In their own words

Following up on my earlier post with a couple of tales of Moscow life from Americans who live there, I've received permission from a friend to post her friend's story of passport woe, as emailed to the folks back home. This one is from St. Petersburg:

Well, as I was stretched out on my windowsill, looking out at the Russian sky, I began to think about the different experiences a young woman may have when traveling abroad. Many in my position, I suppose, have used such an opportunity to meet and fall in love with some local man.

They would then stroll through his native city together, she on his arm, learning of the soul of this new and exciting country with the advantage of an attentive and handsome guide. I, however, do not believe in such mundane foolishness. No, no, I feel a far more productive use of one's time and the ideal route to a thoroughly enlightening visit to a foreign country is to have one's passport stolen within the first week. This is especially good if the country you are visiting requires a visa for exit. Yes, I managed to accomplish this last week while strolling down the street near my house. My school needed my passport to register me, and it had been returned earlier that day. When I noticed it in my bag, I thought, "Uh, oh! I sure wouldn't want something to happen to my passport if my bag were to get stolen...I know, I'll put it in the pocket of my pants where I can keep track of it better and would certainly feel it if someone were to take it!" Well, apparently my butt is a lot more numb than I gave it credit for, and I didn't realize the passport was gone for about 10 minutes.

After searching all my belongings, returning to apartment, and crying on the floor for 5 or 10 minutes, I call my school's director and the US Consulate.

The application for a new passport cost 100 dollars, which I regretted paying, but had no choice. The visa poses more of problem, and I was warned that the Russian government might decide at any moment to throw me out of the country.

So I made sure to see the Hermitage on Sunday.

Anyway, the person who stole the passport then called the school with a really lame story about "some guy" finding it on the street and giving it to him. Anyway, he demanded $300 dollars within 30 minutes, or he would sell it to someone else. The US Consulate then called him and threatened him, and demanded he return it at once. He, of course, then quickly "disappeared" from phone contact. The US Consulate instructed me to go to the city police headquarters
and make a formal statement.

So in the end, this lovely adventure gave me the rare opportunity to spend the evening inside a Russian police station, which is something you really wouldn't be able to pay to be allowed to do!

The police officers were more or less like those in the US, except they were smoking constantly and doing shots of vodka every few minutes. I thought they were joking when they asked if I wanted a drink, but they then produced a huge bottle of vodka and finished it within the 4 hours it took them to fill out the 1 page report. The station itself was something like a dungeon, with heavy, dented metal doors, and hand and footprints smeared on the concrete walls. On my way out, a heavyset officer with one tooth, and only one tooth, slipped me his phone number and wiggled his eyebrows. If I get really lonely next weekend, who knows, maybe I'll give him a ring. It's more attention than I've gotten in quite some time.

Oh, yeah, as to the Hermitage, it is everything they say--gorgeous, overwhelming, enormous. After a few hours, though, I became exhausted with all the beauty and began looking for ugly things or thinking of inappropriate thoughts about the paintings and sculptures (ie "Well, well...what's HE doing?" or "Smell me finger", etc). So I'll have to return when I'm more mature, maybe next weekend if they don't kick me out of the country and I'm not on a hot date with a hefty, single-toothed, heavily intoxicated police officer.

In the interest of keeping things "fair and balanced," and just so that people don't get the impression that Russia is all about pickpockets and scams, I have a more optimistic tale involving a lost passport. This one is from my own experience back in early 1999. While spending my winter break in Novosibirsk visiting an American friend who was teaching there at the time, I lost my passport - and didn't even require a pickpocket to do so. We later determined that it must have fallen out of my pocket while I was wrestling in a snowbank with my friend on the way home from the bar(s).

After several days of panicked visits to the local authorities and marginally successful attempts to contact the US consulate in Ekaterinburg, I was in a state of despair. Naturally, you can't travel from Novosibirsk to Ekaterinburg without a valid passport. And getting the police to issue me a document confirming my document's loss was difficult - remember that this was all taking place during the week after new year's, when, as one of the people I met on that trip told me, "all of Russia is drinking," and even at the US consulate everyone's on vacation. Then, I think on the very day I went to the AmEx office to get some extra cash - a bailout package from the parents at home - I learned that someone had fliered the entire campus (I was in Akademgorodok, not Novosibirsk proper) with leaflets announcing they had found an American passport, with only an email for contact info.

I emailed the guy, and we arranged to meet at the main entrance to NGU. I went with a Russian friend (who was then a student and is now a successful oil geologist), just in case it was a shakedown. As it turned out, the good samaritan didn't want any money, but I still gave him as much as I could spare (which was not much). Lesson learned? Good things can happen in Russia, sometimes.