The Battle For Chechnya: Grozny 1, Moscow 0

Brief Background

The Muslim territory of Chechnya was once part of the Soviet Union, until its collapse in 1991. In 1994, Chechnya declared its independence from Moscow, triggering an all-out war. In August 1996, a humiliated Russia declared a ceasefire, bringing about a de facto independence and a peace ‘deal’. Chechnya is a bitterly poor nation and devoutly Muslim. Much of the drive to be independent from its Russian shackles carries with it an Islamic component; the most radical anti-Russians are those who have declared a jihad against the powers in Moscow. For hundreds of years, Russia has fought to subdue the peoples of the Caucasus, and the latest round of fighting is yet another act in that power play.

Another Strange Journey Begins…

Day #1. Monday 20th. January 1997 07:30:

Crawled out of bed and faced the cold, grey Moscow morning outside my bedroom window, which had now become something of a ritual. I never tired of the view, towering sixteen stories above Akademika Korolova’s four lanes, dominated by that imposing TV tower. Today it was snowing, and I was going to Chechnya.

Conscripted Russian soldiers had been known to injure themselves rather than face a tour in the staunch Muslim breakaway republic, where allegedly at least seven of them were killed each day, before the army retreated. Once again Grozny, the most heavily bombed capital on the planet, braced itself for another influx of infidels – but this time it was not the Russian Army doing the damage, but hundreds of frenzied foreign journalists, all keen to grab their scoops, soundbites and background stories as Chechnya’s election preparations went into full swing – the first election since the bloody civil war began two years ago.

After a strong coffee to blow away the cobwebs, I threw the bare essentials into my travel bag; toiletries, warm clothes, a novel, an emergency roll of toilet paper, a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce and a pack of cards. By 09:40, Chris, myself and the drivers had loaded the heavy flight cases containing our ‘portable’ Betacam edit suite into the van and Misha was behind the wheel, weaving us through the morning traffic to Vnukovo Airport.

Once there, we had to pay every step of the way – to get the cases from the van to check-in the porters charged 200,000 rubles, followed by 1,900,000 rubles for excess baggage and a further 400,000 to another group of porters to load them onto the plane. One way tickets to Grozny were priced at 700,000 rubles each. Now the waiting game began.

It took ages to complete the convoluted check-in procedure and do the scanner shuffle as other TV crews scrambled and shoved and shouted at the baggage staff to load their gear. It was touch and go for a moment as Misha negotiated with the porters, who in turn badgered the harassed check-in woman – who was busy arguing with the CBS crew. She was determined to stand firm on the ridiculous regulation of no piece of luggage over 25 kilos – which was totally ridiculous when we all had heavy TV ENG (Electronic News Gathering in plain English) gear and edit packs. One look at all the flight cases, camera kits, and sound gear told us this was going to be one seriously overloaded flight. Could the plane even lift off with all this gear, especially if the porters were falsifying the actual weight just to get it past that screaming woman? Chris and I looked at each other; oh well he doesn’t seem worried.

By 12:15 we were struggling against the cold wind with our hand luggage (2 cameras, 2 camera bags plus the wide angle lens case) onto the bus, off the bus only to huddle against the biting cold at the foot of the steps to the ageing Tupolov 134. Waiting to board an apparently ready aircraft is a mysterious Russian ritual that no-one seems to have any good reason for. Then as you finally, thankfully climb the steps, struggling toward the warmth just ahead, the flight attendant has to check your ticket – just in case you somehow managed to sneak through the all the other passport checks and stamps.

Once inside, it was the usual you-got-seat-numbers-but-scramble-to-sit-anywhere routine. Inflight ’service’ was a small cup of tea and a tiny packet of wafer biscuits. More like war rations than airline food.

 

14:40: We made a successful, but bumpy touchdown at Grozny airport. That was the easy part. When the plane’s engines shut down, so did the air conditioning; we sweated for 45 minutes in the ever increasing stuffiness and heat, while the flight before us finished with the airport’s only set of airline stairs.

 

Another hour or so and we had our bags and equipment – which had been chucked onto the back of a truck and driven around to the front of the airport – everyone grabbed their stuff in a mad free-for-all rush. We crammed our stuff into three small Zhigulis and drove out of the airport, along streets lined with the shells of bombed out buildings. This wasn’t a city so much as the obliterated ruins of one.

The drive gave me my first opportunity to glimpse just a tiny fraction of the damage done to Grozny, the result of many months of tank barrages by the Russian Army.

I was gobsmacked by the sheer scale of the devastation; no structure was left unscarred, riddled with bullet and bomb holes like concrete Swiss cheese. Not a single window intact.

 

I kept muttering, “Holy shit,” while Chris and Misha smiled to themselves; they’d seen it all before on previous trips. The scenes on either side of the muddy, pot-holed, bumpy road reminded me of a set from a WWII movie, but the centre of town was a film set straight out of War Of The Worlds. Not one building had escaped devastation, as far as the eye could see. The whole city had the appearance of a bizarre post nuclear theme park. It suddenly seemed very apt that the Russian word for ’sad’ – ‘groozny ‘ – was almost identical to ‘Grozny’.

Steely-eyed Chechen soldiers, young and old, in full camouflage combat kit, toting Kalashnikovs, criss-crossed with bullet belts, roamed the streets among the shell-shocked residents, watching everything as they calmly went about their daily routine.

We waited an hour while our accreditations were prepared. You could tell the first timers here – we all had gaping mouths and glazed stares.

As night fell and the temperature plummeted, we arrived at our lodgings; the private residence of a local family who had hired out several rooms in the main part of their house to us. The Dutch journalists had arrived the day before and organised our rooms. They told us it was a great place with lots of room, but – it also had the dubious honour of having the hottest toilet on the planet! And they weren’t exaggerating.

The loo also contained the gas boiler that supplied the heating for the whole house, consequently the temperature inside must have been at least a scorching 50°C! Although the others were horrified at having to endure this searing Death Valley heat every time they had to spend a penny, I personally found it invigorating, almost like a sauna or a typical summer’s day in Queensland.

We promptly unpacked the flight cases and set up our portable edit suit; two Betacam videotape machines, a small colour monitor, speaker, audio mixer and microphone, all sitting on top of two tables. And within an hour, presto – one instant field production unit. Just add two cameramen and their kits.

The taped-over smashed windows served to remind us that a war had raged through here, plus the bedroom door of the Dutch chaps was splintered by bullet holes – as if the Terminator himself had blitzed his way through the house.

Then, at long last, came dinner, served in the kitchen by two Chechen babushkas. Tasty vegetable soup followed by a kind of bean mayonnaise salad, bread, salami and my Louisiana hot sauce. We hit the sack early as we had an early start in the morning. I eventually got to sleep, in spite of Chris’ snoring and the ominous bullet hole in the wall beside my bed…

Day #2

Up at 06:30, a quick breakfast that consisted of a boiled egg, bread, salami and two cups of coffee, then out with our driver to pick up Medina, a Chechen lady who is part of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia. She represents the mothers who are desperately battling against the authorities to learn the fate of their sons, soldiers who are either POW or killed in action. They simply wanted to know where their sons or their bodies are, whether they were alive or dead. No-one knows. even the army allegedly, yet another indication of just how chaotic this war was.

I should mention at this point that, unlike other TV crews, we were driving around without the protection of any armed bodyguards, which made us vulnerable to attack or kidnapping. I am sure the producers had their reasons for this, but I was never made aware of them.

After some vigorous discussion between the driver, his companion, and our Dutch correspondent Peter, we zig-zagged around the bombed out streets until we eventually found the apartment block where Medina lived. More waiting around, then we were on our way (minus the driver’s adviser) to the first of many interviews and locations we would cover over the next ten days to paint a backdrop of Chechnya in relation to the forthcoming elections. We were headed for a secret location about 15 klicks outside the city, where we hoped to interview a young Russian conscript POW.

We drove through a maze of back streets to a hidden Chechen army outpost. When the soldiers brought their captive out, we learned that he, like many other Russian POWs, were being well looked after, not harshly treated, and not exactly being held against their wishes. This was partly due to the fact that a lot of Russian soldiers were conscripts and did not agree with this war; they had fled their platoons when the killing started. Better to run than be fried alive in their tanks as the Chechens picked them off one by one with their anti-tank missiles – they knew exactly where the weak points on the Russian tanks were. Therefore, as far as the Russian authorities are concerned, this guy was officially a deserter – and the last thing he wanted was to be released to face the music – in this case a court martial followed by a stiff prison sentence. In fact, he had already converted to Islam and hoped to settle eventually in Chechnya when he was released. This became a familiar story; many Russian POW’s are now valuable political pawns as Russia and Chechnya try to justify this completely illogical and unnecessary war.

Then we headed back into town, to an infamous Russian torture prison known as PAP-1, a former bus repair depot, now a graveyard full of rusting, burnt out buses. Unspeakable atrocities had been committed against Chechen prisoners here in the process of interrogation by brutal Russian soldiers.

Medina led us into the pitch black depths of this hell hole, and it was so dark I had to use camera light as a torch to show the way as she led us along the narrow stone corridor between the tiny, stinking, rat-infested cells where many prisoners had been forced to endure their inhuman imprisonment. If ever there was a hell, this was it. I felt distinctly uneasy down here, my skin crawled as I could almost hear the screams echoing around the blood-stained walls as I was filming Medina giving her graphic descriptions of the brutal cruelty of the Russian soldiers as they tortured their Chechen victims.

If it wasn’t for the fact that this was work, and that I was being paid to capture images of real-world situations, I would have refused to come down here. And now I couldn’t wait to get out. The place made my skin crawl; it felt like the pure horror and evil of this place was seeping out of the walls, trying to smother me. My camera tape ran out so I had to return to the outside world, load a new one and return with our aged Chechen guide and shoot more gory close-ups of the iron cross welded to the wall where the prisoners were tied during their torture, and the blood stains on the wall that didn’t bear thinking about. I half expected to see a skull grinning at me in the darkness through the piles of rubbish on the floor. I shot the bare minimum in a state of numbness and got the hell out of there.

Ghosts and paranormal phenomena has never freaked me out, but this was different, this was real evil, the sort that makes men kill and torture each other.

