An unexpected phone call

Third class trains to Russia were much more comfortable than we were expecting – except for the top bunk. Theo actually loves top bunks, being the youngest of four brothers he didn’t get to go up top much as a boy, but this one was a bit cramped.

…if we’d been feeling braver he could have had the bed opposite us, but we were going into Russia and we didn’t want to be a problem before we’d even arrived.

The layout was different from any other train we’d been on, open plan in compartment ‘zones’ with six beds in each – two up two down opposite each other, and two at the end – that might make any ‘specific’ attention from the border guards less likely.

The train didn’t leave until 22.48 so it was clean teeth and get to bed time for us pretty soon after the train left Atyrau, at a very sedate 28 miles an hour.

We were in a ‘slow and steady wins the race’ train for this leg of our journey and it was relaxing.

I woke at six and we still hadn’t reached the border. Very civilised.

There was a little boy in the next sleeping bay and he wasn’t much keen on mums idea of keeping quiet as a way of spending his time. He wanted to play with his cars. I reckoned Theo was going to be his best bet, but we had the Kazakh border to go through first.

Leaving Kazakhstan was straight forward, although for the first time since we left home we were asked to open a bag. They lost interest pretty quickly when they saw how many bags we had…

Passport control was done with a couple of officers, a stamp and a laptop on the end bed, and we were done.

Russia next – it took well over an hour to cover the ten mile distance from the end of Kazakhstan to the beginning of Russia. Long enough for the little boy and Theo to make friends.

His name was Ali, he was four and if Theo had really wanted to learn Russian this would have been the way to go. They played together for nearly two hours only interrupted by the Russian border guards coming in, in their big old boots.

They too wanted us to open our bags, and also lost interest before we got to Suitcase, much to Suitcases annoyance.

The heart stopping moment came for me this time.

‘The finger point’ signifying ‘you’, come with me.

I followed the woman out of the compartment, where were we going?

Precisely five yards. She was my passport control person – they did us individually and I was first.

The only question she asked me was my name, which I got right.

There were layers to the Russian approach – the men who checked our bags, then the passport officers, the soldiers with sniffer dogs, and then the man who walked around in the understated grey uniform.

He hung back and watched. Clever, and good at his job. He could speak English but started by speaking Russian, asking us where we were going. He checked our visas and we held our breath – the passport lady had not made any comment about the lack of photo on the visa’s, but would he…?

He spent quite some time looking at everything in my passport and then he moved on, but not for long, just long enough for us to start talking a little more naturally again, like I say – clever and good at his job.

He asked us questions about our route and where we’d come from – and then, probably because of Ali, he started to like us.

Ali had had enough of the sitting about and wanted to get back to the awesome ‘machine game’. Theo was not one to ignore a little boy thrusting cars into his hand and so with the Russian border guards still patrolling the corridors, ‘smashing and crashing’ sounds started up again in our little compartment.

Our man all in grey walked through and smiled slightly, was he a dad? He asked us if we’d been to Russia before, he already knew we had because both our visas were in our passports and he’d spent so long looking through them he could answer exam questions on them.

I decided the smart thing to do was not make a witty little comment along the lines of ‘you should know!’ Instead I took him at face value and told him how much we’d liked Vladikavkaz, and that we were looking forward to spending time back in ‘Mother Russia’.

…and what can I tell you – I saw that steely exterior soften…we didn’t have a heart to heart but he picked Ali’s fire engine up off the floor and popped in back on the table, and as he walked away he smiled slightly at Theo.

When the train finally pulled off the three of us let out a collective sigh of relief – I don’t think any of us had noticed we had been feeling particularly nervous but it had been a big build up…three months of work for this visa and these three days. The train pulling away meant we were in, we’d done it.

Theo and I took it in turns to play with Ali for the next three hours. He was so much fun – his mum was regularly worried that it was too much for us but it really wasn’t – we had a great time with him, I managed to remember how to make a paper crane and he loved it…

As the train slowly pulled into Astrakhan station Ali came and touched Theo’s arm, they had a little hug – , a thank you to each other for a game well played.

We smiled our goodbyes to mum and readied ourselves for the twenty minute walk to the hotel. Suitcase needed the exercise, but I wasn’t sure about the rest of us. Still, we didn’t have much choice until we went to a bank, we had a few Rubels but not enough for a taxi.

We walked slowly through the streets, enjoying the wooden houses and the old fashioned cars. There is a certain ‘faded glory’ to Astrakhan and it sits in quite a small pot of towns we’ve been to where tourism really isn’t a big part of what goes on. People are living their lives for themselves and I like how that feels.

