Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
have jobs for everything in Russia, and these two guys were the official guards of
the local high-security carpark. They were at work - strictly no alcohol - so rather
than the usual bottle of vodka, we were sharing a pot of tea - from shot glasses! We
drained our cups, said goodbye and I hurried down the steps to find Tim waiting
with Sergei. They'd met the night before, whereupon Sergei had invited us to stay
with his family.
Sergei didn't have a car, and had decided that the route to his flat, buried deep
within a suburb of identical Soviet apartment blocks, was too difficult to explain.
We walked to a busy intersection looking for a taxi and ended up flagging down an
empty city bus for an on-the-spot charter ride.
Sergei was an enterprising engineer who, among other things, worked in the
design department of a local munitions factory. We arrived late, but sat up for
a long time, drinking, eating and making merry with his friends and family. We
watched a long, wobbly and drawn-out home video shot the year before when
Sergei had taken a barge 3000 kilometres up the Ob River. He'd been selling crates
of alcohol, cigarettes and other such 'vital provisions' to the isolated villages along
its banks and had made a huge profit. But by the time they'd sailed back home,
all of the money had been completely swallowed up by the bribes and 'protection'
payments that he'd been obliged to make to various armed representatives of the
vodka and tobacco industries, as well as to regional mobsters. The moral, he ex-
plained, was not to get involved in anything big enough to attract the attention of
the Mafia.
He spent a day escorting us around the city, showing us the sights. It was inter-
esting but frustrating. My first priority on reaching a city had always been to find
some place where I could log on to the Internet and sate my longing for contact
with Nat. Today, however, we were guests, and our hosts were spending a lot of
time and effort entertaining us. We wandered round the city eating ice-cream in the
cold wind and straining to understand information boards in local museums. My
need to get in touch with Nat had to wait until the next day, and somehow I man-
aged to divert all of my pent-up frustration squarely onto Tim.
We spent several days in Ekaterinburg. Sergei and his family were wonderful
hosts who made us feel at home in their flat. One of Sergei's friends took us to see
the local lake and nature reserve, still snowy and cold, then drove around the slushy
suburban streets filming from the car window as we pedalled along.
On the third night of our stay, we had dinner with another young couple that
we'd met on the road the previous week. They picked us up in a brand new car