Back upstairs we filmed graffiti slogans painted by the prisoners in bleak unfurnished rooms. We interviewed Medina outside the prison and finally, gladly, left the horrors behind us – after I’d collected half a dozen bullet shells from the thousands that were strewn across the area.

We had a quick lunch, then took off to film polling booths and posters of the candidates. We waited at the headquarters of one of the main contenders, the infamous Islamic rebel leader Shamil Basayev, but he didn’t turn up. We returned to base and sent our driver off on a secret and urgent mission while we logged our day’s rushes.

Within an hour he returned with cans of Danish beer and bottles of Russian vodka that he had dug up at one of the markets – under the counter of course. This is an Islamic country and alcohol is outlawed here, even for us infidels, but the laws are somewhat flexible.

Later we returned to Basayev’s polling station, and waited with a few other TV crews. I chewed the fat with Swedish TV colleague Henrik. By 20:00 we gave up and returned home for dinner, a yummy potato soup followed by a tasty Chechen chicken and carrot dish washed down by cold beer and vodka.

Day #3

Crawled out of bed to discover there was no hot water, in spite of our toilet sauna. And it’s snowing outside.

Again we visited Basayev’s headquarters, where we found his soldiers watching home videos of last year’s fighting in the forests. He wasn’t due to appear today, so we took off to wait outside the Foreign Ministry on the off chance that we will be able to interview the Minister for the Interior about the official policy on the Russian POW/deserter situation.

The streets were patrolled by young Chechen men in their fatigues toting Kalashnikov rifles, spitting and acknowledging each other, while in contrast, beautiful young Chechen girls strolled around in their colourful dresses, shopping and going about their daily routines as though was normal. And then it hit me; this war had been raging for the last two years. This was normality for them. Devastation was everywhere I looked. Not one building had escaped target practice by Russian tanks.

Life in the ruins: note the small market behind me.

Day #4

Early start as Geert and I were driven out to Naurskaya, a small town in the neighbouring province of Ichkeria. A bone-shaking journey as our small Lada car bounced and bumped its way through a million deep potholes – the result of tank tracks tearing up the roads. I began filming the small marketplace as Geert wandered off to rustle up some people to interview. Within half an hour, I was forced to stop shooting when the sheriff arrived and demanded we accompany him to the local police station to register.

He wanted to assign us one of his bodyguards, not so much to stop us from filming certain places or people, but rather as a response to the fact that two Russian journalists had been taken hostage on Monday, so they had orders to protect the foreign media. The last thing the new government wanted was these elections to be tainted by the capture of the press.

So, after a lengthy procedure of filling in forms and discussing our proposed movements, we were assigned a guard and off we went to interview the head of the local administration. After that we interviewed a Cossack chap about the post war situation, shot some exteriors of a couple of rebuilt mosques and sought opinions from the women serving behind the market stalls. One tiny little old lady took one look at Geert’s six foot plus frame, and told us that the only reason the Russian soldiers had spared her was that she was too small! As the sun set we headed off back to Grozny; I braved possible death by explosion, fired up the clunky old gas water heater in the bathroom and finally enjoyed the much-needed luxury of a hot shower.

Day #5

Woke up to discover it had been snowing during the night. I spent the entire day indoors editing the long documentary style story for the Dutch network. Finished by 18:00, and after dinner we popped into the EBU outpost and met up with another Chris (ITN cameraman-editor) and journalist Lawrence from London’s Channel 4, plus their Russian driver/fixer Sergei. After much arm-twisting, they came back to our place for a few beers and vodkas as we swapped war stories.

Day #6

During the first part of the morning, I inserted Geert’s voice track into the Dutch story I had edited yesterday, which effectively finished the piece.

At 11am we drove off to Grozny airport to film the arrival of the OSCE team of international observers, some of whom hailed from Holland. Their task was to oversee the running of the voting process and make sure everything was above board. As each of the two jets taxied up to the arrivals hall, the waiting cameramen, journalists with microphones and still photographers would rush the passengers as they streamed from the plane.

It was a classic bumfight; everyone shoved and jostled everybody else as we all tried to record the observer’s soundbites. Our Dutch journalist Peter spat the dummy when a Russian asshole wouldn’t let us into the arrivals hall to interview one of the Dutch observers – even though we had the correct accreditation. He maintained the stupid excuse that there were already too many cameras in there. He was just being pig-stubborn and obstructive to feed his over-inflated ego.

Eventually we were let in as everyone was leaving, but we managed a quick interview and returned to base, where I then edited the Dutch news story that was to be beamed out at 19:30 that evening. After which, ITN Chris and Lawrence turned up at our place for another late night boozing session …

Day #7

Surfaced at 9ish and edited the Belgian news story with Johan. After lunch I spent a relaxed afternoon with Geert as our taxi driver Ahmed drove us on a photo safari around the ruins of Grozny.

In one of the main streets, I photographed a bullet hole ridden street sign that read “Ulitsa Mira” – ‘mira’ was a word which I already knew since the main arterial road which connected our office to the city in Moscow was Prospect Mira; which ironically translates as ‘Peace’ or ‘World’ Street, depending on which meaning you assign to ‘mira’. When Ahmed saw me staring at the sign, he ripped it off the blitzed building and presented it to me. I still have it at home today.

My ultimate souvenir of Grozny.

Back to base for a sauna in the toilet and a shower. The Chechen ladies prepared a very tasty chicken and carrot dish for our dinner. After accompanying Johan to the EBU base so he could transmit his news story to Brussels, we had a quiet evening at home with the beer and vodka.

Day 8: Election day

Up at 06:00 and off to one of the local polling stations to film the arrival of one of the Dutch observers at 7am. I was frozen to the bone as we waited in the subzero full moonlit pre-dawn darkness. Once the observer and his contingent arrived, the voting became a kind of Carry On madness as everyone crowded into the tiny room, eager to cast their vote.

The staff were also eager to show us press that no-one was being coerced, that all the voting was done in complete freedom and in accordance with the international rules. At the same time, the officials were arguing with the soldiers sent to guard the Dutch observer; they didn’t want the room crammed with machine-gun-toting men in case there was an accident. The soldiers stood firm proclaiming that they had to stay close to the observers, after all they were just following their orders.

An old man, who would be the first to vote, was caught up in all the shouting and hysteria and mayhem as he couldn’t read or understand the voting form. I filmed him as a burly soldier stood with him behind the curtain of the polling booth and helped him tick the appropriate boxes – which gave the impression that this little old man was being forced to vote at gunpoint. The absurdity of the shot made me chuckle as I filmed. After I had enough footage of two polling booths and vox pops, we returned to base for breakkie and a kip.

At 17:00 I edited a news story for the Dutch and beamed it out from the EBU site, where the Mayor of Grozny, a bearded chap called Zelimkhan Yanderbiev made his appearance, surrounded by a phalanx of heavily armed bodyguards, for a live interview. With military precision, the guards took up their positions as Yanderbiev stood in front of the camera outside in the freezing cold as he was miked up. They watched everyone like hawks, checking out the roof also. I had the distinct feeling that if anyone made even the slightest suspicious move, they would open up their machine guns and waste everyone in sight – too many movies I think.

That night saw celebratory drinks back at base. Mission accomplished, the vote was unanimous; a job well done.

Day #9

A sunny but cold day as we as we packed our gear and de-rigged the edit suite. Geert and I made a quick trip to the local markets and bought some souvenirs. We packed our bags, shoved everything into three cars and drove to the airport.

By 14:00 we were strapped into our seats, TV cameras tucked underneath us and airborne thirty minutes later. Chris had the window seat. The stewardess appeared at 17:30 and announced that we would be landing in twenty minutes at Domodedovo Airport, a domestic shithole on the southern outskirts of Moscow. We felt the plane descend, but as we approached the runway, the engines revved up and we gained altitude suddenly – landing aborted. Chris and I exchanged looks as the pilot swung around for another attempt. Chris informed me that it was pitch black outside and snowing quite heavily.

We circled in a holding pattern for half an hour, and descended again … the engines whined … up we went again.

Chris watched out the window and said “Nope. Not this time. Try again.”

And I thought, “Shit, for Christ’s sake just put this bloody plane down.”

For the first time in my life I started to experience what I think was a panic attack; my entire body buzzed with pins and needles and my breathing was laboured – even though mentally I felt OK, I had lost control of my body in a fight-or-flee response. I really thought I was going to pass out if we didn’t land soon. A very strange feeling indeed.

The pilot swung around, and in we came again – this time we both watched as the snowbound runway flashed past beneath us, illuminated in the bright runway lights. The plane lurched as the wheels hit hard. I had visions of us skidding sideways along the runway and tumbling end over end and bursting into flames – too many disaster movies again. But thank (insert preferred diety here) we slowed and braked; down in one piece. As we waited to leave the plane, the stewardess casually informed us that we were not at Domodedovo, due to heavy snow, and had been diverted to Vnukovo, way over the other side of Moscow! Our drivers would be waiting at the wrong airport, unless it had been announced, which considering the usual level of Russian organisation, seemed unlikely.

We hauled our arses off the plane, down the slippery stairs in the snow and made it into the terminal. Chris phoned our drivers and found out they were already enroute to us. Soon we’d be home sweet home.

But just at that moment, Johan got a call from his head office in Brussels and was asked to do a rushed news story straight away. I was chosen (no rest for the wicked) to go with him to the EBU office in Moscow and edit the story.

So we grabbed a taxi, but by the time we arrived, an hour later, they’d changed their minds and cancelled. So we had our driver pick us up and take us home at 20:00. Home at long last.

I relaxed in a hot bath with a glass of Cognac, and relived my first taste of Chechnya.

Would I ever return?

Probably. One day.

Bury My Heart In Bilibino

My First Strange Journey

Wed. 6th. November 1996: Day #1
My first two months in Moscow were relatively peaceful and without incident. Apart from President Boris Yeltsin’s heart problems, nothing much had happened as far as international news was concerned. I’d had plenty of time to settle into a cozy, comfortable expat lifestyle; drinking and womanising with the lads on Friday night’s BNO (Boy’s Night Out) had quickly become a well-entrenched tradition. I’d managed to figure out how to drive to one of the western supermarkets, so gathering food and beer was no longer a problem. And I’d even acquired a beautiful ‘pillow dictionary’ so I was learning more about the real Russia. Life was good. Little did I know that this was just the proverbial calm before the storm.

