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In Which I Arrive In Estonia, And So Does The Snow

October 30, 2006 by Mike

Narva (Estonia)

Route: St Petersburg - Ivangarod - Narva

I'm holed up in the Hotell Inger; 200 metres inside Estonia.

I got out of Roosia just in time -- that's pretty much how it felt, especially after committing yesterday's ranting Roosian riff to cyberspace -- before the cold turned to f-f-f-freezing and the odd snowflake twirling gaily to the ground turned to a blizzard.

[Note to god: *this is not good biking weather*]

I could so easily have been stranded the other side of the border. The roads were wet, and I'm totally paranoid about ice, so that would have been enough to stop me. The blizzard too. And then there's the Roosian border officials: though I had all the documents, paperwork and stamps I needed, I still felt edgy approaching the border.

I'd also had a run-in with the traffic "police" in St Petersburg, which left me considerably out of pocket and their pockets considerably fuller. I was waved down by a baton-weilding policeman two minutes into my ride - just as I pulled out of the petrol station. By taking a left out of the petrol station, across a white line, I had.. he informed me, in Roosian, then by calling his mate who spoke a bit of English.. committed a crime so heinous that I would lose my licence after appearing infront of a federal judge in two weeks time.

Come on. How much is this going to cost me?

(In fact, because this venal little turd didn't demand a bribe straightaway I got confused. Perhaps he was serious? Perhaps he wasn't just after some easy money? Perhaps exiting a petrol station really *is* a federal offence and worthy of his time, in a city where speeds of 70mph on narrow downtown roads are clearly acceptable, along with undertaking, U-turns and driving through red lights?

Yeaaaahhhhhrrrright.

Igor (it sounded like "eager" -- and he was eager.. for money) patrols in a Lada police car (registration 05500) just south of Lermentovsky Prospekt. Igor has a ripe zit on the left side of his chin today: I suspect he gets them quite a lot.

The other officer in the car -- overweight, ginger, crap moustache -- spent most of this incident trying to adjust the lights in their car - pressing a switch then getting out to look at the headlights. Then back in.. click.. and out to check again. Apart from leafing through my passport he ignored the whole thing. Perhaps he was embarrassed? Or angry because Igor doesn't share his illegal booty?

Igor's mate is called Max. is English is pretty good.

Dear President Putin: if I reported this incident to the appropriate authorities, do you think anything would happen?

I needed to get out of this beautiful/ ugly country today because of the petty strictures of my visa. And I couldn't delay getting away from St Petersburg by trying to sit this one out, in the way I did in Murmansk, because I had a slim window of relative warmth in which to ride.

Igor didn't know it, of course, but his timing was perfect. I paid up. Sorry, future international visitors, I realise this makes it more likely that Igor will try to stitch you up too. If there were a god, not only would I get a little sunshine, but she'd make sure that Igor would soon be burning in the seventh circle of hell.

My only little victory was counting his money out loudly and in public. Imagine that! He wanted me to slip the cash to him on the sly, as if everyone didn't know exactly what he was doing. I regret not having the balls to take his photograph. That's what the internet is good for.

The whole business took an hour out of my life. I got my own back on Roosia by not taking the coast road, but instead taking the main M20 straight to the border. Yes yes, I know I'm spiting myself, but allow me to bleat in my own way. And the truth is, the M20 is such a bad road that going off on smaller ones might have been unwise. That, and the fact that one of the towns on the coast, Sosnovy Bor, is still "closed" to foreigners, so I would have had to take non-tarmac rural roads anyway.

As it was, about 50 miles south of the city there was one section of road so badly mangled that I was convinced I'd suffered a puncture. Barely keeping the bike upright, I slowed to a halt just off the tarmac, the judders getting worse, quickly, as I pulled up.

I was still congratulating myself for keeping the bike upright when I realised that both tyres were absolutely fine. But the road behind me looked like it had been slashed by Jack the Ripper.

Oi! Putin! Do something about this poor benighted country. Now!

In these conditions, I was stopping whenever there was somewhere to stop in. One little roadhouse was typical enough - 2-3 men drinking coffee. 2-3 men drinking alcohol. A couple of them policemen, working hard. A cup of Nescafe (decided not to bring up the international boycott) and fingers tingling as they warm up.

Outside again, a man in tracksuit trousers and a big coat is shaking his head as he looks from me, to the bike, and back again.

"Ayyy-yaaah-yaaay-yaaay-yaaah," he said.

Translation not required.

As I pulled on my helmet, I heard a mosquito buzzing very loudly. In this weather? I looked round. It was the first motorised two-wheeler I've seen for a while. But I'd struggle to call it a motorbike. It was a bicycle with an engine that looked vaguely like grimy-grey scrambled egg hovering between the rider's knees. It was moving under its own steam but that seemed to be a triumph of the will more than anything mechanical. Perhaps he was a Roosian Harry Potter.

Crossing the border took 90 minutes. 87 minutes of that involved getting out of one country; three minutes getting into the next, most of which I was asking the passport stamper to stamp my passport, and asking him the Estonian for 'thank you'. ("Palon", he said. I think.)

The border follows the river Narva. On one side is the Ivangarod Fortress, erected by the Roosians hundreds of years ago to stop the Estonians from invading them. Ironic, huh?

And on the other side is the Narva Fortress - built by the Danes to prevent the Swedes from invading them. Yes! It's a crazy mixed-up world, and it was ever thus. Pretty soon, the Danes sold this bit of Estonia to the Livonian Order, a band of German warrior monks who eventually ceded to the Lithuanians, who were actually Polish, before Sweden conquered the territory just in time to lose a war with Roosia, and with it this stretch of Estonia, as it would become, at last, briefly, in 1918.
Until 1940, when the USSR, having signed a secret pact with Nazi Germany, felt obliged to invade little Estonia just in time for the Nazis to renege and take over the country for three years before the Soviets wrested it back. Until 1991, when Estonia once again became.. Estonia.

(Take a deep breath.)

The fortresses are austere, elegant, still. They've been shyly courting each other for the best part of a millennium, while the river gently curls between them. They got a shock in 1944, though, when Narva was for several months the frontline of fighting between the Nazis and the Soviet Union. The Narva fortress was destroyed, and later rebuilt by the victorious home team.

The current drama played out under their skirts, border guards and queues and frustrations and all, may be calm by comparison. It'll be over soon enough, too.

Snowflakes on arrival at the border. Heavy snowfall as I left it.

Luckily, I was on the side of the border that has half-decent hotels costing very little. And as one of them was called the Hotell Inger (hello Ma!) my decision was made for me.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Arrive In Estonia, And So Does The Snow

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