We got up early, the plan was 9 00 the border, 11 00 St Petersburg, 21 00 Finland and no overnighting in Russia. Martin and I didn't like it, we wanted to be in Russia as long as possible, but we got outvoted.
We were in Narva around ten, we filled the tanks right up (God knows what they have in Russia) and parked at the border on the line about 10 m before the first booth. We were first, so it looked fine. After about an hour of waiting, during which not a single wheel moved, only soldiers with submachine guns guarding the barrier, Andrej and I got up to find out what the deal was with those visas. One gas station attendant told us you can't get into Russia without a visa.
After a few days in the Soviet republics I was already pretty confident in my Russian (I pleasantly surprised myself), so I went straight to the first booth to ask. The woman inside knew squat about visas, but she immediately informed us that we had to pay her 15 local whatsits per car for entering the historic centre of Narva. When we objected that we didn't want to go to any centre, that we were going to Russia, she explained with unshakeable logic that to get to Russia we have to go through the historic centre, because we're in it right now. All around there were nothing but blocks of flats and kiosks. So we wanted to pay her in dollars. She said sure, but she doesn't know the exchange rate. We offered her a five-dollar bill, she liked that. When we wanted the change back, she handed it back to us with the words "Chadítě paměnjáť v bank!". About the visas she advised us to ask those soldiers with the submachine guns. So I went straight to one of them. He looked about 16 and the gun was definitely heavier than he was. I started on him in Russian and he took my breath away by saying he doesn't speak Russian, so English then. Then I took his breath away by switching without warning into fluent American English (I can manage that one sentence...). He didn't understand a word and sent me to some building nearby, in front of which stood a queue of loads of people with stuffed string bags. It was the pedestrian crossing point for people who go shopping in Europe. In that building I got out of another little soldier with a submachine gun only that he doesn't know, but there's supposedly a Russian embassy in town and a taxi there costs 1 dollar. Then he chased me off with that gun.
We abandoned our nicely warmed-up little spot in the queue and drove off to the embassy. On the way I practised my Russian about 6 times in exactly the textbook situation, "straight on, left, right, etc." After about half an hour of wandering we finally found the Russian embassy. The word embassy conjures up the feeling of a grand villa. Not in Russia. Among the shabby, peeling blocks of flats was a former kindergarten overgrown with weeds. A dirty single-storey building with plaster falling off, weeds halfway up the windows, and as the main entrance a garage door with a broken-out lock. In front of the building a guard booth, with a soldier, how else. He had us explain our whole problem, which was quite a bit of work in Russian, then he pointed his hand towards the gate and uttered "Over there". When we walked past the gate without noticing it, he called us back and said I have to knock. After I knocked, something very rude came back from inside in Russian. So the soldier from the booth explained to us that they have a lunch break until 15 00. To the question what we're supposed to do until three when it's 12 30: "Guljájtě po górodě". Just lovely. So we unpacked our stoves and soup in front of the embassy and set about cooking. People came out of the blocks of flats to watch us like it was telly.
Opposite the embassy there was some once-grand big old building, so we went to see what was inside. All we found there was a mess and one bored clerk, who revealed to us that it's some kind of house of artists, or something. From the Russkies in Teplice I knew that to get into Russia you need either an invitation or some kind of "voucher", which you can get at a travel agency, something like us going on a trip to Russia with that agency.
Where the travel agency was, that's exactly what the old girl in that building told us. It was an old shabby villa in the middle of a park full of locals, but behind the rusty iron gate there was really quite a modern travel agency. I was there with Martin and we were trying with the clerk to figure out how to get into Russia. We kept failing to understand one Russian word, because of which a visa costs 8 times more than a normal one. So she tried whether we understood the English "urgent". So we switched into fluent conversation in English and learned that a "normal" visa means within 4 days and urgent about within 2 hours, and costs 8 times more. We couldn't wait four days and didn't want to pay 8 times more. Nothing left but to hope for visa-free travel. Besides that, we'd checked the prices of the Tallinn-Helsinki ferry in Tallinn, just in case. It was expensive as hell, roughly like the urgent visas. But for the visas you also needed 3 photos and a voucher. That one even in the case of visa-free travel. The woman at the agency said that at 15 dollars a piece it's no problem.