The reds and browns of autumn were soon replaced by winter’s white blanket. On a quiet November afternoon, my tranquil routine was shattered; I was given my first real assignment. On a cold Wednesday afternoon at four pm, the call came through; go east young man, accompanied by your two journalists, Stefan Blowfart (Belgian), and Geert Beetrootkamp (Dutchman) on an expedition to Russia’s far east, to Bilibino, a one reindeer town in Chukotka, on the remote far eastern tip of Siberia, home to the ancient and mystic Chukchi tribes, Russia’s indigenous Eskimo people. Make this epic journey to shoot footage for a TV documentary on the deepening economic, political and social problems of this forbidding, forgotten Soviet outpost.

As there is only one flight a week, we hit the road within the hour. I frantically threw my Berghaus cold weather gear, Canadian snowboots and toothbrush into an overnight bag, and packed only the essential camera equipment so we could travel as light as possible.

We were driven in a mad rush through the chaotic rush-hour traffic to Vnukovo, one of Moscow’s smaller domestic airports. We made a brief stop on the way, so that Stefan could dive into a bank and exchange a few thousand US dollars for roubles, becoming an instant millionaire. This is the land of cash, plastic is not accepted or understood in the wild frontier that we’re plunging headlong into; on such trips the journalists must carry cash in dollars and roubles to pay for everything. Guess that made us his bodyguards.

It had taken me several attempts to remove all the metal objects from my pockets before successfully passing through the metal detector. Even though I kept showing the stern-looking woman that it was my belt buckle that was setting off the alarm, she insisted I go through all my pockets. By 1845 we made it onto the tarmac, where we huddled with the other passengers in the drizzling rain at the bottom of the stairs to the plane. As we stood there getting soaked, I wondered why they kept us waiting. But one does not ask why in Russia. Once onboard, we had to rush and grab the nearest empty seats – there’s no such thing as reserved seats on Russian airlines, even though we had seat-numbered tickets – it’s a mad scramble to claim your seat!

By 1940 we were airborne to the melodic strains of Glenn Miller, which put everyone in the mood. We were on a privatised Aeroflot service, so we were served with very basic food and complimentary drinks throughout the flight.

At 2320 we landed at Igarka, deep in central northern Siberia for a refuelling stop. This was a very surreal experience; in the middle of the night we were herded from the warmth and relative comfort of our seats onto the frigid -30C tarmac! I was curious about how it would feel. As I descended the stairs to the tarmac, it was like walking into a butcher’s cold room and then I noticed a strange sensation in my nostrils – I couldn’t inhale the frigid air through my mouth; my lungs literally froze. I realised that this weird feeling was the mucus lining of my nose freezing. Of course I was experiencing something that is familiar to anyone who is used to such conditions, and in fact, I later learned this is the body’s thermometer by which one judges temperatures – if you get that tickling, crisp feeling in the nose then you know it’s below -15°C.

We shuffled through the clouds of condensation billowing from our noses into the building that serves as Igarka’s transit lounge; a cramped, old building with worn seats and smelly, filthy squat toilets (how women cope with such primitive loos in all their coats and layers is beyond me). No kiosk, no coffee, no snacks, no nothing. We just sat around and stared at each other. Geert joined two guys nearby and began chatting – Stefan and I surmised that he had somehow spotted the deputy directors of Bilibino’s nuclear power station and one of the goldmines. This contact was to prove very fortuitous later on.

By 0100 we were in the air again, bound for the eastern Siberian border town of Pevek. I managed some kind of tortured sleep in the cramped seat, and as the sun came flooding through the windows at 0300 I realised we had flown several hours into the future and caught up with the dawn of the 6th. of November. We were awakened for landing at 0420, and soon we found ourselves standing around the arrival hall, waiting to retrieve our bags and obtain the necessary permissions for us to continue onto Bilibino, which is closed to most foreigners. My TV camera was kept with me at all times as hand luggage, plus the loaded down camera bag, so that if our bags were lost, we could still shoot.

But we were screwed by the system that is still firmly entrenched since Soviet times. Because we were in a border zone, all foreigners (especially journalists) are required to be registered and the authorities require all sorts of information on what we were doing there and where we were likely to be going etc. Not necessarily to prevent us from going anywhere or covering any aspect of the local situation, but more as a habitual policy of recording all traveller’s movements, keeping tabs on our whereabouts etc. And, although we had all the necessary documents and permission, the border guards at the airport were completely unprepared; they had no idea how to process us – even though we weren’t the first foreigners to travel into the area, these guys had never dealt with all this red tape before. So we waited.

Geert kept talking and filling in form after form. The guards had to ring up their head office to try and figure out what they were supposed to do. Stefan enquired about the next leg, our flight to Bilibino. I stood around guarding our hand luggage. Then the directors Geert had been chatting to at Igarka offered us a free ride on their plane that was due to takeoff any minute!

Thankfully Stefan managed to grab our bags, and Geert told the guards that we couldn’t wait any longer – he grabbed our passports, visas and accreditations and we literally sprinted through the security check to the plane – an old prop-driven job, and this throbbing, droning old clunker carried us high into the night air. At this point the whole journey had the definite smell of an Indiana Jones adventure. The plane was freezing inside, our breath billowing out of our mouths, I sat there with my leather Russian helicopter pilot helmet on, it was a gift from a Russian friend years ago and it was very warm. When our pilot came onboard, he gave me a funny look. A few people laughed and then the joke became obvious. The pilot though that I was a fellow pilot but what was I doing sitting with the passengers? Eventually the heating came on and we could remove our hats, coats and gloves and relax. The passengers brought out their vodka and snacks as there was no inflight meals on this leg.

By now it was 1600 local time as dusk fell on the 7th. but by our body clocks it was 0700 on the same day, but without much sleep. I was losing track of time altogether, it was just too confusing. Just over an hour later we touched down in the dark again – I thought we had arrived at our destination and prepared to disembark, but we had touched down on a landing strip Somewhere In The Middle Of Nowhere to refuel. It was actually Cape Shmidt Airport, a former military airbase in Chukotka on the northern coast a million miles from Nowhere.

The pilot came through with a fistful of roubles – cash for the refuelling. Pilots on these remote runs sometimes get robbed because it’s well known they have to carry cash to pay for their fuel. Outside it was blowing a blizzard, and I could feel the plane being buffeted by a blistering arctic gale as the groundcrew struggled to attach the fuel hoses to the engines in the -25°C, but with the added wind-chill factor it would more likely be -45°C! Our pilot came over and showed them how to connect the fuel hose properly. Talk about a tough job! An hour or so later we were airborne yet again.

Another hour and a half passed and we finally touched down at Keperveem, a tiny airport town about twenty klicks from Bilibino. All that I wanted now was a nice hot cuppa tea and sleep, but we were separated from our hotel beds by a half hour drive. About twenty of us crammed ourselves into a small bus with our bags and endured the bumpy ride through the frigid night into Bilibino.

By 1200 our time (1900 local) we finally checked into the Northern Hotel, the only hotel in town. Although my single room was tiny, messy and without a bathroom, I was looking forward to bed, although now too jet-lagged to sleep.

After complaining about the lack of bed linen, the concerned lady night manager moved me to a ‘lux’ room on the floor above – it was exactly the same, but cleaner and with a bathroom and plenty of tarrakani (Russian for cockroaches) to keep me company – a word that was to become inextricably linked with this voyage into the outer limits.

Russia is so vast that it took fifteen hours flying time from Moscow, across nine time zones; we gained one day, and ended up one hour ahead of Australia! Moscow is eight hours behind Australia.

We dumped our bags but Stefan and Geert couldn’t make a call from their briefcase satellite phone. They couldn’t orient the microwave transmitter with the satellite. We headed down the street to the only restaurant in town, the aptly named Polar Restaurant and had dinner, which consisted of vodka (we had to wait while their warm beer cooled outside in Nature’s Fridge, a term that Stefan coined for leaving food outside to freeze) pomidori (tomatoes) salad and pelmeni, a kind of tasty Siberian ravioli. It was an odd place to say the least – a sort of cross between a café and a disco, with a huge Hawaiian sunset poster dominating the back wall; although the place was almost empty, they insisted on playing awful disco music very loud. Average cost of our meals there was 70, 000 rubles each (US$13). Then at last, Mr. Sandman came calling… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

8th. Nov. Day #2 (we lost a whole day travelling so far east!):

0800 – a nice hot shower. You quickly learn to appreciate small mercies here, especially after hearing horror stories of hotels without hot water. Since room service or meals in the hotel itself is an alien concept here, our breakfast consisted of coffee, tea and Pigface on bread (our jargon for corned beef, a term coined by the previous cameraman on such trips with Stefan) with Louisiana hot pepper sauce (my contribution) in Stefan and Geert’s room (which became known in the mornings as the Café Blowfart and in the evenings as Blowfart’s Bar – a play on Stefan’s real surname), and Stefan introduced us to the weird Belgium tradition of chocolate sandwiches – literally a slab of chocolate between a folded slice of dry bread.

Then Irina turned up; she was a nice middle aged lady who was our contact in the local administration. She organised our young driver, Volodya, a familiar form of Vladimir, and soon we were being driven around the town shooting general street scenes in the relatively warm temperature of -7°C. Actually the driver’s name was a source of amusement because the Belgians and the Dutch both have their own drivers in Moscow and both of them are called Volodya. Stefan remarked that the name determines the vocation.

Lunch at 1400 at the Polar restaurant again, tasted my first real borscht (a yummy cabbage and potato soup) and lots of juice made from local berries; one quickly becomes dehydrated in the dry air and warm clothing. The afternoon was taken up with shooting an interview at the local natural history museum with a nice chubby Chukchi woman named Larissa, the spokeswoman for the small peoples (the Eskimo tribes). I took shots of the exhibits, including a huge mammoth skull, while Stefan was cornered by several middle aged women desperate to tell him their life stories.

