So here I was, a mere million miles away from home, in a country where capitalism had just landed. The first sight of Russia was more than a shock. Armed guards with beer bellies and mullets alongside AK47s waiting next to the Visa/Passport Check In area, both of them old, chain smoking and hassling people who might have uttered something under their breath. Anyways, we all put brave faces and pass the derelict check-in area, leaving the 1970s era deadbeat airport to go outside and wait for our coach.
We stepped outside, expecting awe-inspiring buildings and statues of importance, a vast land of beauty and Polka music. Well, we got the latter, and instead of the former, what our group first saw was areas of half finished construction sites, a furore of ridiculously loud congestive Russian traffic and to top it all off, the most awfully shit Russian ballad singers of all time on some radio station. I nursed my jet lag with my Russian hat and tried desperately to fall asleep. All I kept seeing and blinking at were snippets of countryside, upon unfinished construction, upon countryside, with the odd occasional gypsy on the road or on a horse, and countless Lada’s.
To say Russians don’t drive well isn’t an understatement, it’s a massive one. When I say this, I mean, they drive like lunatics. To them, there is no Highway Code. Imagine Mad Max 2, then multiply the amount of cars by a billion. It literally is Lada eat Lada out there. ‘Get out my way, bitch or I’ll make you wish you were never born’ is a friendly way of putting it. The coach nearly crashes twice on the way because of these spectacular stunt driver types on the roads, a car missing its front doors jutting from lane to lane jumping without any indication in a beat up 1950s piece-of-shit-mobile, with, I kid you not, tables strapped on top of its roof.
As we move from mundane and crap countryside into urbanized areas, the amount of these Mad Max wannabes multiply like flies around a turd, with taxis simply are shells, two to three doors and a few under pressured tires. Road rage is putting it lightly. Honestly, Ben Hur ain’t got shit on Russia. As we enter St. Petersberg, I start to gaze at the eccentricity and bombasticity of the brilliant architecture, the immense space filled and surrounded by noise, commotion and light. I’m for the first in many times on this trip, literally stunned.
However, what stuns me the most isn’t the drivers. It isn’t this stench of 1970s. It isn’t even the whole Twisted Metal feel of the roads and the insane car skills on display, no. What shocks me happens directly outside my hotel. As we arrive near the entrance of the hotel, a huge beige block of glass and concrete, we all bear witness to some poor bastard lying on the ground in the middle of the road (No, no Tenacious D impressions, please.), who a mere 10 minutes before we arrives was hit by, yeah you guessed it, a Lada.
His body lays sprawled on the floor, the most awkward position ever. A shattered and broken body left limp and alone, a mess of what was a man, not a single person trying to help him or go to see if he’s still breathing. He’s missing a shoe. 25 feet from where his body hit the ground, his shoe lays askew and upright against a sidewalk. I can’t believe it, I expected troika dancers, not a casualty from a hit and run.
But, once again, a story wouldn’t be without an ending. The final scene which caused everyone to laugh nervously wasn’t just the dead guy. It was the gypsy lady coming across to see if he’s alive, then taking his sprawled shopping and walking off without a care in the world. Welcome to Russia.
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