Fine(d) in St Petersburg
Monday, September 15th, 2008Less than an hour in Russia proper and I have already been fined by a very severe looking railway official. The crime was taking a photo of an, on reflection kind of average, wall mosaic of Lenin. The site Finland Station where the great leader had arrived back to from his exile, gave a speech on a tank and proceeded on to do some stuff that you can read about elsewhere. The punishment 100 roubles, a sixth of the money that we had just changed upon arrival. The sequence of events was as simple as get off train from Helsinki, drag others outside to take photo of statue of Lenin on spot of aforementioned speech, change money, line up for subway tokens, pull out camera, get pulled by the scruff of the neck into a booth filled with unidentifiably uniformed officials, have piece of paper shoved under nose explaining offense and amount of fine, try and explain that personally I have no money on me a situation that’s not covered by my phrasebook, get shouted at, eventually wave over others who thankfully post my bail. [read on]
montombo