re: #157 wheat-dogghazi-mailgate

On the issue of spending roubles, a cute, unrelated side story.

When my wife and I were in Poland last year, one evening she and I stepped out of our hotel to have a late-night cigarette. (The hotel was next to the downtown police station in Gdańsk. The city is a popular tourist destination for Russian citizens, as it is very near the border of the Kaliningrad exclave.)

I’d forgotten my cigarettes, so I went back up to the room to get them. A bunch of drunk Russians were staggering up the street, and one stopped and propositioned my wife in Polish for “a good time” (woman at 3AM standing on the street having a cigarette, &c). He offered her 300 roubles (about $5). She told him to get lost.

Her assumption was they were looking for a clueless woman who would not know the exchange rate between roubles and dollars or euros.

They then staggered as far as the police station, and one of them lost the contents of his stomach all over their steps and a police car. The police came barrelling out and hauled them all inside.

When I came back, my wife related the story and noted “if this is the best Russia’s got we don’t have a whole lot to worry about.”