It should have happened someday, but as usual it happened right when it was last thing you expected to occur. A nice couple came to visit me (a girl from Novosibirsk and her boyfriend from Hungary), plus George came after university, and we all went to the supermarket to buy something for dinner. And when we were walking downstairs we came across two men accompanied by the Boss of our house – one too wish-to-know-all-about-neighbours Granny.
The man asks me,
“Do you live here?”
“Yes”
“Then your documents, please”
“What for?”
“I’m your district Militia man, please, your documents”
“They are in the apartment, and I’m in a hurry, there’s another person there, she will show you the docs”
“NO, I need your documents, NOW”
“Aaaaalright…” I turned round and walked back to the apartment for the docs.
“There’s no need to act as if you’re doing me a favour”, says the voice from behind.
The Granny hurried to put a word in, “Ah, new neighbours – and a whole crowd!”
“We don’t live here, we just came to visit her”, George says.
The next few minutes I’ve been passed through an interview.
- Do you live here?
- Are you registered here on this address?
- What’s the purpose of your staying here?
- Whose things are all that?
And blah blah blah.
Finally he said, “OK, no more questions to you, you may be free” AS IF I HAVEN’T BEEN ONE BEFORE!!! SHIT!!!
But when I went out of the apartment I had to pass through another interview. The Militia men learnt that Imre was a foreigner, and he was not registered. F*ck, I hate our stupid system! Why can’t a person just come and visit the country?! Why do we, Russians, have to be registered in Moscow, the capital of the state where we all were born? We are also Russians, and we HAVE a right to move within Russia – what the hell?!
Everyone kept silence. I felt like I needed to say something to rescue the guys,
“They are just my friends who came to visit me, that’s all” I do all my best to smile drowning the desire to punch them at their faces (although I’m a girl and I’m not supposed to act like that, but damn all the prejudices, I really wished that!)
“Where did you get to know each other?”
“Through one international organization…” I tried hard to recollect the name of any organization
“Which one?”
“Eh.. MitOst” We never chanced to meet through MitOst sure, but it was the first organization that slipped from my tongue.
“What is this organization responsible for? Red Cross-type?”
“No, it’s an organization to unite Eastern and Western Europe and establish friendly ties among the states”
“Well ok, ok… I just need to know if it’s a sect or not”
“OF COURSE NOT!!! It’s sponsored by Reichstag!!!”
Ha-ha-ha it never was financed by Reichstag, but I simply stopped controlling myself :) Anyway the phrase sounded very impressive, and the Militia men gave up and set us free.
Imre was totally shocked. That was his first impression of Russia. We tried to calm him down as much as we could. And after that we get surprised with the world’s attitude towards Russia!!! When even Russian citizens born here are treated like undesirable guests in the capital having no right to anything.
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2 comments:
Hey, darling, it's rather awful to come across this, i'm really angry with such system of ours. In othere countries anyway are the same rules coz they r all afraid of the muslim terrorists mainly, so they even ask their own citizens to show the id, for instance, in Germany, i have an aquaintance of my mum who even had a doc and who was frequently asked to prove it.
So be careful and have ur id at hand to be armed with knowledge as well. Good luck, darling! I miss u i had to say as i felt like that!
Thanx Ox, I miss you too. And sure I always have my passport and my registration in my bag, and maybe it's understandable why they are so strict at checking the docs. But I don't really like the way they do it, you know what our Militia men are like, so there's no need to explain anything about it.
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