia and had to let us go back onto the ship.
The next day, our friend Sup had a similar but much less dramatic run-in that resulted in him also being banned. They've been really ridiculous this year, the Russians, and I'm glad we've made our final stop there. Last year was a lot better there. It's actually become much more of a pain, dealing with the authorities there.
Anyway, the next morning - our last day - I thought to try to get off the ship to see what happened. there were two lines - one where they checked names and passports against our crew list, one where they didn't. We didn't know that, and I happened to go through the line where they didn't check. One of the people I was with saw Jamie's and my name on the list, circled in red and x'd out. So, I got into Russia to go to the port CD shop's end of season clearance. I returned unscathed with a couple of CDs, some postcards, and some free chocolate the shopgirls gave us.
Or, to put it another way, I snuck into Russia, retrieved the documents, romanced the locals, and returned to tell the tale. I'm a regular James Bond.
Self-aggrandizment 101.
1 comment:
Wow. You win.
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