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| Email/Newsletter Update: Issue #21 (July 1st, 2001) |
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| Lisa and Joel's Excellent Adventure: Issue 21 ------------------------------------- -All Hell Breaks Out In Russia!- by Lisa A. Listro and Joel A. Sward Saturday afternoon, June 30th, 2001, day 362 of Lisa and Joel's Excellent Adventure, we found ourselves walking across Birzhevoy Bridge to the Petrograd side of St. Petersburg, Russia. Once we crossed the bridge, the first thing we noticed was a huge group of people working their way into Petrovskiy Stadium. Many of the people in the crowd were dressed in blue and were waving blue flags with Russian letters. It turns out they were proudly displaying the colors of St. Petersburg's football team and everyone was going to a football match. We thought, why don't we try to get in. This could be interesting. What an understatement! As we became absorbed by the huge, disorderly crowd, we began to notice that most of the people around us were young Russian men, many with shaved heads, void of shirts and covered in tattoos. (Not that we have anything against shaved heads, or going without a shirt or having tattoos -- we're just trying to set the scene here.) Soon the crowd pushed us up to a security check point. Armed soldiers in full riot gear were physically searching every entrant from head to toe, in addition to checking tickets. Since we didn't have a ticket and couldn't see any way of getting one we put our heads down and ploughed our way out of the crowd. We were just about to give up on our attempt to enter when a scalper approached us. He spoke excellent English (which is always a bad sign -- English speaking touts are more likely to rip you off) and offered us two tickets for 800 Rr. We had no idea what the tickets were actually supposed to go for, if the tickets he was offering were good seats, or if they were actually real tickets for that matter. As we tried to dicker him down, he continued his sales pitch and motioned us to get away from the hundreds of police and soldiers standing guard over the proceedings. (Scalping must be illegal in Russia too.) We finally got him down to 400 Rr for two tickets, which was still a rip off, in more ways than one -- the tickets actually were supposed to cost 40 Rr each and the seats he gave us literally put us in the eye of a storm. After fighting our way back to the security checkpoint, we were padded down from head to toe and our bags were emptied and searched. Anyone trying to get through with anything heavy (which could be thrown at opposing fans), booze, bombs, flares, firecrackers, even lighters (we guess so they couldn't light things on fire) were confiscated and thrown into a huge, and ever growing, pile of contraband. It turned out that this checkpoint was just one of four that we had to go through. More physical searches of our bodies and bags and more passing through metal detectors. Remember, this entire time we are literally sandwiched between thousands of drunk young Russian skin heads. Adding to our anxiety were the stares and glares we got from the security forces as we passed through the checkpoints. When it became apparent that we couldn't understand the orders they were barking at us in Russian -- probably "Raise your arms over your head!", or "Open that bag!" -- they would kind of stare at us with slanted eyes like they were saying "What the hell are you doing here?" Soon we found ourselves pushed and smashed into what was supposed to pass for our seating section. It was literally a pen or jail, surrounded by wire fences and hundreds of soldiers in riot gear. There were metal planks, which served as seats, that is if everyone wasn't ripping them out of their screws so they could throw them over the fence at the opposing fans. Plus because everyone was so smashed together, there was no way we were going to try to sit down -- it would be too easy to get trampled. To make matters worse, the tickets that jerk pawned off on us were in the section for the fans of the visiting from Moscow. Situated in one corner of the huge stadium, literally surrounded by a sea of opposing Blue, the two or three thousand skin heads, who had suddenly become our allies, adorned in Moscow Red, seemed small and vulnerable matched against forty thousand testosterone driven skin heads who wanted nothing more than to climb over the wire fences and the riot police to beat the shit out of every one of us. Many of the Blues tried to get over, only to be beaten back by riot police with hard rubber mallets and clear plastic shields. When they couldn't get over the fence the took out their aggression by throwing anything they could get their hands on. Sharp metal belt buckles, glass bottles, and even as we said, the very seats they were supposed to sit on came flying through the air directly at us. More than once we had to duck, not to get hit. Suddenly everything was put on hold, as a deafening roar greeted the players as the ran onto the field. Flares, burning flags of the opposing team and smoke bombs went flying out into the hundreds of riot police that surrounded the field. The police were trained to run and grab the flaming object and throw it in tin cans that were strategically placed all around the perimeter. Seems that they were expecting this kind of behavior. Thirty minutes into the match Moscow scored a goal and all hell broke out. Somehow a Blue skinhead got over the fence into the Moscow section and everyone started beating him. Then the riot police charged the crowd and started beating everyone with their rubber mallets. This was all happening within 20 feet of us! On one side the crowd was trying to get away from the police and their weapons of pain and on the other side the boys who were looking for a fight were trying to push their way into the fray. It turned really ugly when some of the crowd started fighting back against the police. At this point we had enough. It was time to bolt! Lisa grabbed Joel around the waist and Joel just ploughed his way through the crowd to the gate. Guess what? The police weren't going to let anyone out! The exit was blocked with a large metal gate. We guess they wanted to contain the dangerous elements around us, but we had to get out of here! We yelled at the guards through the gates -- "Out, Out, Let Us Out!", while motioning violently with our hands, literally pleading with them. After looking us up from head to toe and determining that we were definitely out of our element, they let us squeeze through. Gasping for breath and feeling our hearts pounding hard in our chests, we worked our way out of the stadium, past a group of Reds, heads covered with blood, being thrown into the back of a SWAT mobile. Man, is this nuts! All this over a football game. Well, we made it out without a scratch, thank goodness. You know the strange thing? As we were walking away from the stadium we heard the crowd roar (St. Petersburg must have scored) and we both said that we kind of wished that we were back inside. (If we knew were weren't going to get hurt that is.) The energy, although misguided and nonproductive, was incredibly powerful and strangely intoxicating. So much pent up passionate aggression just waiting to explode. It was definitely intense and it makes a great story for our journal. ------------------------- Attached photo: Inside Petrovskiy Stadium, St. Petersburg, Russia ------------------------- (c) Lisa and Joel's Excellent Adventure 2001. All rights reserved. ------------------------- Lisa Listro and Joel Sward are currently unemployed, homeless world travelers. ---------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to this newsletter send email with subject containing "subscribe". To cancel subscription send email with subject containing "cancel". To change email address newsletter is sent to send email with subject containing "change" and list old and new email addresses in message. SEND EMAILS TO: joel@joelsward.com ----------------------------------------------------- |