 |
| August 6/7th 2006. SCR rise late, Rich sporting a technicolour black eye of impressive proportions, breakfast in a Mexican cafe, and locate a mobile phone shop. The staff are immensely friendly, and help them to attract a UAZ-load of cowboy-esque policemen, who tour the scenes of the crimes before eventually taking them to the local (but not that local) police station, where SCR hope to report their troubles swiftly and receive the crime numbers necessary to claim on travel insurance. This being Russia however, obtaining these numbers requires the following, broken here into a series of statistics: Hours spent in police station or in the company of the police: 21.5 Signatures required (each): 21 Visits to the crime scenes: 3 Round trips from the police station in police vehicles: 6 Greatest number of policemen poking around the CC at any one time: 11 Russian trees slaughtered as a result of the required paperwork (estimated): 3 Thanks to the amazing services of Helen and Katia, who are true guardian angels throughout the bewildering fiasco, SCR finally get the crime numbers, and 35 pages of official report as an added (but unwanted) bonus. Memorable moments: - Rich being x-ray'd in the face when the police insist on a full medical report. - The driver of a Police UAZ making a U-turn on a busy six-lane road whilst simultaneously smoking and talking on his mobile telephone. - Driving to the city's university and waiting outside in the police UAZ for 40 minutes whilst the officer in charge takes a nap. - Being raced across the city at unsafe speeds in a official Volga, subjected to Russian hip-hop at a painful volume. Golden quotes: Katya: "Russian food is tasty but unpronounceable." Russian man hurrying through waiting room: "Please excuse me for Rush'n!" SCR ponder: How many Russian policemen does it take to change a light-bulb? A: at least 50, but then they don't bother as there is too much paperwork involved (we have photographs to prove this). |
 |
 |
Clive Aid
Contacts
Clive's Corner
Current galavants:
'08 Iron Curtain Tour
Future galavants:
'09 India?
Past galavants:
07 - Nurburgring
'07 - Banjul-Zwickau
'06 - Swindon-Vladivostok
'05 Plymouth-Banjul