The Trouble with the Russians...or a Change in Plans II

The Trouble with the Russians or Change in Plans II

Alexandria was warm enough, cool enough, cheap enough, and sociable enough but there comes a time when one must move on. My plan was to leave in early June and spend a couple of months touring and living in Russia. Even after reading somewhere that Moscow is the most expensive city in the world, I reasoned, I’ll just take a quick look around western Russia and be off to Irkutsk in Siberia and that will be reasonably priced. I don’t know why I thought that. If prices are high in Seattle, will that make Fairbanks a bargain?
Irkutsk is halfway across Russia. I would travel by train, spend a month or so there, and then continue on east to the Pacific. I’d hop planes possibly through China to Japan and fly from Tokyo to Anchorage. Such was the plan.
I’d found a sane cyber café run by a gray-headed guy who disallowed music, games, and snot-nosed kids. I surfed until I found the application for a Russian visa, downloaded into my flash recorder, and took it home to fill out. I had to remember what year I had left Texas Tech, what my former wife’s maiden name was, and where she was born. I had to admit my expertise with firearms, “In the years 1965-66, I shot kangaroo.” I had never developed any skills with explosives or radio active materials, shucks, but they did want to know. So after a few backs and forths to the cyber café, I was ready to attach an extra passport photo to my app and go see the Russians.
By this time I’d made friends with a bunch of retirees who hung out at a sidewalk café on El Corniche’. Mr. Farouk was the best at English and he and I became great friends. I wanted to know about Alexandria; he wanted to know about Alaska. He told me to go to Ramal Station which was about two or three blocks away and take the Number Two tram. “Two” in Arabic numerals looks like a Greek gamma on uppers.
The name of the jumping off place slips my mine but I found the Two and had to detrain immediately. I had gotten onto the ladies car but then the conductor took my money, twenty-five piastas (the only thing I can remember that you can use a twenty-five piasta note for. It’s about a nickel. Beggars won’t even take them.) And I told him the name of the station. Of course everybody on my end of the car overheard me. As the crowd would change at stops, each time, the people getting off would tell the people getting on to tell me when we got to that station. It was a real group effort and when I left the tram, everybody waved good-bye.
Well it was a perfectly good day and having found the consulate, I was told that this was not the day to deal with me. Come back tomorrow between something like nine and twelve. I bought a peach and went back to wait for the tram to downtown.
Next day after being hollered at for not entering the correct door, and told to wait my turn in a large room, and since I was first in line (nobody else around) I went in to talk to the man behind the thick glass and through the two-way intercom, he dealt his way through my papers and looked over my passport as if something was missing. I didn’t have an invitation! I have never been “invited” into a country in my life. The door was always open and while I surely had to get a visa ahead of entering some of them, I never needed an invitation. So after explaining this to me (he did speak very good English through the intercom) he told that for a price I could get an invitation through an Egyptian travel agency. Remembering upper Egypt travel agents, that didn’t sound good. My considering retiring on Lake Baikal didn’t sound good to him. The Cold War was over. The Wall was down. Nevertheless it was time for me to go look for another peach.
Mr. Farouk, who is something of a traveler, and I pondered this development over many cups of tea. I was so put out with the suggestion of going through an Egyptian tour office, that I had forgotten the name of the business who obtains invitations. Well, I want to go to Russia, expensive or not, bureaucratic or not, it’s there and I want to get to the other side of it, so I had Yvonne, the desk clerk at the hotel, call to ask about the tourist office. I have a thing about talking over telephones in foreign countries. They always crackle and sound funny. The Russians knew it was me even though she didn’t give my name. Nobody else in Alexandria with five million plus people wanted to go to Russia. They said that I couldn’t make an application until I had established an address in the country from which I applied and the required time for establishing the address was for six months.
Yvonne hung up the receiver and I told her that I had always wanted to return to
England. I had never seen Scotland, Ireland, or Wales and since it didn’t look like I was going to get a seat on the Trans-Siberian Railway, now was my chance.

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