Well, this is actually my (Seb’s) first report since we left Belgium as Kim is always your commenting host, but today that will be moi…
Ok, so again we had some pretty bad weather as you have been reading and some mental issues with the trip, the weather and the problems. But then that’s what we were after, I think. Maybe we just hoped on having good weather all the time and no brake downs, but then hope is hope and not reality, isn’t it?!
So we did some more camping after taking a wrong turn somewhere (you can still see it on the ‘spot’map for now) as my GPS is not working anymore and my map is 1 in 3 Million so impossible to find my way except for the mayor roads. The GPS was supposed to have all the ‘roads’ of where we would go, but Deus Machina decided once more that he would intervene and so my GPS is completely worthless at the moment, except for speed indication, since we don’t have any dashboard on the bikes, this comes in handy for dodging the police(bribes).
Anyway, we found our way back after talking to some peasants in the field in direction of the border and off we went. Thought it would go fast as it’s a small border. We thought wrong…
The paperwork was done in 30 minutes, but the customsofficer was looking strangely nervous when he saw my camera in my pelicase on the bike. You need to know that Belarus, Russia and Kazachstan share a one customs area policy, so we still have our Russian customs papers for the bikes. Even if there’s no customs but only immigration, the guy wanted me to open all the bags of the bike and unload everything. I was honestly really not looking forward to this, so I told him that I am a police officer in Belgium (ok, for those of you who didn’t know, now you know!) He was looking at me like, “yeah sure”, but it stopped him from being a pain in the ass, or so I thought at the time. After going to immigration, we were getting ready to cross no-man’s land to get to the Kazakh border but this was not what the Russians intended for us, no sir, they were not finished with us yet:
We were asked to take the valuables of the bikes and wait inside for an undefined amount of time. Maybe it was because we talked a bit while we were not supposed to with 3 German bikers who were going the opposite way? Would be strange, because then they would have also told them to wait. Maybe it is because we didn’t register our visa once inside Russia? Not likely as I know the law; you need to do it within 7 days and we were not 7 days in Russia, so we could dodge this rule… and go camping, hehehe… Looking at our passports, we were already checked out of Russia, so actually, why the hell do we need to sit and wait? Wait for what actually? I went asking the customs officer who spoke some English. Some English means as in the equivalent of almost non-existent. He told me that the Chief Customs Officer needs to talk with me. “Ok, so where is this guy?” I asked. “He here in 20 to 60 minutes” was the answer. “Why does he want to talk to me?” I asked. “He come and speak, you sit and wait” is the best I could make of it. So we waited. And waited. In the end some guy came asked if we spoke Russian. Of course we don’t otherwise we would know why we had to wait all the time for no apparent reason. He vanishes. After yet another “what seems like an eternity” time, they come and take me to this guy and the customs officer (remember he speaks ‘fluent’ English) will be serving as my interpreter. “Euh… excuse me? Am I getting interrogated by the Russian FSB?” “Yes” is the simple answer I get. Ok, at least now I know what’s going on. Oh no, wait, I don’t have a clue what’s going on! I am in a foreign country, 3700km from home getting interrogated by the KGB (what’s in a name?) in a language I don’t understand with an interpreter that’s worth shit for an unknown reason. All is fine! Hell no! Ok, let’s see what they want and how to get out of this situation…
I won’t go to much into details (you never know if Ivan’s reading and we need to get back into Russia later on) but it came down to this: We are on a Cultural Visa (yes we are actually-long story) with some cool looking camera’s driving alone in Russia without any tourist organisation and we declare to be policemen… They wanted to know where we were going, where we came from where we stayed in Russia, if I was in the army, where I served, where I work in the police, what my specialization is, what my political opinions are, what I think of Russia, etc… Needless to say that I dodged a lot of these questions, doing what all experienced travellers do to get out of a mess: started joking around, smiling, complying etc, anything (no not anything!) so they would let us go. In the end they checked all the pictures and videos I made since we left home to see if I didn’t film anything prohibited in Russia or get interviews and stuff. After another 2 hours they said it was fine and let us go. I politely gave them a handshake and could just in time put aside my feeling to give them a big wheelie when leaving…