We made it to our hotel and even though we were three hours early they got our room ready within twenty minutes. It was a large room with a good view of the canal, but the best thing about it was there was a bath in the bathroom, an actual bath.

I couldn’t decide what to do with myself first …after three days on trains we were all glad to lie down for a bit but we needed to change some money, get some food and …that bath!

No-one else had it in them so I decided bank and shopping first, bath second – get the work done and then rest.

I loved walking through those streets by myself. The combination of having a slight sense of purpose with being somewhere hidden from our view because of the actions of their government and ours. This was a country where my credit card didn’t work, where our insurance didn’t cover us. (…it was hard to see just where the danger lay in the jams and spreads isle of the supermarket, but clearly this was an insurance risk not worth taking …)

People were helpful everywhere I went, showing me the ticket system at the bank and where the weighing machine was in the supermarket. We only had $50 dollars we could change and half of that was going on our hostel the next night, time to be careful about what I bought…plums, bread, a weird spinach pastry going cheap, a cucumber, some tomatoes  and a bar of dark chocolate…(sounds a bit grim now I’m writing it : )

I spent three glorious hours in the bath, removing at least three layers of tan, and then Theo and I went out for a walk to the ‘Astrakhan Kremlin.’

I thought there was only one ‘Kremlin’, the one in Moscow, but apparently there are twelve left still standing and with Russia being seventy times the size of the UK, it gave Astrakhan’s an extra significance. I discovered that Kremlin means ‘citadel’ so there we are – learning something and getting to go for a walk. I suspect there was a lot more to see than the casual look around we had but we were tired after three days of travel so we nodded our appreciation at the beauty of the place and went back to the park where I sat in silent contemplation of the wreaths placed by the everlasting flame.

I can’t walk past a war memorial in the UK without reading the names of the dead and it was no different here – I could feel the grief at the loss of life, here and in Ukraine – wondering if that woman in a headscarf, sat quietly by herself, was a mum of one of these poppies.

That night we ate a simple (weird) meal of what I had brought in the supermarket plus what we had left over from the train. We didn’t have the money for a restaurant and we really needed as much sleep as we could get these next two nights before our mad dash across Georgia.

We had actually loved the Museum hostel we stayed in in Tbilisi and little Mangy (the cat!) still had a place in our hearts but, as a place to reconnect with on the way home? …we just weren’t feeling it – we wanted home more.

…and if we were honest and made a list of our favourite countries in order, Georgia would not be near the top.

I got another bath in the next morning and went and fed the crows on an early morning walk back through the park to the Kremlin (I knew where it was now : )

We had time to go and have our breakfast before we walked to the bus station. I don’t book hotels with breakfast very often but this hotel was also serving as a ‘respectable place for us to stay’ if we were questioned so I’d gone for it…and it was fabulous. A buffet breakfast and I think we ate enough pickles and beetroot to keep us going through Russia and Georgia.

We thanked the women who had looked after us so well the day before, and set off back to the bus station.

Our bus was not glamorous or big, it didn’t have working seatbelts and they charged us all our remaining rubels for our luggage, but the driver wasn’t crazy and we were better at travelling long distance by bus now. We all had our strategies for coping with it, and so the whole journey passed without incident, except for…

A checkpoint.

At the border between the provinces of Dagestan and Chechnya we were stopped by a large force of army personnel.

It looked like a routine stop to us so we sat tight.

One of the patrol-men came on and gave a quick instruction to the driver  – ‘all the men into the corrugated hut’.

Theo was the only other man on our whole minibus…I gave him his passport and watched him walk away with the driver.

Not. Again.

The driver came out quite quickly but not Theo, a couple of other buses were pulled over behind us now and I saw their men go in, and come out.

Still no Theo.

The feeling in the bus was restless – was that worry, or wanting to get a move on?

Rosa and I stared out of the window, glued to the back door of the hut willing Theo to come out.

Eventually our driver had had enough and not being the sort of bus company that leaves its passengers behind, he went steaming back in again.

Two minutes later he was back with our Theo.

It had only been fifteen minutes but when he walked back into the bus Theo got a round of applause – they had been worried about him!!

That (and the relief) bought tears to my eyes and Theo quickly recounted a simple tale of the guards inside not really knowing what to do with him and just pointing to a corner of the hut and leaving him there. God knows how long he’d have stood there if our heroic bus driver hadn’t gone to get him.

Back under way the rest of the journey passed in a blur of sunshine and pastoral landscapes – this part of Russia was pretty flat but as we approached Vladikavkaz the mountains we would pass through tomorrow slowly came into view.

We were all relaxedly contemplating a night at the Stanislavskiy Hostel, having recovered from Theo’s stint in ‘the hold’, we were only an hour from the end of the journey when…

My phone rang.