Back to the hotel for a much needed cuppa. Stefan and Geert still couldn’t get the satphone to work, so we trudged around the corner to the local post office and had to book a call to Moscow. We are so far off the beaten track here that there is no area code; that’s remote. Consequently most people do not have phones and must make their calls from one of the four booths in the PO, shouting down the line while everyone else listens in. As we waited for our call to come through, we giggled at this guy who was screaming down the phone to his mate, but everyone else seemed not to notice.

A quick beer in Blowfart’s Bar (because the restaurant doesn’t open until 8pm) and then dinner. Tonight it was the usual tomato salad, fruit juice and kebabs – very nice, it certainly hit the spot. Working outside in these arctic conditions certainly gives one a healthy appetite.

Back to the hotel and crashed, but woke at 3am due to jet-lag, so I decided to run a bath, but – no plug! Aha! The lid of the sweets container we were given on the plane fits perfectly! And yes, there was hot water! But the bath filled up with brown water and all this black sediment stuff, is it coming from me? No it’s in the water. Probably just minerals. Oh well, I still had a good soak as I listened to Radio Australia (Glenn Miller again) on my portable short wave radio as the roaches scuttled around the bath rim. I think I’ll give them names. After growing up down under, one gets used to living with insects very quickly. Even Russian ones. Somehow they made me feel at home, although these were only small buggers compared to the big black flying bastards we get in Queensland. Anyway I’m rambling, but I did find out that it was possible to shave with my eyes closed without cutting myself.

9th. Nov. Day #3:

Breakfast in Café Blowfart. This morning I had the sachet of marmalade I had saved from Aeroflot, pigface on bread with hot sauce, and tea.

We waited downstairs in the sparse room that serves as the hotel lobby but which has the decor of a parking garage, for the Governor of the region, who just happened to be staying at the same hotel – even though his body guard denied he was here earlier. He’s in town for some function or other. Geert tried to intercept him as he came through with his entourage of bodyguards and hangers-on, but he very arrogantly waved him aside and refused to give us the time of day. He said we should have interviewed him yesterday, but we were out filming when the message was left for us and therefore couldn’t make the time he’d set. We came to the inescapable conclusion that he is a small man overblown with his own self importance, as Dirty Harry would say, “A legend in his own mind.”

So we moved on and interviewed a reluctant ecology inspector about the environmental problems affecting the region. The Russians are not known for preserving the ecology when there’s gold or oil or diamonds to be mined. In this case they’ve taken to using large amounts of cyanide to extract the gold, a sure recipe for disaster for the flora and fauna. But although this guy was nervous about going on record, we convinced him it was the best way to get the message across to the rest of the world. He hadn’t been paid for five months, a story that was becoming all too familiar.

Then we drove to a farm on the outskirts of town where a very enterprising farmer has made a living out of his produce, all the more remarkable when you consider the harshness of the climate here. I filmed him watering his pomidori in his greenhouses, and in his very smelly pigsties surrounded by snorting porkers and squealing piglets. The things one has to do for this job.

Because of the extreme variations of temperature between inside and outside in these situations, we had to wait for a few minutes each time we came indoors to film; because the camera is ice cold, its lens elements completely fog up with condensation. After we interviewed the farmer, he very hospitably invited us in for a lovely lunch. I hadn’t realised how hungry and thirsty I was until I had scoffed a plate of tasty meatballs, a sort of pickled cabbage salad and yummy green pickled pomidori, home made bread (like Mum used to make) and four cups of tea!

I shot more footage around the farm, then at 1600 we drove to a lookout overlooking the town and shot some views of the nuclear power station that was built to supply power to this region, but the expansion has reversed and the station is only running at 20% output. The people are leaving the area in droves as the Russian government is not ploughing any of the profits from the goldmines back into the area.

Another bizarre fact; the phone to the nuclear station has been cut because they can’t afford to pay their bill. Yet another sign that the local infrastructure is collapsing.

While at the lookout we filmed a glorious sunset. Because of the sharp angle at which the sun sets, it takes longer than normal to actually set, and twilight lasts for well over an hour.

Mr. Antlers

On the way back to the hotel, Volodya stopped off and presented Stefan with a magnificent set of reindeer antlers still attached to the animal’s skull and upper jawbone! This gift soon acquired a personality of its own and was dubbed ‘Mr. Antlers’ by me – I sensed it had mystical Chukchi powers and would appear in Stefan’s and Geert’s dreams as it lay in the corner staring at them during the night – so they put it in the bathroom because it was stinking up the room. We speculated that Geert would look good if he arranged the Persian rug as a tent and danced around Mr. Antlers. Well, you had to be there. There is a certain level of madness on these trips. It helps one cope with the bureaucracy, the endless waiting and the weird locals.

As we were quietly quaffing cold ale back in Blowfart’s Bar, things became very weird in a Twin Peaks way (maybe it was the effect of Mr. Antlers?); first one of the local policemen arrived on crutches to politely officially register us in the area. He spent ages meticulously filling in forms and copying details from our passports, visas and accreditations, then presented us with our documentation that gave us permission to stay in the area for the next 3 months. We all looked at each other as if to say “No way!”

After he hobbled out, we sat around chatting and next thing I knew we had all drifted off into deep sleep. Then a very strange thing happened, at least I think it did. Two hours later we were rudely awakened by an old man who marched into the room led by his shaggy, very smelly dog – he (not the dog) barked in Russian “Is this room 324?”

Stefan just stared at him in a glazed dreamlike way and replied “No … ?” and the chap promptly did an about face and marched out. Stefan looked at me (I thought I was hallucinating as the whole scene had a peculiar dreamlike quality to it) and shouted after him “And take your smelly dog with you!” There was a pregnant pause as the three of us just looked at each other and burst out laughing.

By 2045 we were having dinner at our usual place, still debating who would have the guts to try the ‘meat surprise’ – we decided to leave it until the last night. The staff still hadn’t worked out that we travellers from far off liked our beer ice cold, so again we had to wait, but this time we put in a request for them to chill beer now for tomorrow.

As we ate our pomidori salad and plov, a tasty rice and chicken dish, we noticed a strange old moustachioed man sitting alone at the next table. He took one and a half hours to eat his salad, seeming to prefer to stare at it as if he were absorbing it by osmosis. Every few minutes someone would turn up the crap music to a deafening level, and the strange man would jump up and start shuffling around the dance floor in what we decided was a Chukchi dance, but which was probably in all reality the pathetic gyrations of an alco who thought he was Fred Astaire. Anyway it was entertainment of a kind, and for this we were grateful. Where is David Lynch? He must be hiding nearby as I have a distinct feeling we’ve wandered onto his set by mistake. I’ll bet there’s a dwarf waiter lurking around here somewhere…

The music got to me eventually, and I complained in Russian with Stefan’s expert tutelage. The volume dropped, and on came The House Of The Rising Sun followed by Hotel California – all very appropriate we agreed.

10th. Nov. Day #4:

0830 breakfast at café Blowfart’s as usual, but we’re becoming very creative. To our pigface and hot sauce on dry bread we added frankfurts ‘cooked’ by running them under the hot water tap, slices of fresh green peppers given to us by the farmer and handfuls of pickled cabbage salad with our tea. Yum! Normally I never have much of an appetite in the mornings, but working in these arctic conditions makes me ravenous.

 

A particularly dense haze lay over the town, it was probably -30. At that point, no matter how warmly you’re dressed, the cold eats through everything, numbing even your thoughts. In just a few minutes outside, all your extremities have lost all feeling. The dogs just lie there balled up with their noses tucked into their bellies.

Today Geert will try again to find a helicopter that will ferry us inland across the tundra to one of the Chukchi villages where we hope to shoot footage of them living in their traditional ways. We only have a budget of a thousand dollars for the trip, but the cheapest we can find is two thousand. The pilots know if we really want to go, we’ll pay. Such is the lessons they’ve learnt from dealing with the outside world. They know how to exploit their monopoly here. But so far, no luck. We were looking forward to the chopper flight into the frozen wastes of the tundra, but it just isn’t meant to be.

While waiting for Geert, I filmed some dogs howling outside the post office.

Then, as I waited with the gear in the lobby, a jubilant but very pissed bloke began babbling to me in Russian and waving his arms around like I was his best friend. Indeed once he found out I was from Australia I was instantly his best friend! Seems he’d never met an Aussie before. Stefan returned just in time to translate; this guy was a plastered helicopter pilot with some very definite views on the expansion of NATO. When I said that Australia wasn’t part of NATO, he just went on and on about how we were not neutral because we had taken part in the Gulf War, and at that point Stefan dragged me away. I tried unsuccessfully to appeal to Stefan’s sense of adventure, to convince him that here was potentially a golden opportunity – we could just pour some black coffee into this nut and he would probably fly us deep into the tundra for free! But Stefan didn’t see it that way – his keen sense of self-preservation was on red alert – the idea of us three intrepid adventurers hurtling into the icy wastes with a drunken Russki chopper pilot was definitely a suicide mission! Maybe he was right, but I would have given it a go.

Anyway two minutes later the pilot was back again, and he handed me 100,000 rubles as a gift! (about US$18.50) Stefan said he was giving me the money as a token of friendship and that if he was ever down under, I should look after him. OK I replied, and off he staggered.

Stefan looked at me aghast. “I don’t believe what I’ve just seen! You’re the first person who’s made a profit out of travelling in Russia!” he exclaimed, “A complete stranger has just given you the equivalent of about two week’s salary! Amazing!”

“Happens all the time.”

No sooner had we began to shoot more street shots, when another drunk wandered up and began happily babbling to me like I was his best buddy. And, as Stefan and Geert were laughing at this, I tried to move the tripod but the drunk thought he had disturbed me and kept forcing the tripod back to where I had just been filming. Jesus! How do I attract them? Then I was informed that today was Militsa Day, a special holiday for all the police, maybe that had something to do with it, I don’t know. Each profession has its own holiday here, which as far as I can make out, is just an excuse to get pissed. Speaking of which, the Polar was closed for lunch, so we dined at Blowfart’s Bar.

Afterwards, we shot street interviews or vox pops (TV jargon for vox populi, the voice of the people) in the main street in the crisp, sunny, biting -25°C afternoon air. While I was filming, a playful dog collided with my tripod. Packs of dogs roam the streets here, including beautiful husky/white wolf types because the departing population have left them behind.

