Worth the Price of Admission

Last Sunday I was playing football (soccer) in the park with some Expat friends. Okay, no, they were playing and I was barefoot because my heels would have sunk into the grass. But I digress.

We get to the end of the afternoon and are drinking beer on the grass, when we are approached by militsiya. In Russian, they tell us that it is illegal to drink beer on the grass where we are (elsewhere on the grass, yes, just not here.) We're 99.9% sure it is not. But in proper expat fashion, we all "don't speak Russian." (Even though we all pretty much do.) But they tell us we are in trouble in Russian, and we tell them we don't understand in English.

And so there we are in what basically amounts to a game of linguistic chicken. Because we can't challenge their authority without admitting we speak Russian, and they know that they have no authority to speak of in this situation. It's a catch 22. All they are lloking for is a small bribe, and in order to give it to them and walk away happily, all we have to do is turn over next to nothing in cash (because even though we may not have been doing anything illegal, they could always SAY we were doing something else...)

This would be upsetting if it weren't so funny. At one point, one of the cops (after making the intenational finger-and-thumb rubbing sign for "bribe") had the balls to use his limited English and say "Hah. Russia police!" and laugh. And believe me, we were all laughing.

The Cop: "Beer! So--" (makes the money-motion)

Me: (with feigned innocence)"What are you saying? You'd like us to buy you a beer?"

OR

The Cop: You drinked beer!

My Limey: Yes

(Edwina the Aussie slaps him on the arm)

My Limey: I mean, No.

OR

Mya: "These beers? They aren't ours-- these are rubbish. We were just cleaning up after other people who were drinking beer, that's all."

Imagine much of this going back and forth, and you can see how the situation was funny.

In the end, their patience with the back-and-forth outlasted ours, and we did end up paying them.

Total cost to bribe two militsiya and make them lay off five foreigners?

300 rubles.

12 lousy bucks.

The best part is, they didn't want to take any of our small bills. Because that would have been tacky, right?

Worth every penny for a good twenty minutes of entertainment that you can only find in Moscow.