It was a Russian phone number. Who the hell was calling me in Russia – I only knew one person, Olga, and it was her daughter’s birthday so she wouldn’t be ringing me…I cancelled it.

Could it be…

Igor?!

No, he’d have a Chinese number and why would he ring? …To check we’d actually gone to Russia as part of the consulate follow up service? Not very unlikely.

Who was it?

Next time they rang I answered and a stream of fast Russian came at me. I stammered I don’t understand and offered my phone round to someone else. One of the other women took it but it cut off.

…and then I got a text.

‘Are you travelling from Astrakhan to Tbilisi tomorrow?’ There was no name or explanation – it could have been from the Russian Government for all I knew, but I assumed it was from our bus company.

To put this in context, in the entire nine months we’ve been away, none of our bus, train or ferry companies have contacted us.

This was a first.

It would have been a simple matter to send a one word reply but I had no data in Russia – I couldn’t reply until we got to our hotel.

…and why was she asking me?

We’d booked the tickets and paid for them, was there a problem?

I tried not to let my imagination kick start. Much better to ring her back.

…but I couldn’t.

The women in front and behind me had cottoned on to what was going on and asked for the number – one plugged it into her phone and rang it while the other explained to the woman who could speak a little English what was needed and the phone was passed to her.

Some mighty efficient sisterhood solidarity going on there…

The conversation lasted longer than I had expected with a few nods and a couple of shakes of the head. The call ended and then our translator crossed her arms in from of her.

The bus was cancelled?! She said ‘bee, bee, bee’ and then crossed her arms again – what did ‘bee, bee, bee’ mean?…and if it was cancelled what the hell were we going to do?

I imagined us all turning up at the Russian Police Station, ‘Hello, our visa expires today and the bus has been cancelled, would you like to drive us to the border like the nice Chinese policeman would have done, or would you prefer we stay another day?’…

‘Oh, so you have a third option for people who outstay their visa’s…?’

Nope, we really didn’t want the bus to be cancelled. Rosa and Theo had sat patiently with questions in their eyes during both phone calls and I filled them in as best I could.

The woman behind me leaned forward and showed me her phone ‘lost connection’ it said on her translate app.

Ahhh that’s what ‘bee, bee, bee’ meant (beep, beep, beep!) …and the crossed arms.

Momentarily I felt revived but we still had no idea why bus lady had called and no way of finding out until we got to the hostel …and we weren’t going to get there quickly.

The baggage costs had taken all but our last 200 Rubels (£1.70) we had no option but to walk the hour from the bus station.

Just before we arrived into Vladikavkaz the women in front of me took the initiative and rang bus lady again, better signal in the city. The upshot was there was a text waiting for me on What’s App and I had until 21.00 Moscow time to get back to her.

Blimey!

It was 19.15 now and just over an hours walk across town – I wish I hadn’t bought the weird spinach thing, we might have had enough money for a taxi.

We like Vladikavkaz, the mountain backdrop is spectacular and it has a slight ‘resort’ feel to it…somewhere people go to have fun, but that hour long walk across the city, knowing we had a time limit, was not quite what the three of us had in mind when we arrived.

I am delighted to say that we did not fall out (very much) and my chest was only slightly tight. We took it in turns to drag Suitcase and eventually we arrived at that haven of tranquility – the Stanislavskiy Hostel – so clean – so stylish, so well run!

Angela was there to meet us with her beautiful smile and kind eyes and showed us to our room.

My phone remembered the WiFi code and there were a string of messages all asking us if we were getting the bus tomorrow.

‘Yes.’ I typed, and I really meant it.

We all sat on the bed waiting for her to reply – was it cancelled or was she just checking numbers?

Two minutes, three minutes…and then a question.

‘Where are you staying?’

I texted her the address and within a few short seconds her reply dissolved all our worries.

‘David is your driver and he will pick you up from your hotel at 10.00 tomorrow.’

Three fabulous things:

1. The bus wasn’t cancelled
2. We didn’t have to walk an hour across town
3. We were leaving an hour and an half earlier – maybe we could catch the earlier train in Georgia and actually get some sleep in Batumi?!

Delighted with how everything had turned out we went downstairs to a packed kitchen. The hostel was busy and the residents were celebrating Serge’s birthday!

Serge was a big bear of a man who walked with a limp and drank from a hip flask. (Mad-eye Moody in Russia!)

Theo and I had the same idea and I went and got my guitar so we could sing him a song for his birthday – He was so into it and everyone knows the song ‘What’s going on?’ …it was good to sit around that little kitchen table and sing together… it united us.