Numerous abandoned apartment blocks stand in

mute testimony to Bilibino’s dwindling population.

Later, I shot Geert’s stand-up in front of an abandoned building as he was talking about the flood of people leaving the area. in the freezing conditions. He kept stopping because of sound disturbances; every so often a vehicle would roar by, or someone would walked past and their footsteps made a loud crunching and squeaking that was audible through his microphone. Sometimes the cloud of steam billowing from his mouth would completely engulf his face and we’d both collapse in hysterics. The worst scenario for ituations where the journalist is trying to sound serious is an attack of the giggles.

Because I was wearing my leather fur-lined Russian pilot’s helmet, Geert kept thinking how silly I looked in it and bursting out laughing half way through his standup, which set me sniggering while we were recording, and so what would normally take five or ten minutes turned into a half hour marathon with over thirty takes in the frigid -30° C air.

Eventually we got it in the can and struggled back to Bloomfart’s Bar for a welcome cuppa and chocolate. Then a nice lady from the local press turned up to interview us for a change. Not much happens here so a foreign TV crew was big news.

Stefan and I went for a walk and bought champanska and postcards. As we toasted the weirdness and the relative smoothness of the shoot so far, we wrote out our postcards, intending to send them as an experiment to see if:

(A) they are actually delivered.

(B) how long that will take.

I was betting that mine wouldn’t reach Australia and the UK before Xmas!

We had a brief visit from the deputy head of the nuclear power station; it seems he still needs to get official permission from Moscow before we can film inside. How unusual.

Off we trudged to the Polar for the usual feast. Tonight, as the strange dancing man cavorted round the floor with his imaginary partner, Stefan risked food poisoning by trying the meat surprise, which turned out to be chicken we suspected. Maybe it was dog, who knows? I was getting used to this weirdness. It almost seemed normal. I had brought the camera with me so I have him on tape, proof that I was not hallucinating.

11th. Nov. Day #5:

0830 – Breakfast as usual. Things are grim; it felt like day #84. I shared the last frankfurter with Geert, ate it on dry bread with hot sauce and a handful of pickled cabbage. A piece of chocolate and the last teabag. Geert is starting to lose it. He suggested we make a soup out of Mr. Antlers. How long before we start eating each other?

Today Larissa the Chukchi lady joined us and Volodya drove us through the bright dawn to the Chukchi shantytown of Keperveem near the airport. As we drove into the town, I had a cosmic experience, one I’ll never forget. Through the front windscreen I saw a flash of what at first seemed to be a rainbow – then I saw something else, something that made me shout “Stop!”

I leapt out of the still moving van, pointed my camera at the sun and began filming a miraculous sight. Geert brought the tripod and I continued to film. They thought I had gone mad. They did not see what I was seeing, and I didn’t have time to explain – this rare vision could disappear any second.

Stefan wandered up to me and pointed to the horizon “Oh look, two suns!”

I pointed to the right, “No, three!”

Then he saw it – two perfect mirror images of the sun reflected either side where the rainbow touched the horizon! Ice crystals, known as angel flakes, were falling in the -35°C air, flashing in the sunlight like tiny sparks in the air; their reflective prismatic quality combined with the low sun was the cause of this spectacularly beautiful phenomena.

I felt the presence of an ancient Chukchi entity. Or maybe it was too much alcohol and not enough sleep. Within minutes this mirage faded as though it had never existed – but I had it on tape, I had proof that we had not shared some collective hallucination. Meanwhile, the townsfolk went about their early morning routines unaware of Nature’s cosmic display. I assumed that this was a common sight at these latitudes, but Larissa said she had never seen this effect before.

Stefan interviewed some of the Chukchi elders who had turned out in their tradition garb of reindeer fur coats, pants and boots – they were oblivious to the frigid air. Although I was wearing gloves, my fingers became so painful that they ceased to work, and I had to leave the camera running while I put on my thick ski gloves. We filmed the local boarding school, and were kindly provided with a much needed lunch and several cups of tea.

We drove back to Bilibino and picked up the deputy head of the nearby gold mine, who showed us the way to the mine itself, about half an hour outside the town. By now the setting sun had tinged the mountains with a beautiful salmon pink glow, making them look like a giant’s desert of strawberry ice cream. We must have spent two hours crawling through the deafening, hot and smelly gold processing plant, scrambling up and down narrow staircases to for high angle shots of the gargantuan crushing machinery.

Back to Blowfart’s Bar for a cuppa and a much needed shower, then off to Larissa’s flat for dinner; her hubby and young son Philip came to escort us to their place only five minutes walk away through -35°C. We were treated to a lovely Chukchi meal of moose meat (just like steak), potatoes, bread, red caviar on boiled eggs, many vodka toasts, champagne, chocolates and coffee, as we watched their home videos of a visit to a former Stalinist prison camp and a Chukchi gathering of tribes celebration, which included wrestling on the snow and reindeer races. A wonderful evening, but our beds soon beckoned. We were given lovely polished crystal rock samples as gifts as we staggered out into the frigid air at midnight.

12th. Nov. Day #6:

We’ve eaten everything. We may have to make a soup out of Geert’s socks. Mr. Antlers is starting to look mighty tasty…

I shot Stefan’s standup plus some more street footage while Geert checked up on the status of flights to Moscow. The lady in the local shop where we had shot an interview yesterday came up to us in the street and presented Stefan with a beautiful stuffed owl (who became known as Mr. Who). We decided he should go to Girt, who is the bird fancier amongst us – the feathered kind that is.

We found out that yesterday’s flight south to Magadan, the nearest major city, was cancelled due to bad weather and was resheduled to take off today! We’ll have to fly to Magadan today, stay overnight and catch a plane to Moscow tomorrow. We threw our stuff together, checked out of the hotel, bid farewell to Bilibino, and beat a hasty retreat to the airport at Keperveem, half an hour away. We waited in the shack that serves as the departure lounge for the flight to be announced. And waited.

I shot some footage of the plane sitting on the snowbound tarmac. And waited. At last the flight was announced and we could buy tickets. The price of our freedom? The flight cost us 2, 300,00 rubles each! (US$426) Stefan and I went on an excursion into Keperveem to forage for food – mainly beer. I looked for the three suns again, but it was not to be repeated. Maybe I had imagined the whole thing. Eventually, after trudging through deep snow and across creaking footbridges into the deserted town for half an hour in the freezing cold, we found a shop that was open for business.

We bought chocolate bars and instant noodles, but we couldn’t find any beer. In vain I shouted “We need beer!” to the empty buildings, but the wind carried my lonely echo into the distant tundra and started the local dogs barking.

As we sipped our noodles in silence back at the airport, the kind ladies at the ticket office took pity on us poor pathetic stranded foreigners and treated us to some Russian hospitality – so it was coffee, cognac, champagne and chocolates in their office. After half an hour of this frivolity, we checked in Mr. Antlers and Mr. Who and boarded the plane at long last.

The interior was freezing until the heaters eventually warmed up. It was a dry flight, no beer, no real service as such, but we enjoyed views of the savage white wilderness as the tundra slipped away beneath us. Four hours later we touched down in Magadan, which, compared to Bilibino, was a sprawling metropolis.

We grabbed our bags and stored most of them (including Messrs Antlers and Who) at the airport, and walked to the nearby hotel with no name but which was in fact the airport hotel. Rooms were 200,000 rubles each (US$37) plus the 7000 rubles (US$1.30) local registration tax. The rooms were nice and clean, mainly due to the place being relatively new. Beers at the tiny airport bar, followed by Pilmeni at the airport café. We fell into bed at 2200ish.

13th. Nov. Day #7:

Surfaced at 9ish for breakfast in Stefan and Geert’s room. Coffee, tea, a currant bun each followed by cuppa soup, cheese and bread.

Girt and I waited for 1½ hours at the ticket office while Stefan changed some dollars into rubles. Nothing was happening. Although the flight had been announced, no tickets were being sold. Stefan had a bad feeling about this, said it reminded him of Soviet times when one would queue for hours and still not get tickets. So he checked up and found out that another flight was scheduled for the afternoon. PHEW! He managed to secure three seats for us at a cost of 1,634,000 rubles each (US$302).

Then it was beers at the café, we checked our bags and trophies in, and then hung around the huge dusty hangar that was the departure lounge. At 1400ish we took the bus to the plane and scrambled aboard to grab three seats together. Good service by pretty young stewardesses, and free cold beer made the trip a breeze.

Somehow Mr. Antlers ended up on top of some bags on a seat at the front of the plane. From where we were sitting, it looked like a bald elk was flying to Moscow. That’s how it is sometimes in Russia: priceless.

Seven hours and fifty minutes later we were back in Moscow, exactly a week since we left. I’ll never accuse Moscow of being cold again, for now I have tasted real flesh freezing way below zero cold. And ever since that trip I have always wanted to return to that remote and rather special part of Russia.

A month or so later, to my surprise, my postcard was delivered to my mother in Australia! Wonders never cease.

My First Russian Winter Of Discontent As Boris Goes Under The Knife

Here’s How September – October Unravelled:

My first task was to run off some Betacam copies of low quality footage which would be part of a follow-up story by the Belgian network in response the recent paedophile scandal in Belgium. The film showed three very young, plain-looking girls who were strippers that performed for guys they picked up on the street. They charged 50,000 roubles (about US $10). There was some discussion about going out one night to film street hookers, but this was ultimately abandoned due to the dangers involved; ie being attacked by pimps and/or Mafia thugs was a distinct possibility as filming the night butterflies (as they are whimsically called in Russian) was a definite nyet-nyet. Later in the week we opted for the safer option of a drive-by shooting. And that’s not as violent as it sounds; as we drove past a curb-crawling area on Leningradsky Prospect, I surrepticiously filmed through the car window.

Stephen King Designed My Bathroom

Just had a go at doing the laundry. There’s a newish Ariston washing machine/dryer in the bathroom, and although it works fine, when it empties after each cycle, murky, foul-smelling water bubbles up into the hand basin and overflows onto the tiled floor; somehow I sensed this wasn’t going to be as easy as it should be. Nothing is what it seems here. The pressure of the emptying water must be causing some sort of back-flow in the plumbing. Oh well, another question for Chris when he returns on Monday. (Later he fixed it; the pipes had been blocked by the previous cameraman’s girlfriend’s hair – insert sound of vomiting here.)

