Maybe Tomorrow

Some people seem to be a little disappointed in my failure to explore Russia beyond Moscow. To be honest I’m more than a smidgen disappointed in myself. In my defense I always have been a city girl - never pretended to be anything other than that - and after my border crossing incident of the other week I am less keen to abandon the metropolis. However the ambition is there. Latent as it is.

Several Friday nights ago intrepid M, myself and another friend, Don RRR (a latin diplomat who says “hhhhhhhot” a lot), sat around a table in a cozy bar somewhere off Bolshoya Nikitskaya, surrounded by a sea of empty glasses and a very fine shisha. The three of us staring into space and puffing….

M: We should get out of the city next weekend. Let’s hire a car and drive to Suzdal.
Me: I should let you know, I don’t drive.
DR: Neither do I.
M: Neither do I.

We haven’t left Moscow yet. However progress has been made with two more attempts at contemplating journeys to Suzdal….baby steps. I have decided that next weekend I will make it to a golden ring city. Come hell or high water.

I have managed to leave the country though - Helsinki (via Tallinn) to get my new visa and to hang out with my friend S from London. Finally. After the first abortive attempt to Ukraine I started to wonder whether I would ever make it out of here…. What happened in Ukraine?

A Russian epic on a par with Dr Zhivago. Romance (none for me), high drama, hunger, suffering, cold and lots of snow. Actually to be honest the comparisons are a little tenuous but I’ll point them out as I go on. To be brutally honest I think the only reason why I’m drawing parallels with is because I really want to be Julie Christie and for a moment (in the fur coat and fur hat while the snow was coming down) I actually looked sort of kind of not really like her at all and a little bit like Geraldine Chaplin. Seriously though, either way, you really would have to squint those eyes.

So as I had changed jobs and as my visa was cancelled I had to leave Russia for a couple of days to go get a new visa. Destination of choice was Kiev. Very un-Dr Zhivago, I know. Over the space of a week I bought my ticket got my documents ready and then finally one Thursday evening I boarded the train. I was all excited as I had lucked out and landed a swanky refurbished train. My kupe cabin has everything I could want including a very cute American traveler to flirt with. I hiked up onto my top bunk – with my fat ass on display (my lack of grace remains). Unwrapped. Grabbed my book, donned my glasses and kicked back. Had a quick munch of a sandwich and then at around 10pm dozed off. All of a sudden at 2am I was woken by the border police doing passport checks. They took mine along with everyone else’s and then they came back and that’s where the trouble began. It seems I hadn’t checked my visa very closely (I saw the picture – of me- and the nationality and my employer and so automatically thought if it has my picture it then it has to be mine). They come back to the kupe, gave everyone their passports back. Everyone but me that is. And this is where the fun begins:

Guard: Irish?
Me: that’s me.
Guard: is this yours
Me: yes
Guard: is this your visa?
Me: yes
Guard: are you sure it’s your visa?
Me: yes, look at the picture
Guard: be careful now, is this really your visa?
Me: yes, let me show you

I show him the picture and then he points to the name: Sean Barry Morris and according to the visa I am male and born in 1983. Thanks to some stylish handiwork by an inept foreign ministry visa processor (if ever there was an advertisement for people not to allow workers to drink beer at breakfast then this is it). I felt the bile rise. I was promptly removed from the train.

It was pitch black and effing freezing (I had it pegged at -25oC or thereabouts). I get frog marched into a compound and brought into this prefab room/building/box. What ensued was 9 hours of being held by the Russian border police. Don RRR tells me I am an official case of consular protection. I was accused of having a fake passport (apparently I don't look very much like me int he picture - more like Jabba the Hut on a bad day) and fake visa. After much phonecalling and with much thanks to my embassy, my former employer, Don RRR and the Russian foreign ministry, the misunderstanding was cleared up and I finally got my ass back on a train and back to Moscow (where it was sorted out pretty quickly). Alas not before interrogations (next to big guard dogs in the freezing cold) and searches, a few more scares, threats of being incarcerated for days, bollocks Russian bureaucracy and much bonding with the Russian border guards in Briansk (i knew them all by their first name by the end of it). It was interesting though. I got to see how the immigrants from the caucuses were treated (I was in the room all night watching people come and go) and how the border guards interact (much bed hopping) and I also learnt that the stasi fashions circa 1985 are still very much in vogue (the boss man wore a black leather jacket, black turtle neck, black jeans, gold rings and slick-backed hair) with persons of power. I have joked about my night an awful lot, but on my trip to Tallinn and Helsinki I realized that the whole experience actually scared the buJesus out of me. i have just been in denial about it.

