Mission Aborted

Five Polish friends and I months ago planned a trip to Kaliningrad, a formerly German town in the tiny Russian enclave on the Baltic, between Poland and Lithuania.

Through another friend, a soi-disant travel agent and expert on such matters, we got three-month visas to Russia, for which we paid, he said, a reduced rate because he knew the Russian Consul and could get a good deal.

The trip was today.

The journey from where I live to the border takes about thirty minutes, with a fifteen minute wait at the Polish side for documents to be inspected and a rather longer wait at the Russian side for the same reason.

Polish officials are usually friendly, and we got to the Russian control point without problems.

The Rusians officials were neither happy nor quick, and were particularly interested in me and my British passport, and even more so in my visa.

Unlike the others, my visa had expired on 30th August, and I could not enter Russia. Fool that I was, I had not bothered to read it. I explained to the border guard, whose hat would have made a fine helicopter landing pad, that we were on an excursion to the beautiful and historic city of Kalininigrad.

"Your problem, not mine," he replied, without a smile. He looked sad. Being nice got me nowhere.

There followed a wait of about 20 minutes while the officials thought about it. I hoped they could extend the visa with a rubber stamp, or something similar. If not, I had already decided to return to Poland on my own, so as not to make everyone else come back and spoil the outing.

The official returned, beckoned to me to follow, and walked very fast across three lanes of the checkpoint. I walk very fast too, so overtook him, and that made him even sadder. A car was waiting.

The driver of the car was a Pole, was returning from Russia to my town, and so drove me home. My friends went on to Kaliningrad.

I learned a lot from that driver. From where I live you can drive to Russia in half an hour, with an almost empty petrol tank, fill your car and a canister up with low-price Russian petrol or diesel, buy a litre of very cheap but excellent Russian vodka and cigarettes (all quite legally), and return to Poland.

You then syphon out the petrol, which you sell at a good profit, sell the vodka and cigarettes, and earn yourself 100 złoty, a reasonable day's pay.

The driver said he could easily do this three times a day and earn three times the amount, but you can cross the border legally only once every 24 hours. He has a wife (a nurse) and children, but no job, only the daily trip to Russia and plenty of free time for his children, he and hundreds (thousands) of others who live close to a border crossing.

Smart people! As they say, "Polak potrafi." The Pole can do it.

Hah! And he also told me where to buy a much cheaper, regular visa.

The others haven't returned yet, but I hope they've brought me something nice.