Russian Guards...

Now, about 50% of the times that we’ve mentioned that we’re going by train through Russia, the first thing somebody has said has related to Russian border guards, who appear to be known and feared worldwide. This seems to be with good reason; apparently a recent study revealed that 60% of Russian border guards are mentally unstable and should not be trusted in command of weapons (said study was commissioned after a couple of unfortunate incidents in which deranged border guards went on shooting sprees and killed their colleagues).

Given this reputation, and given that my previous encounters with border personnel across the world have rarely been entirely pleasant, we expected that our meeting with the Russians would be nothing if not memorable. Alas, we were to be disappointed. Perhaps since the publication of said study the recruitment policy has been changed (i.e. they are not recruiting from category A prisons), for the guards that came on the train were all very young and not very threatening at all. The guard who came into our carriage was a woman not much more than my age, who was the possessor of an imposing fur hat but did not appear to be at all psychotic, mentally unbalanced, or trigger-happy. She even smiled at us, and there was never any talk of a fine. Perhaps the Russia-Mongolia border will furnish us with better stories but for now I unfortunately have no interesting/scary Russian guard stories to report. We did get another stamp though, which always makes me unreasonably happy.

Kelly also enquired about drug mule bunkmates. Again, sorry to disappoint, but our cabin mate going across the Russian border was a Ukrainian babushka who I very much doubt had a secret career as a heroin trader. She did supply us with lots and lots of food which may, I suppose, have contained barbiturates or something, but of all the people I’ve ever met on my travels she didn’t immediately strike me as one of the more dodgy. She was about 65 and was going to visit her son in Moscow, which didn’t strike me as suspicious either, but then again, she could have been a Ukrainian spy en route to crack the secrets of the Kremlin. Maybe.