As for TALLIN & HELSINKI. The train ride to Tallinn was far less eventful. Though stressful as I was freaked out about being dragged off the train again. And a lot more amusing. I had some interesting cabin mates. One man and two women of a “certain age”. The train departed at 18.10 and by 19.30 the man was in his bed (in his PJs) scarfing down sandwiches and suckling on a bottle of vodka like nursing infant. A couple of hours later a fight started between him and one of the ladies over switching out the lights (there was much switch flicking in a very farcical way). It was a minor but was refereed by the head steward in the train and witnessed by all others in the carriage. It culminated in the steward trying to reason with the lady (calling her devushka) and the man bellowing back “she’s too ugly to be called devushka”. The lady left and we got a new cabin-mate. Aside from that and both the Russian and the Estonian border guards asking me why I had such an awful picture in my passport the journey was pretty uneventful. It was pretty though. On the train, hurtling through the Estonian countryside, nursing a cup of tea and watching the sun rise over snow covered plains. I even saw a family of moose. Which was rather cool. Cute too.

So Tallinn for my visa. Getting the visa, despite my fears, was uneventful and so I had plenty of time to wander around town while I waited for my ferry to Helsinki. Tallinn itself is super picturesque, in the old town at least, but unnaturally quiet. I was there on a Thursday a working day and I saw barely anyone on the streets. It was kind of creepy to be honest. It was cold though. Damp-cold unlike Moscow and so a lot harder to brave. Despite being swathed in fur I couldn’t ever get warm enough. I spent the day wandering around town, seeing some sights and drinking lots and lots of hot drinks. At 4pm I caught the ferry to Helsinki. Very titanic with the ice covered see surrounding us. Basically Tallinn is where all the Finns go to get their cheap booze. And they buy A LOT of booze. Children are porters of choice…the bigger the family you have the more alcohol you can carry.. As it was winter only the bigger ships were making the journey and so the trip was three hours, rather than the 1.5 hours it would have been in the summer. I managed to find a seat in the bar which had a live band and then just watched all the people around me booze it up and dance. It was kind of cool actually. I couldn’t imagine any Brits doing that on a booze cruise to Calais.

Helsinki. I met S and we spent three days looking at sights and eating and drinking our way about the city. The hotel was gorgeous. A good find. And possibly the bargain of the weekend. Helsinki itself was pretty. Incredibly low-lying and effing freezing. And randomly, a little Moomin-tastic (even though Moomins are from Sweden). And in a similar vein to Tallinn it was quiet quiet quiet. Creepily so. The only day it really came to life was Saturday when people were out shopping. But other than that there were times when we didn’t see a soul on the street. Like I said: creepy. When you did encounter people they were lovely and incredibly friendly which made up for it. It was small too. A walk which S had thought would take us the whole morning actually took 30 minutes. Which was a good thing as it was cold cold cold. But we saw churches and museums and galleries and shops (ironically the prettiest church was the Russian orthodox cathedral - the Uspenski). So I think we did the city some justice. We also managed to sample some of the city’s nightlife with thanks to my hairdresser who told me where to go. I bumped into him and his entourage all over town. He appeared to be the man to know and so he became my temporary BFF. We also made it to the opera. Awfully cultured of us, I know. To see Tchaikovsky’s "Queen of Spades". I was thrilled to bits as it was visually quite a breathtaking production at times. Poxy tenor though. Which was a shame. On the upside there was a very cute French horn player who I mooned over….

I do have to say, though, it is the most expensive city in the world. And tosh to anyone who says anything different.

So a good weekend all in all and a successful visa run. And it was really lovely to see S and to get a dose of London sardonicism – I have been missing it. Any recommendations? Well, Helsinki I would go back to. Tallinn not so much.