The Demon Drink Finally Catches Up With Boris

That first week, as I was editing the Russian underage prostitution/child exploitation story, I had to drop everything and rush out to shoot a story on the reaction to the announcement that Yeltsin is to undergo heart surgery at the end of the month. We dashed off to shoot yet another stand-up outside the Kremlin and I then frantically edited a story that was beamed to Brussels from EBU. A few days later: had to shoot exterior shots of the Kremlin today for another story on Yeltsin’s hospitalisation and how it affects the power struggles within the Kremlin. And again the next day: another stand-up outside the Kremlin for yet another story on old Boris’ ticker – the latest news is that he’s too ill and will have to wait for a couple of months before surgery.

Monday the 9th of September was a miserable rainy day. I moved the desk from the master bedroom to under the lounge window, so I could stare out at the spectacular view of that massive TV tower that dominated the skyline while I wrote letters on an old laptop that Chris lent me. I was in heaven; munching on bread smothered with red caviar, swigging an ice cold can of Russki beer as Gary Numan pounded out of the CD player.We had the computer doctor in today and he set up my very own personal e-mail account on my office computer. At this time though, only a handful of my friends and family have e-mail addresses but it still beats trying to rely on the abysmally slow and unreliable Russian postal ‘system.’ In these times it was not uncommon for foreigner’s mail to be stolen. Apparently overseas mail gets here as normal, but is sent to a central office where the address is translated into Russian (the posties here can’t read English), and then onto its destination.

Mr. Baritone himself, Alexander Lebed.

Had to shoot a press conference given by Alexander Lebed, the former general who brokered the peace deal in Chechnya and is now running for president. Upon arrival, our press accreditation was cross referenced with a list of attendees and this took ages. I had to switch on my camera to prove it was real and not a bomb. When we finally got in there was a gaggle of cameramen and one camerawoman from French TV plus assorted journalists from all media, crammed around a small stage. I staked a good position on the side with my tripod, cruised up to the podium, stepped over the pile of spaghetti (TV jargon for the tangled mess of microphone cables at these gigs) and placed my cool little radio mic (with tiny arial so one doesn’t have to run cables all over the place like the aforementioned TV/radio people) on the table, and filmed his speech with quiet efficiency. But holy Jesus, when Lebed sat down and began speaking, his voice was so deep I had to check that my audio inputs to the camera were set correctly – he sounded just like Lurch from the Addams Family! That weekend, friends took me to a disco called The Titanic (pronounced ‘Teetanic’ by the Russians), designed along the lines of the infamous sunken liner, complete with water bubbling up past portholes. The place was heaving with wall to wall babes dressed to thrill. Talk about a glamfest. We were content to sit at the bar and ogle the moving sea of miniskirts and plunging necklines. Some of the girls had an interesting way of coping with the heat on the dance floor; they peeled down their tops and boogied in their bras! I noticed they were the type that can’t be undone from the back.I danced with one cute little chickski, but she was so off the planet on ‘E’ that she couldn’t even manage to write her phone number. She had just been chucked out by her ex-boyfriend, an Italian she’d been living with for two years and I guess she was keen to shack up with another foreigner. As we left, she had problems getting her coat back from the cloakroom; seems they had misplaced her tag and although she could point out her coat, they wouldn’t let her have it until all the others had been claimed. This is how things work or don’t work over here.

The imposing gateway to Moscow’s Park of

Soviet Economic Achievement or VDNKh for short.

VDNKh

It was a quiet Sunday, sunny but nippy outside. I took a walk around the nearby Park of Economic Achievement, browsed the shops and market stalls and purchased four CDs for about a quarter of their price in London: Depeche Mode, Yello, Sparks and Giorgio Moroder. It was about 1530 when I got back and although the sun was still beaming down, my fingers were numb with cold! It must have been about 2 C. The air had that ski resort bite.

The park was amazing; in the middle there’s a Vostok rocket booster with a Soyuz space capsule sitting atop it alongside two old Russian passenger jets.  

This my favourite fountain, ringed by giant gold statues of women from the former republics with their harvests. Nearby I discovered two more gigantic Soviet icons. This strange Soviet wonderland had become my favourite part of Moscow.

  

The massive 25-metre-tall stainless steel Soviet Workers monument, or ‘Labourer and Kolkhoz Woman,’ also known affectionately as ‘Jack and Jill’, created by Vera Mukhina for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937) in Paris. This has since been dismantled for maintenance or relocation (?).

The soaring rocket of the cosmonaut monument atop the space museum.

Monday morning and Chris and I drove to the plush Slavinskaya Hotel for haircuts. He got the cute blonde with the mini skirt, I got Bubba, the big podgy Russki faggot with the pony tail. Typical. It wasn’t that I minded he was a poof so much, it was his choking body odour that got me. Anyway, they gave us the works, shampoo, mousse, blow dry etc. When we walked out, Chris’ hair was slicked back like Al Pacino, and I looked like fucking Rod Stewart!Another press conference this morning. This time it was at the Ministry Of Defence, with all the Army types buzzing around. They didn’t screen us or search our camera bags this time. Strange, you’d think the defence headquarters would be more cautious. This footage will be later incorporated into a story we are doing on the dire straits of Russia’s armed forces.

 

By October I had acquired a Russian girlfriend, a beautiful twenty three year-old English speaking redhead named Yana. I was introduced to her at a party. It was a simple and uncomplicated process; after dancing with her, she gave me her phone number. I didn’t have to impress her, I just had to be myself, and the rest as they say, was history. A week or so later, I joined Dutch Peter on the overnight train to St. Petersburg, where we spent a few days at the Hermitage, an enormous art museum, shooting a story on antique paintings. It was also later used as the location for the film Russian Ark which was filmed using a single 90-minute Steadicam shot. By now the weather was changing noticeably. There was a chill in the air, the snow’s not far away.

Snow began falling in October, so it was out with the woollies and thermals. After the first full day of below zero temperatures, the central heating plants started pumping hot water throughout Moscow. I shot a story on the process for Belgian TV. I remember it being extremely hot and noisy inside the pumping station. The central heating keeps the interiors at a nice 24 degrees Celsius so I discovered that one feels warmer indoors in the Russian winter more so than in the UK or Australian winters. By early November, ol’ Boris had finally gone under the scalpel and we found ourselves running around Moscow like chooks with our heads cut off trying to shoot stories as the world’s media went into a feeding frenzy. Typically, everything you never wanted to know about heart bypass surgery was being broadcast on CNN step by step.Outside the clinic where Yeltsin was due to arrive after his operation, I tried to film out in the rain with our Dutch and Belgian journos, but the place was crawling with cops. Just after we had shot our stand-ups, in a scene straight out of a gangster movie set in 1930’s Chicago, a bunch of black leather jacketed bully boys, who claimed they were security, shuffled over and hustled us away in a decidedly unfriendly manner. That’s the weird thing about Russian authority. Here you have a situation which naturally attracts attention from the world’s media, and they treat us like we’re trying to film some top secret military base. They wouldn’t even let us get near the gates of the clinic. I had to shoot zoomed in from afar.That night over drinks in the Brasserie du Soleil, we came up an idea for a new list – Stuff They Will Find Inside Boris Yeltsin When They Open Him Up For Heart Surgery:

Lebed’s brainReagan      

Prime Minister Chernomyrdin in drag Salman Rushdie Weird Al Yankovich Maggie Thatcher on acid A shot glass A bottle of Stoli Gorbie followed by Brezhnev followed by Krushchev followed by Stalin… Dudayev – Alive A Lada badge on his heart A hole where his liver should have been… Elvis Korzhakov’s wedding ring Embalming fluid A butt load of FAT Fresh Caviar The rest of his thumb (did you know that he is missing part of his thumb?) Tennis balls Nothing…     

Yeah I know, well we were drunk. Maybe they’ll implant some sort of nuclear powered heart so he’ll be a cyborg like the Terminator.

 

A Russian optimist is someone who knows that things can’t get any worse.

It was a Wednesday and I was out on a shoot in an army village north of Moscow. As I was filming street scenes near the gates of the base, a colonel and some of his officers approached and started questioning Peter, the Dutch reporter, who speaks Russian. Next thing I know, I’m told to stop shooting. I knew that there was a danger the camera tape might be confiscated so I hid it under the front seat of the car and replaced it with an old one. Then the cops drive up. The officers ordered the cops to arrest us, but we hadn’t broken any laws. So the cops were told to take our names, which they did. Then the colonel told them to record our vehicle’s registration plate. When the cop asked our female interpreter if he could have our registration, she just stared at him and replied, “You can read can’t you?” Apparently the army wasn’t too happy with the media after an American crew had been through a few days ago and interviewed soldiers and their families about the cash crisis the army is going through. Some of the grunts haven’t been for five months. And now they’ve been forced to pick spuds and carrots in the fields. This is truly bizarre; one of the most powerful and feared armies in the world reduced to scavenging off farmers. Poor bastards, even I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. A bunch of generals had printed an open letter in one of the Russian newspapers the other day and gave an ultimatum to the government – sort it out by Friday (last) or else. So now we’re just waiting to see what happens next. In a related incident that took place a few months later beyond Moscow, a 17 year-old conscript tragically froze to death while sleeping in a farmer’s hut. He had been one of a group despatched to help the farmer pick potatoes in exchange for food supplies for the local army base. Later on: I had to shoot yet more footage in a cardiology clinic, for a story we’re doing on the Russian public health system, which is basically much the same as ours – if you have the money, you can pay for good service, if not then, well you have to put up with their inefficient public health care. This is all related to Boris’ operation. Some of these hospitals we saw were very rundown, literally falling to bits. I felt sorry for the administrators as the government is too busy lining its own pockets to give them the funds they need.It was snowing when we left the hospital.A few days later we rushed out today to Red Square to film the big demonstration – there’s been a national strike – and the place was really buzzing. All very calm and orderly thank goodness. Because of Yeltsin’s operation, I’ve had to shoot and edit for the Dutch and Belgians while Chris shot an interview with Tina Turner for the BBC. I was supposed to get that shoot, but Boris’ heart operation took precedence. As you would expect, she was surrounded by security, no-one in the crews could get near her. Security is even tighter since the American boss of the Slavinskaya Hotel, Paul Tatum, was blown away yesterday! This is the same hotel where the BBC have their office and I’m going there tomorrow to film an interview with the ex-foreign affairs minister.

