Today, November 10th,\u00a0is Police Day in Russia.\u00a0 That means they all want to go and get plastered tonight, and that requires money, which means they need to pull over more motorists from which to extract bribes.<\/p>\n
The police were out in full force in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk this morning, pulling over motorists left right and centre.\u00a0 I narrowly avoided a speed trap at 7:15am on my way to our training centre, but made a daft mistake on the way to the site an hour later.\u00a0 There is a large police checkpoint outside the town where the limit goes from 70 to 40 over a very short distance.\u00a0 I usually crawl through this section, but today\u00a0the road was clear and I went through the first gantry, several hundred metres from the actual checkpoint, at 57kph instead of 40kph.\u00a0 As a result, I got flagged over and hauled into the office.\u00a0 Problem was,\u00a0my Russian is crap but infinitely better than the English of the police: both the rough-looking captain and the twelve year old\u00a0with the submachinegun.\u00a0 The latter asked me if I spoke Russian, and I said a bit and if he speaks slowly I’ll understand a bit.\u00a0 However, I won’t understand bureacratic waffle designed to get me to pay you a bribe in order to avoid going to court.\u00a0 He asked me if I had a translator, I said I didn’t.\u00a0 He asked me if I had any at the office and I said I didn’t and they all speak\u00a0only Russian.\u00a0\u00a0Nobody was sure what to do.\u00a0 I was: sit there and speak only when spoken to.\u00a0 It’s a bit like being at school.\u00a0 The captain then asked if\u00a0my translators were all drunk, and I laughed at that.\u00a0 He really was a\u00a0jolly fellow, if only he didn’t look as though he was about to shoot me and bury me under his checkpoint we could have\u00a0been best buddies.\u00a0 Finally, he handed me back my documents and bid me goodbye.\u00a0 I guess I was one of the lucky ones\u00a0today of all days.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, November 10th,\u00a0is Police Day in Russia.\u00a0 That means they all want to go and get plastered tonight, and that requires money, which means they need to pull over more motorists from which to extract bribes. The police were out … Continue reading