We went back in front of the embassy, announced the situation to the rest who were waiting, Andrej had already decided to bomb it to the ferry, we'd buy the visas. At three o'clock some shaven-headed flunky in a T-shirt came out of the gate with the words "........" We explained to him what was up and he evidently didn't get it, slammed the gate again and disappeared. Nothing happened for quite a while and we just stood outside having a royal laugh, mostly in our beloved Russo-Czech, at the standard of the local embassy. Behind us in the queue stood two Dutchmen and clearly the situation didn't seem so funny to them. The salvos of our roaring apparently lured out comrade consul himself, because he came out and asked what our problem was. Not even his presence could discipline us enough to stop us talking over his shoulder about the charms of Russian girls.... (The girls sat by the car all day gossiping. Martin and I agreed that afterwards they'd write in their diary " .... and there we sorted things out at the embassy (or should that be they sorted out?"))
In the end it slipped out of the consul that we have visa-free travel, so all fine. We still popped into the travel agency to have a group voucher issued, there was a different woman there by then and it cost 5 dollars a piece. She had a dead cat on the desk and the place stank horribly.
We still needed to change money to pay the entry into the town. At the local bank they only took dollars from year 1990 and later, no Italian lira at all, and they had no change for dollars. Before we managed to swap small dollar bills among ourselves, they shut the window in our faces and Andrej had to go to another bank
Then we joined the queue in front of the border again and resisted the onslaught of two beggars. One little barefoot boy and an old man with a stick. We gave him one local whatsit and Martin gave him apples. The little boy got bread and butter from the Dutchmen and looked happy. After about 40 min. of waiting the submachine-gunners kindly let me and Martin into the customs area. We had to take the passports to one booth, the vehicle registration to another (a blonde nice Estonian girl at a computer) and between the booths they checked us for contraband. Then they let us through. So far it looked easy. We drove on a bit and there was a pretty long bridge over the river. On each side a medieval fortress and walls, in the middle two soldiers, armed to the teeth how else, on the Russian side of the bridge fences with barbed wire. But mainly, to our horror, the whole bridge full of standing cars and the barrier down. Considering we wanted to be in St Petersburg at 11 00, a split time of 17 00 wasn't much to write home about. Once we'd been waiting there 2 hours, I went to ask where the toilet was. They do supposedly have a toilet, but only for staff. To the objection that we'd been standing there 2 hrs. and that I simply have to go, I got the classic Russian answer: "Čto sděélať". Then the soldier - clerk at the barrier wrote us some slip with a stamp again, commented with the words "Nádo ždať…". So we stood there another half hour and then they let us onto the Russian side of the bridge. After about 500 m there were more booths. There I went straight to look for the toilets. In the building some customs officer caught me and led me to another customs officer outside (..... a young guy with a truncheon) so he could show me those toilets. He waited until the first one crawled back into the building, then stuck his head out of the car he was inspecting, pointed his truncheon at my car and practically yelled: "Sadítěs v mašínu! Ťualét zakrýt!" He looked obviously pissed off that someone would have the nerve, after three hours of waiting at the border, to still want a toilet. Then the farce with the two booths repeated itself, a queue in front of both, one for the vehicle registration, the other for the passports. During the contraband inspection the one with the truncheon ordered Petra 20 m away from the car and ordered me to stay. Luckily he was small fry and someone else came for the inspection, unarmed. What interested him most was where our beer was, seeing as we're Czechs. We gifted him beer mats, which didn't please him much. Then they also issued us a paper for the car, which must be handed in when leaving Russia, and off we went. It already looked like that was everything, but no such luck. 150 m from these booths another booth with a submachine-gunner who collected the slips.