During the night, the mercury had dropped to -8C and it had been snowing. Looking out of the kitchen window this morning, everything was blanketed in white, and the snow was still lightly falling. That really cheered me up; I felt like I was holidaying in a ski resort. Cars were slipping and sliding all over the roads. Staggered lines of snow ploughs cleared the main thoroughfares. Now I felt like I was in Russia.Winter in Russia brings its own special brand of unforseen hazards. The footpaths were very slippery, due to ice hidden under the snow. While waiting for a cab, I saw at least three people go arse-over-tit in the street. This happens all the time during winter; you get used to it. I’ve been a victim of it myself, fell flat on my back and almost knocked myself while I was showing a friend the ‘Jack and Jill’ monument.

One morning I had to drive to a nearby Metro station to pick up a friend who was returning to the States. But I couldn’t find my car … at first … then my eyes adjusted to the blanket of white – I could just make out a white mound against the white background. Oh… my car must be under there somewhere… Like an archaeologist who has just discovered a long-lost ancient Himalayan burial tomb, I carefully scraped away the snow and located the door handle. Yes there was a car hiding under all this snow.With all my strength, I yanked the door open, sat inside the frigid darkness and turned on the ignition to warm up the engine. I grabbed the brush from the back seat and got down to work. It took me a full ten minutes to clear away all the snow and reveal my car in slow stages. My vigorous brush strokes accidentally sprayed a passing lady who was not impressed at all – she gave me such a dirty look. Russians have absolutely no sense of humour when it comes to being hit by snow.Eventually I was on my way with the heater at full blast. I parked near the Metro, strolled up to the exit and waited. But no sooner had I taken a few confident steps, than both my feet went from underneath me – WHACK!I fell flat on my back in the mud and slush and ice and God knows what else. Damn black ice under the snow was slippery as hell! No-one laughed or tried to help me – I just lay on my back frozen in shock for a few seconds before picking myself up with as much dignity as I could – ouch! – my arse was sore.My friend appeared at that moment and said, “Hey man why are you covered in shit?”

Those first two months in Moscow were a real eye-opener. I was simultaneously disoriented and excited; I felt like I was on another planet, which in a way I was. Russians could spot me as an alien from a mile off. The perfect analogy would be an episode of the original Star Trek TV series. The usual suspects beamed down to a planet where the humanoid population had evolved to the period of early 20th. Century technology. Kirk and his gang adopt the local dress and language, Spock covers his ears with a hat. Yet everywhere they went, the locals would always look at them with suspicion and say, “You’re not from around here are you?”And my life was going to get a lot stranger. I was being sent on my first trip, a real doozy. I was being shipped off to Siberia! To a region called Chukotka, deep in Russia’s remote Far East…Gotta rush – just got word we’re flying tonight at 19:30!

 

Fear and Loathing in Moscow

First Daze

Sat. 31st. August 1996: My first day and I was straight into work, well sort of. A peace agreement had just been brokered in Chechnya by Russia’s security chief ex-army general Alexander Lebed and that was big news. A brief background to this event; the Chechen war had raged since November 1994, when Yeltsin dispatched Russian troops to quell the Muslim region’s push for independence. At this point in time it was estimated that the conflict had cost 90,000 lives, with three times as many maimed or wounded. Lebed was dispatched to the region after rebels overran Grozny early last month. The peace agreement defers a decision on independence for five years.

Lebed, right of frame, brokers an uneasy peace in Chechnya.

Little did we know that within three years, the Russian army

would return to bomb the tiny nation into submission.

I rushed out with Chris on a shoot for the Dutch and Belgium networks. We drove into the centre with Dutch TV, newspaper and radio correspondent Peter d’Hamecourt and his Belgian counterpart Jan. August in Moscow was like one long Sunday; the city and the streets feelt empty. Many Muscovites had retreat to their dachas to escape the heat, the traffic and the pollution.

Pushkin Square today. I wonder what Pushkin would make of the New Russia’s capitalist overkill?

In Pushkin Square, we found a festive atmosphere; Chris filmed Chechen demonstrators milling around in the hot sun as other news crews interviewed various spokespersons and members of the public. After we’d got all the quotes we needed to make a story, Chris shot two stand-ups – news jargon for those shots of the correspondent standing in front of some famous landmark, in this case the statue of Pushkin, and wrapping up the item.

Chris and Misha (who also doubled as our sound recordist) filming in Moscow.

I was spotted by Swedish TV reporter and ski buddy Henrik Samuelson. He’d arrived yesterday too! Even in Moscow, the world can be a small place. As captain of the Aussie team at the Ski Club of International Journalists (SCIJ), I knew Henrik from numerous ski meetings and bar room discussions.Back in the office edit suite, Chris cut the two news stories in a couple of hours, as they were identical apart from the stand-ups at the end. At first, the process seems a little confusing linguistically: our quotes and interviews are all in Russian, the voice-over is Dutch and Flemish, and we communicate between each other in English. In the weeks that followed, I soon got the hang of it.We shoot on PAL Betacam SP and edit with a Sony manual timecode three machine edit controller. Most Russian TV networks and news production use PAL Betacam so it made sense.

The now-demolished, mammoth 2000 roomed Hotel Rossiya.

We then drove back into the centre, in what would become a well-practised routine over the next few years, to the offices of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) located on the eleventh floor of the colossal Soviet monstrosity, the Rossiya Hotel, overlooking Red Square for a live two-way chat between our Dutch correspondent Peter and a current affairs show anchor at public broadcaster NOS in Hilversum, Holland. EBU run a small TV studio that features a big window facing the iconic St. Basils Cathedral, the most photographed building in Russia. The journalist sits in front of the open window and the shot is framed so that the edges are not visible, so he appears to be sitting in front of the cathedral.The next day I helped Chris pack his camera gear as he had to rush off with the Dutch at a moment’s notice – which is the way we operate in this business – to fly south into the wilds of war-torn Grozny, capital of Chechnya for a few days to cover the influx of returning refugees after the signing of the peace accord. Soon I would have to venture into that blitzed region.

I was left to my own devices, so I spent the rest of the day sorting out my flat and strolling around an alien and unfriendly world. I say unfriendly, because that’s how it felt, how people on the street and in the shops appeared to me. I’d taken a short walk around the neighbourhood and felt the pressure of that infamous Russian thousand yard stare. Passersby glared at me like I’d just killed a member of their family. No-one smiled or said “hi” – the contrast to basic Aussie friendliness could not be more extreme.

Of course, all was normal; they were not being deliberately rude to me – just Russian…

I had brought a load of spices and curry pastes with me from London, but had nothing to put them in or on. The company was treating me to my first food shopping spree at a big supermarket where one can purchase a cornucopia of Western goodies by credit card. But with trips to Chechnya and St. Petersburg, Chris has not had the time to sort it yet. So, my diet has so far been limited to: bread and butter, pizza, Frosties, Corn Flakes, tinned corned beef, fish fingers, tomato sauce, a bit of Chinese sausage from London, cups of soup and beer. When I’m not eating out that is.

I explored a few corner shops or magazine as they are called in Russian, but the staff didn’t understand a word I said, and their range of produkti was quite small: frozen pizzas, cheeses, salmon, sausages, bread, chocolates, booze etc. In one mini-market, I noticed that the counter staff used an abacus to calculate purchases! Everything was behind the counter. One had to ask for the product, get a ticket, go to the cash register woman, pay for it, take the receipt back to the counter and collect one’s purchase. Needless to say, shopping this way took me ages.

Another SCIJ friend, Seda, drove me to a supermarket in the evening so I wouldn’t starve after all. Seda is the daughter of Alexander, a well known Moscow journalist and also fellow SCIJnik. I rushed around with my trolley and purchased some basics. Back home, I cooked a Thai chicken curry. Seda and I stood on the small the kitchen balcony, sipping Russian champanska and munching caviar as we watched the fireworks exploding across the city skyline in honour of Moscow’s 849th. birthday. Na z’drovya! (to your health!) hic!

Two weeks later, Chris made good his promise and took me on that shopping spree; a half hour drive to a Stockmann supermarket on the Ring Road. This place became a regular haunt over the next few years as it was one of a handful of Western style supermarkets where one could shop with a trolley and pay by credit card. They stocked mainly European and American products, but supply was always unpredictable. I soon fell into the habit of buying in bulk after running out of Worcestershire sauce for a few weeks.

That weekend I played a great joke on my good komrade Nikolai, captain of the Russian team in SCIJ. Seda invited me to her house, which she shares with her journalist father Alex, another SCIJnik. About half a dozen others turned up, including some others from the SCIJ club, plus Henrik from the Swedish team and his bird. Nikolai was last to front, and the only one who didn’t know I was in the country – we had deliberately kept it from him so we could play some kind of gag on him. I formed a plan, and this is what happened.

From the left, Nikolai (not amused) yours truly and Alex.

When Nick arrived, I hid in the bathroom and he was led into the front room for drinks with the others. After about five minutes, I rang Seda’s phone from my mobile in the bathroom, and pretended to be calling from Sydney. She passed me onto Nick who was sitting on the sofa, with one ear covered so he could hear me over the din of the others. We made small talk for a couple of minutes, then I casually strolled into the front room as I was asking Nick for details on the flight times to Moscow, saying I really should visit sometime.Because he was staring at the floor as he was trying to concentrate on our conversation, he still wasn’t aware that I was standing right next to him! Everyone was in hysterics as he continued to talk as though I was twelve thousand miles away in Australia! He assumed all the laughing was jokes being told in the background, and tried even harder to hear me. One of the ladies was taking snaps of us as all this was going on, and Nick still hadn’t tumbled! He was even staring down at my jeans as he spoke, but never looked up.

