In response to Eileen's (http://bearshapedsphere.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-bear-shaped-sphere.html) request for awful travel stories, I have a couple to share from Russia in the mid-90s:
(1) January 1995. St. Petersburg, Russia. It was the height of Russia’s wild west phase and I was there with twelve other students and one oft-inebriated professor from a large midwestern university. It was my first time outside the United States. I was 19. I was a blond sorority girl. I was fearless. I was stupid.
On our last night in St. Petersburg, our professor took us to a restaurant at which we were the only patrons. When we finished eating, the staff thoughtfully opened up one of the walls to reveal a make-shift casino. We, of course, set about gambling. And I, of course, lost my allotted money within five minutes but stayed there to have a couple drinks and watch everyone else.
A few of my fellow students decided to play roulette. They won on a couple spins. How lucky! Then a few more. Wow, they must really know what they're doing. And a few more. Hmm. The casino changed out croupiers to no avail. The students still won even though the casino manager now manned the table. Finally, the manager decided that enough was enough. The students, who won approximately $3,000 U.S. dollars, apparently broke the bank. There were accusations of cheating and the students were informed that they were not going to receive their hard-won money. The students, who were drunk & stupid, nevertheless demanded their money from the Russian casino manager. Did I mention that this was the mid-90s and we were in a casino that was hidden behind a wall in a strange restaurant? Things were beginning to get tense.
I looked out the window and saw four shiny black sedans drive up (I'm guessing that it's not easy to keep a black car shiny in St. Petersburg.) In my mind the cars are Mercedes, but I don’t really know – they certainly were not Ladas. The cars' occupants matched their vehicles -- all were wearing shiny black sunglasses and leather coats and gloves. They were carrying something black and shiny, too. The men in black (maybe I'll just go ahead and refer to them as gangsters), came into the casino and some of them gathered the women and took us downstairs, where we were made to stay.
By "made to stay," I mean that there were three men with large guns who would not let us leave. Not to our shuttle; not to the bathroom. It was, however, cold and I had left my coat upstairs. As you may remember, I was young and stupid, so I thought thought that I could flirt my way out of anything. I approached one of the armed young men and explained to him that I was cold and asked if I could please go upstairs to get my coat. He responded with a not-at-all friendly: "nyet." Not getting the hint or being frightened of the gun, I then asked him if he would go get my coat. You can guess the response. Surprisingly, he was not swayed by my midwestern charms and patented hair flip and coy head tilt.
Anyway, the climax of this story is a bit anticlimatic, which, I guess is a good thing. After a couple hours in which there was apparently negotiating to get our prize gamblers out of there, the professor and the rest of the boys, followed by gun-toting gangsters, came downstairs. We were escorted by the gangsters to our shuttle and hurried away to the train station. Oh, the boys did not get to keep their money and as they were walking out of the casino they saw the staff begin to take the roulette table apart.
(2) Well, after that experience, I obviously wanted to go back to Russia. So, the next year I studied abroad in eastern Finland for a semester. (I soon realized that I wasn’t cut out for the Arctic winter and I transferred to Holland for the Spring semester.) As part of the program, I traveled to Russia for study excursions. The first trip occurred only a few weeks after I arrived in Finland. I still believe that they sent the international students to Russia so that we would stop complaining about Finland (which, by the way is a lovely, yet strange, country). Anyway, as soon as we crossed the Russian/Finnish border, the roads became nearly impassable, which prompted the Russian professor who accompanied to us to assure us that his students had prayed that we would not die on the journey. Their prayers soon became much appreciated.
While the ride was an adventure, the real fun began upon our arrival in Petrozavodsk. We were to have host families, but the Russian university did not assign us to particular families. So, we got off the bus, lined up, and the Russian students chose whom they wanted as their host sibling. The boys picked girls and the girls picked boys. My host brother was named Ilya. I did not, however, stay with his family and it quickly became obvious that he had not told his family that he had a host sister. He placed me in the apartment of his friend's (who was also named Ilya) recently deceased grandmother. The Ilyas had spent my food money on vodka & other party supplies, as the apartment was apparently going to be the setting for many a wild evening.
Not wanting to spend the night in the apartment by myself, I asked if my friend Leah could join me. The Ilyas consulted with Leah’s host brother, who begrudgingly agreed to give her up after they decided that this meant that we were lesbians since we would have to sleep in the same foldout couch. They also compromised by promising that Leah & I would eat breakfast at her host brother’s house.
After the negotiations were complete, the boys left and locked the apartment door. When I say "locked the door," I mean that there were actually two doors into the apartment, the interior door locked from the inside and the exterior door (into the hallway) locked from the outside. We were, in fact, locked in, and could not leave until they came and got us. It has suddenly occurred to me that most of my time in Russia has been spent as a captive. Well, this happened every night for a week. And every morning we would join the other students, who were telling stories about their lovely host families. Every evening we would "host" a party for Ilya and his friends at our apartment and then get locked in for the night.
A couple weeks after we returned to Finland, I heard a rumor that Ilya was in town on some sort of field trip. He was apparently looking for me, vodka bottle in hand. I didn't answer when he knocked on my door.