We had a great evening, the Russians, a Korean woman and us three, eating cake and finding out a bit about Serge’s colourful life.

When I went to pay, the lovely Angela didn’t take all of the money for the room, ‘keep it’ she said ‘you made such a lovely atmosphere tonight!’

Well, that meant we had enough money for snacks tomorrow…wonderful. 

Rosa and I went for a walk through the beautifully clean wide streets of the city to find a shop in the morning while Theo cooked dahl and rice for our wait at Tbilisi railway station.

David was on time and we bid a very fond farewell to the Stanislavskiy.

Our ‘bus’ was a nine seater –  clearly our bus lady decided what vehicle to use based on the number of bookings – very efficient actually.

Our driver was Armenian and the couple next to him were Russian.

Theo sat in the back next to a software designer from Belarus named Art who translated for the bus driver, effortlessly switching between Russian and English, and then he nattered away in another language with the last occupant of the bus.

A tall, striking looking woman in her mid twenties, from Ukraine.

We suspected we might not be the most interesting thing on the bus when we got to the border.

David was not a sedate driver, he could overtake at speed with the best of the crazies we’d been driven by but he had one thing they didn’t – a love for his vehicle. If there was any chance something might happen to it he’d slow right down.

I would have preferred slow and careful, but fast and careful was infinitely better than fast and totally reckless.

Our driver was something of a tour guide as well and he kept telling us interesting things about the mountains we were passing and their various heights…the Caucuses are big!

We arrived at the border within an hour. A border crossing that we will always remember long after nearly all the others have faded…on our way out this had been our first big test.

We joined the short queue of vehicles and quite quickly we were at the front.

We all got off and by silent agreement our Ukrainian bus mate went first – if there was a problem we wanted to witness it and if there were to be questions the sooner they started the better.

Sure enough, within minutes she was being escorted to a building behind passport control.

To be honest Theo, Rosa and I were struggling to understand how a Ukrainian national could be wandering around freely in Russia, about to leave and go to Germany.

Life is complicated.

The three of us took a little time to process but we were all done by 11.45.

Ukrainian lady appeared once with an officer to check that the bus was waiting for her, which it was, we weren’t going anywhere and we settled down to wait some more. 

Watching the comings and goings of cars, buses and lorries, admiring the ‘sass’ of the two women border officers in charge of everything in our section.

After a while I noticed an older man hanging out quite near us, he looked like a taxi driver, dressed unremarkably and I assumed he was waiting for his passengers to get through. But two hours later every car he could possibly have been in had left and he was still here.

Interesting…

We eventually left at 14.30.

They had checked Ukrainian ladies phone and asked her a LOT of questions and eventually come to the conclusion she was as harmless as we were…

It was great to see the care for her amongst our little bus. No-one got cross or impatient during the wait, we just wanted to know she was okay.

We stopped at the Georgian side and Ukrainian lady was whisked off again but only for a couple of minutes this time…and while we waited, guess who showed up? Yep, fake taxi driver man.

The mood on the bus was a little festive on the way through the mountain pass, with David stopping a few times so we could get out and admire the snow capped mountains.

It wasn’t a slow drive around the hair pin bends but ‘the fear’ never settled for long – his love of his vehicle keeping us all on the right side of the road more often than the wrong.

We arrived into Tbilisi at 18.00, over an hour after the earlier train had left, (good call on the later train booking) we said a warm goodbye to our fellow bus companions and noticed we were in the same bus station we had arrived into the night of the ‘great storm’.

Rosa took a wary look at the sky.

I was all up for retracing that memorable journey but Theo and Rosa were really clear that that memory deserved to be preserved as was (with no walking), so we engaged the services of Razu who drove like a Formula One driver, without the precision.

God was I glad we had a train booked!

The station and its surroundings were ugky and a bit grim – no Chinese train station this, in fact of all the stations we’ve been to it was the worst – (sorry Georgia)!

It was a long night sitting on those metal benches waiting for our train to arrive but eventually it did, and with a very nice piece of luck we ended up with a couple of seats each.

Sleep was minimal but it was horizontal.

The sunrise was soft in that early morning light, the Black Sea reflecting the colours in the sky and in a first we said yes to a lovely old gentleman who offered us his taxi services. Normally we haggle, or walk out of the station but not today.

We had enough Georgian money to pay him what he asked and because we didn’t even try and haggle he took us the scenic way through Batumi – a lovely way to say goodbye to a Georgia we had crossed in less than 18 hours.

On the other side of the border lay our next bus taking us the length of Turkey to Istanbul.

By tomorrow morning we would have arrived in ‘the city of cats’ and home would only be a few short days away.