St Petersburg

Sergei, editor-in-chief of a St Petersburg colour supplement, has an exceptional command of some suitably colourful words of the English language, using several words throughout the evening with which I have only a passing familiarity. "In Moscow, you have a meeting and you make a decision. In St Petersburg, you have a meeting and then you decide when you will have the meeting to make the decision." he says. We are eating Thai curry in the apartment of Andrei and Sasha, photographer and doctor respectively, friends of Simon, who is in St Petersburg researching the next edition of the Lonely Planet guide.

Many stories are told about the old days and the not so old days. Andrei and Sasha once borrowed the car of a famous boxer with whom they are friends. Not far into the journey the police car pulled up behind them, "Pull over, Piotr Grigioryevich, pull over" blaring from their megaphone. When the driver turned out not to be the boxer, from whom this policeman had taken so many drink driving bribes that they were on first name terms, he just shrugged and let them drive on. Another time Sasha was working as a nurse on a naval ship in dock, an obligatory military element of her medical training. As the only two women on board, she and the other nurse often found sailors returning day after day with minor, self inflicted bumps and scrapes. When the orders came down that they were to put to sea for one month, the two girls decided enough was enough and bought the captain several bottles of whiskey to avoid several weeks in close proximity to so many men on the verge of desperation.

Apparently, this story is by no means confined to the past. Today it is possible to see the incredibly prevalent officers of the GAI (Their name has changed many times but this is one of the more polite terms still used to describe them) stop a flashy car, only for the driver to flash a piece of paper and continue. This is an expensive document, a fast track pre-paid bribe, that allows the owner to claim that they are on police business, however unlikely this seems for a woman in high heels, fur, sunglasses and Porsche. If you don't have it, you must stop your car, get out and go through the routine of document checking before paying to be one your way. If you don't stop for their random checks, they are allowed to shoot your car.