Then we were in Russia, but the ordeal still wasn't over. Another 200 m on, a uniform with a lollipop sign by a derelict portacabin. Our green card supposedly isn't valid in Russia either, so we have to pay insurance here too. 20 dollars for 1-5 days per car. But the blokes at the ancient computer were quite nice and wanted some Czech coins for their collection. Then it finally looked like that was everything. We got the convoy rolling, switched on the walkie-talkies and set off towards St Petersburg. After another 300 m a cop Lada was waiting on the left. They started up immediately and set off after us. When they saw we were heading in the right direction, they left us alone. The right direction was towards the GAI. That's the kind of thing that on the whole globe you probably only find in Russia. (This year I can already say, not true. They've got it in Libya too...) On a straight stretch of the local "motorway" suddenly a 40 limit, then a booth, a barrier and cops with Kalashnikovs. Average occurrence about once every 10 km. This was the first time we'd seen it, so we were pretty spooked. Andrej and I drove through, then Andrej told me they'd been waving at me to come back. I didn't see it, luckily they didn't shoot. Worse was that Lenka announced to us in a shaking voice over the walkie-talkie that they'd been stopped. We waited for them a bit further on and we weren't in a laughing mood. Luckily they only asked whether they were carrying drugs and weapons.
So that was the crossing of the Russian border, which lasted from 10 00 in the morning until 21 15 in the evening. It could have been worse, but I don't know how.
We agreed that we'd had enough, the plan not to spend the night in Russia hadn't worked out (hahaha) and that once it started getting dark, we'd find a reasonable place to sleep and call it a day.
When around eleven at night we realised that it wasn't going to get dark any time soon, because it was still as light as at seven in the evening, we had to find a place right away. We were all weaving from shoulder to shoulder again.
We whipped off at the first turn-off into a village that came along. Of course Mr Murphy arranged that although before there had been one turn-off after another, now we had to wait about 15 km.
I'd never been able to imagine what total poverty looks like. Russian villages showed me it in full. A village consists of many "little houses", or rather sheds, knocked together from planks of various origin, unvarnished and greyed by the rain. In between 150 cm high weeds, wrecks of agricultural machinery, emaciated cows and here and there a barefoot person.
We drove into one such settlement, and whoever spotted us couldn't believe their eyes. Three hi-tech cars, average age a mere 13 years, you don't see that there just like that. We found the grandest little cottage in the village (stink of cow sh...t everywhere). It was grand in that you could still see the peeling coat of blue paint on it and almost all the windows had glass in them. In front of the little house there was just the right spot for three cars, now all we had to do was negotiate it. Martin and I went to try Russian hospitality. At first they shouted at us angrily: "što vy chatítě", but then they let us get a word in, and when they found out we were Czechs they quickly softened up again. There were two of them, an old toothless geezer who'd been in Prague during the war and a fat bearded old lady. Both were barefoot, the old lady with nicely blackened nails, the old man's mouth looked like a grenade had gone off in it and he was completely deaf. They both talked at once, the old man rambled something about the war and the Germans, the old lady quite sensibly about the current situation in Russia. Supposedly they're no worse off than under the communists. She recommended several nice places around St Petersburg to us (Pushkin, Petropavlovsk), which we didn't see because most of the crew were chickenshit. In the end they kindly allowed us to spend the night in front of their house, the old lady even offered us tea. We thanked them many times and backed the thanks up materially (coffee, cigs, vodka). Then we set up camp without worries, the girls cooked dinner and all of us at once couldn't get over our amazement. It was already midnight and still light. I walked around the village with the camera, some youngsters dressed for a disco went past. The occurrence of clothing surprised us quite a bit. We lay down totally dead, but fairly calm. The first night in that "scary" Russia.
P.S. Before bed the neighbour with a dog even came over to make sure we'd asked whether we could sleep there.