So I asked him if the Russians had invented faster forms of travel yet, like the transporter in Star Trek – I said it would be great if I could just beam down to Seda’s flat right now, and he agreed, still continuing the conversation as everyone was laughing so much they had tears in their eyes. I realised that because Nick had one ear covered, he couldn’t hear me talking right next to him, he could only hear me over the phone. Finally I said “I might be closer than you realise,” and at that moment he looked up with glazed eyes as he realised we’d been winding him up all the time! He was completely lost for words – so funny! The rest of the night was spent catching up, consuming lots of tasty Russian zakuski of course, way too many vodka toasts.

The Moscow Fear

The next morning, a Sunday, I crawled out of bed at 1100 with a splitting hangover. Weather: overcast and drizzling. Cleaned up the remnants of last night and tried to get my head together. Reached for the Panadol. Gotta watch that vodka. I looked out of my bedroom window. Where was I?Moscow. Fuck, I’m in Russia. Jesus how’d I get here? A job. Something about a job. That’s it, I got a job. With an old mate. In Moscow. Now I’m here. Shit, I better get my act together.

Room with a view; a summer storm rages over Ostankino.

I felt as helpless and useless as a baby, unable to communicate even my most basic needs, apprehensive about venturing out onto the streets, unable to use the buses, the metro or the taxis, afraid of the police, who have the right to demand your passport. Upon entering Russia, one has three days to register with the OVIR (Department of Visas and Registration) but in my case, it was all taken care of by the company. I needed a work permit and a foreign correspondent’s accreditation issued by the Foreign Ministry. (Every time we travelled to another city we had to register too.)In his novel The Russia House, John Le Carre called it the Moscow Fear – but my fear had more to do with feeling vulnerable rather than any Cold War paranoia. I had read in the London newspapers that foreigners were more likely to end up in trouble in the New Russia than in the days of the Soviet Union. I’d have to conquer this anxiety if I was going to get anywhere here.

I didn’t sleep much. I spent most of those first nights surfing the murky wastes of this new world called the internet for the first time on an office computer, often until three or four in the morning.

Even with cable, television here is crap, mostly French, German and Russian stuff. Even BBC Prime shows mostly ancient re-runs. I was missing my favourite shows at that time: NYPD Blue, Northern Exposure, Alexi Sayle, Outer Limits, X-Files, Cracker, ER, Whose Line Is It Anyway? Keeping Up Appearances to name a few.

I overcame my fear by getting used to hailing ‘unofficial taxis’ – one stands on the curb, one arm out, one index finger extended, pointing to the ground; the Russian method of hitching. And anyone driving past can become your taxi and make a few roubles extra on their way home by giving someone a lift. In fact, I learnt later that lots of guys make their living as taxi drivers, even though it’s illegal according to the letter of the law. They drive around all day and all night looking for fares. The rule of thumb is not to get into a car with two or more people because of the possibility of mugging.

I’m embarrassed to say that the first time I did this on my own was to join another cameraman-editor friend in a bar on a Friday night. Chris was still away so his Russian wife wrote the address in Russian on a piece of paper and I handed it to the first driver that stopped. I tried putting on my seat-belt. There usually was one, but the fastener by the handbrake was broken. The driver shouted, “Ne nada!” (don’t want) I had inadvertently insulted his ability to drive. Common sense ruled and I learned to strap myself in despite their protests, as these gypsy cab drivers were usually crap drivers and uninsured. Within a few weeks I learnt enough basic Russian and this became the easiest way to get around if one was drinking, as technically driving after any alcohol consumption was illegal.

One of those days…

Writing of taxis, that same cameraman colleague had one of those days last week. First, there were problems with his company jeep, so he left it at the office for the company driver to sort out while he took a taxi to go play tennis. When he flagged down a car and told the driver the hotel he needed in his basic Russian, the driver first seemed confused, then nodded his head, OK he knew where to go.

But as they took a turn in the wrong direction, my mate protested that the guy didn’t in fact know where he was going. He sensed a scam in progress, maybe the driver thought he was some dumb tourist and was just going to drop him at any big hotel and leave him there stranded. He ordered him to stop the car, which he did. My friend grabbed his bag and opened the door, intending to leg it without paying the scoundrel one kopeck. But the driver seized his bag and wouldn’t let go unless he paid. So a tug of war and screaming began which quickly became useless. Stalemate – no-one was going anywhere.

My friend demanded that they get the militsia, so the driver locked his bag in the car and off they trotted to a nearby GAI officer (traffic cop) in his little glass booth overlooking the intersection. The cop wanted nothing to do with this skirmish, and when my fuming friend demanded to see the cop’s badge number, he covered it up with one hand like a child.

So my friend and the cab driver returned to the car, and as the door was unlocked, my mate made a grab for his bag. Another tug-of-war ensued with screams of abuse hurled at each other as the traffic streamed past. Resisting his overwhelming urge to punch the driver in the face, which was very tempting at the time, my friend managed to manoeuvre himself into a good position and as the strap snapped, he fell backwards out of the car and onto the footpath clutching his bag. He picked himself up, dusted off, and after more insults he marched off down the road to get another cab.

After an exhausting game of tennis, he returned to the office to discover that the company driver had not fixed his jeep, and worse still, had locked it up and given the keys to his journalist partner. He caught a cab home, without incidnet, only to discover that his girlfriend was at her family dacha and he had left his house keys in his jeep!

Since Chris was away filming, and I was out, with Chris’ wife’s help, he made a few frantic phone calls from our office and soon discovered that everyone was out. He couldn’t remember his reporter’s home number, so he called the London office. After eventually raising his partner, he caught another cab back to the office where he finally met up with him, retrieved his keys from his jeep, caught another cab home and finally hit the sack at 2am!

Another time, this same friend’s brother was over from London on a Friday night for a flying visit on his air miles, so we hailed a Lada and headed down to the Dynasty Chinese restaurant. Just as were almost there, the car’s front wheel snapped – sending us ploughing and screeching sideways through the snow-covered intersection – us all hanging on for grim death as we were deafened by the loud scraping noise.

We’ve all seen plenty of Russian cars with snapped axles here but never actually been in one when it’s happened. We stood on the footpath in hysterics while Chris slipped the unlucky driver his illegal fare without the fat traffic cop noticing. All just part of the Moscow Madness.

Another menace was the GAI (the traffic police). They stopped cars at whim and set arbitrary fines for usually imagined misdemeanours. Here’s an example in a letter that was printed in the Moscow Times:

In Strife With The Shtrafniks

Dear Editor,
Shtraf was the first Russian word I learned. It was easy because it is used so often, and it rhymes with the English word for trouble: strife.

Okay, so I’m new here and still naïve and idealistic about the way things should be. Maybe I just don’t understand the Russian way. But Jesus Christ what is it with these damn GAI of yours? Every time we go out, they stop us for one stupid thing after another – and always this silly pretence of breaking some obscure road rule or document check, and always for one purpose; so they can line their pockets courtesy of the rich foreigners.

But we are not rich, we work damn hard for our money, and we earn it honestly. I work with foreign TV journalists, cameramen and editors, and consequently our vehicles display the regulation correspondent plates, so the GAI know full well our occupations when they target us. But last Sunday morning was the last straw. I’m sure the following scenario is familiar to your readers.

There we were five of us, two Russians and three foreign journalists, driving home at 5am from a night out. The streets were deserted. Along came the GAI, cruising in their big Yank-tank police car. They sat at a green traffic light, until it turned red – ignoring the Lada that blasted past them through the red light – and waited until we drove past, then swung round behind us and flashed their lights. We pulled over. We hadn’t done anything wrong, but we knew the routine.

Two machine gun-toting bullyboys swaggered up to our car and barked at our friend behind the wheel, “Do you have any guns?” The officer refused to tell us why we had been pulled over, instead he frisked our friend for non-existent weapons, then aggressively ordered him to sit in his patrol car while he checked to see if our car had been reported stolen.

I guess it must have checked out because he then went to Phase Two of the unwritten Harassment Of Foreigners Code: he demanded to see all our papers. They went into a huddle, then shouted for our passports and visas – knowing full well that as journalists, all we are required to carry is valid accreditation, which I might add is issued by the Forign Ministry.

One of our Russian friends, obviously disgusted and embarrassed by the actions of her fellow countrymen, pleaded with the fat Gestapo-like officer, “Please, there must be some other way to sort this out, my friend hasn’t done anything wrong. We are just on our way home.” The GAI man scowled at her, “You mean a shtraf? We can’t shtraf you, there’s a car load of foreign correspondents!” Clearly there were unnerved by such a large contingent of press. This went on for some minutes. Despite his obvious sobriety, (he’d been on coffee all night) our driver was accused of being drunk, and now we would have to leave the vehicle there, as they were going to take him to “The doctor”.

“Fine,” our colleague replied, “take me to the doctor then – let’s get it over with.”

Then the truth came out; they had no intention of going by the book – they demanded $200 from him! But all he had was $35 which they begrudgingly snatched from him, and like sulking children, threw his documents back in his face and screeched off into the night.

I have a message for Sergei Fyodorov, head of the GAI; please tell your Shtrafniks to grow up and act like real men of the law who are sworn to serve and protect. Tell them to stop treating foreigners like criminals and start treating them as guests. Tell them to pay more attention to stopping the real crime in Moscow, not foreigners on their way home. I never thought I would be proud of the law enforcement officers in my home country, Australia, but I tell you that our men of the Metropolitan Police and the Highway Patrol could teach your thugs a thing or two, and honesty and courtesy would be the first lessons they’d learn!

And to General Sergei Almazov, director of the federal tax police, I have the solution to your abysmal tax collection record: replace your officers with the GAI. Why, I’ll bet you’ll end up making a handsome profit in no time!

Every day I rose at 0700, jumped into a hot shower, got dressed, gulped down coffee and munched two slices of toast, rode the lift down sixteen floors, strolled about thirty yards along to the next entrance, took the lift up to the fourth floor and presto! I’m at work! No more waiting in the cold wind at London bus stops, no crawling through the peak hour traffic, battling the crowds on the tube.

But this honeymoon wouldn’t last, I knew that. There would be days and nights of frantic filming in arctic conditions, roughing it in the elements, battling with Russian bureaucracy etc. My life here wouldn’t always be a picnic…