After scouring two of the most pathetic shops possible, calling themselves “supermarket tourist shop” we managed to get rid of our last remaining lari and then set off for the Russian border. Our impression was jaundiced by the first two people we met, a lady border guard who would have been very pretty if she could smile, and a tall cadaverous-looking individual who couldn’t smile to save his life. Passports were checked many times, then we had to drive over a pit so they could look underneath the van for drugs and bombs. A man who, judging by the stars on his epaullettes, was the Big Boss came over and beamed at us. He looked like Grouty in “Porridge” and his beam reminded me of when Grouty called Fletch into his cell to break his fingers. We were then shown into a room and asked to wait. Eventually a very pleasant man with extremely good English came in and began to ask us a lot of quite personal questions which we had been asked when we filled in the visa applications. He was looking for discrepancies in the story. When a colleague opened a drawer, we couldn’t help noticing a set of handcuffs. Eventually we were able to go and set off down a channel marked “Vladikavkaz” before we were waved back and a soldier came running out with two customs declaration forms. After several abortive attempts to fill them in correctly (they wanted to know what goods we were carrying and, trying to be scrupulously honest, I put “bedding, cutlery, portapotty etc) and the customs man scrubbed them out and said “don’t bother with that”, it was all eventually completed. We then had to buy insurance, costing £27, and some extremely friendly office folks gave us cups of coffee. We drove away in a state of suspended animation, hardly believing that we had got through the border unscathed.
We soon arrived at Vladikavkaz which, like all Russian towns, has long tree-lined avenues down which you drive for miles wondering if you are actually getting to the city centre. Hotel Diakris is the cheapest hotel in the city listed in Tripadvisor, and it is a treat. You have to have hotel bookings before getting a visa so I chose the cheapest, but it is clean and comfortable with an excellent shower and a very friendly lady-owner who let us use her washing machine for a small fee.
The pics of Vladikavkaz show the immediate environs of the hotel. It was rather sad to see buses going to Beslan in the bus station. More than 300 children were murdered in Beslan by terrorists in the early 1990’s. Many of the vehicles have “I love the USSR” stickers with strong support remaining for the communists in the North Caucasus.
