Missing, Presumed Dead.

When I left the internet cafe after writing my last blog entry, we went out for a meal and then to what had by then become our local pub for a few drinks. There was certainly a comfortable air to our time in the German capital. It was our fourth European city in two weeks, and we were getting used to this lark. The youth hostel was cushy, the area was as far from seedy as you can get, and The Pristine Marmott spoke the language. We had it easy. When we headed back from the pub in the early hours of the morning, trudging through a solid foot of fresh white snow, we thought nothing of hanging out in front of our hostel trying to throw snowballs at a billboard of Christina Aguilera. The first one to hit her face won. When we turned around at one point to see an assault of snowballs flying towards us, we weren't scared. We had no reason to be. We were in Berlin, the friendliest city in the world. We engaged our attackers in a few intense minutes of snowballing action, and when it was all over we laughed when our assailant turned out to be a 26 year old woman also staying at our hostel. "I'm knackered..", she giggled, taking a seat next to us beneath the now snow-covered billboard. "Where are you from?"

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the first leg of our trip was easy, with a capital E and a capital ASY while we're at it. It was a laugh. It was fun and jokes. It was nowt but shits and giggles. But it was coming to an end sooner than any of us had quite realised.

I'm writing this from an internet cafe in St. Petersberg. It's Monday, January 29th 2007, Day 20. There's smoke in the air, big screen TVs and funk music blasting out of speakers all around. A snapshot of this moment wouldn't place me in Russia. I could be anywhere in the world. But the past few days getting to this moment have been some of the scariest moments of my life. It's been a roller-coaster ride of crisis, disaster and paranoia. Lives have literally hung in the balance. If someone had asked me at 5AM this morning where I thought I'd be right now, I might well have replied something along the lines of "assisting in the repatriation of my friend's mortal remains".

Get ready, ladies and germs. The story I'm about to tell you will shock you. Don't blame me if you find yourself stuck to the edge of your seat, nor if you inadvertently shit your pants. So, now that I've set the bar appropriately high for myself, let me begin..

Although this story spans only the past few days, it's roots lie far deeper. Let me take you back to a mild Saturday morning in December 2006. The location is Cambridge, England. More specifically, the STA travel agent branch where our band of merry travelers is waiting to be seen by one of the many young dudes and dudettes who sit behind flat-screen computers as middle-of-the-road indie music plays on a loop. We're there for advice about traveling to Russia. We've heard horror stories of brutal police guards and tough border controls. We're stuck because the Russian embassy require us to have proof of accommodation for every night we're planning to spend in the country before they'll issue us a visa, but we can't buy the tickets for the Trans-Siberian express train until the start of the new year, a mere week before we set off for the continent. We need a Russian visa to get a Belarusian visa, and we can't risk turning up in Russia without it sorted, because we ain't gonna get in. We've found a somewhat suspect looking website purporting to offer a "tourist invitation" in exchange for $30, which (the according to the website) would bypass the bureaucracy and get us a visa without any problems.

We tell this to the dude at STA Travel when we finally get to the front of the queue. He's barely older than us, with a decidedly cool little mini-beard and a low-key brown hoodie that gives him a comforting air of 'hakuna-matata'. "Yeah man, that sounds cool.." he tells us after a quick glance at the dodgy website in question. "I'll tell you what, let me go check with my colleague who knows a lot about Russia, just to make sure it's all kosher, y'know?" We knew. He traded a few hushed words with her in the corner as the soothing indie music continued to play. They both then came back over to us. She was a slightly pudgy-looking 30-somthing called 'Haps'. What that was short for, we had no idea. "So.. you boys are going to Russia then?", she asked us, then continued without waiting for a response, "Robbie here's been telling me your little problem.. guys, I think you might have the wrong idea about Russia. It's not as easy as you think. Do any of you speak Russian?". We mumbled something back, and she seized the opportunity to reel off a few sentences of what we can only assume was flawless Russian. Beaming with pride, she suggested she leave us with Robbie to tell us about one of the Trans-Siberian packages they offer. Like the smooth operator he looked, he whipped out a brochure.

"We do this really wicked thing called the Vodka Train!" he told us, flicking through glossy pages brimming with photos of white English louts waving bottles of Vodka. It looked like everything we were trying to avoid. "Yeah, I don't think we're going to be doing the Vodka Train", The Disgusting Hippo told him with a steely-cool defiance. Robbie looked crestfallen. There was a silence. It was awkward. No-one wanted to meet his eye. The Hugless Stone was virtually squirming to get away. With every passing second, the tension grew. No-one knew what to do. At last, The Hippo decided to take one for the team, and offered up the following disgustingly cringe-worthy addendum: "we're probably going to drink a lot of vodka though!"

Okay, so flash forward two months. We'd decided to ignore Haps' advice on the grounds that Haps isn't a real name and she was a patronising jumped-up nobody. We were in Berlin with our Russian visas and our Belarusian transit visas and our dodgy tourist invitations and everything else we needed. It was Day 18, and the start of the second leg of our traveling adventure. We were waiting at Ostbahnhof, the big train station in Berlin, for the train that would take us to a place called Orscha in Belarus, where we'd have to wangle a further ticket for the last part of the journey, to St. Petersberg itself.

The train pulled in, and we bundled aboard. We were spread over two cabins, so The Disgusting Hippo and I bid a temporary farewell to the other two as we went off towards our wagon to discover our sleeping quarters. Although there were three beds in the cabin we were the only guys in there, so we dumped our bags and sat back, taking in the moment. Against all odds, we were finally doing it. We were on our way to Russia.

There was a knock-knock at the door of the cabin. It was one of the train porters, a Russian guy in a shiny tracksuit. He asked us something in Russian, and was more than satisfied when we handed over our tickets. He gave us a thumbs-up and a wave, and moved on to the other cabins along the train.

A few minutes passed, and another smiley face popped around the door. It was another train porter, wanting to check our passports. He also spoke nothing but Russian, but we got along with him fine. He was very tall, with kind eyes. His track-suited friend returned, and through a mixture of Russian, broken German and complex hand gestures, we agreed that he would return our tickets the following morning before we left the train. All in all, we were off to a great start.

The Marmott and The Stone turned up to check in with us. They'd been having an adventure of their own, as their train porter had asked them to each smuggle some excess bottles of vodka into Belarus for her, which they happily agreed to do. They did have a third passenger in their compartment, a middle-aged woman with platinum blonde hair who spoke fluent Russian and German. She offered to fill in our Entry Forms for getting into Belarus, which were written in Cyrillic. The Marmott took them from us and went back to his cabin to give them to her. The Hugless Stone stayed in our cabin, and took the opportunity to break open his latest novel, this time the Joseph Conrad epic "Nostromo".

We all read for a while, occasionally breaking into the huge stash of oranges and chocolates we'd brought with us. I was wary that I was rushing through my current reading material, "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, and decided to take a trip to The Marmott's cabin. We had some writing we had to get done, and the train journey seemed an opportune time to take a first crack at it.

I eventually found his cabin, and opened the door to find him and his middle-aged train companion huddled over on one side of the compartment, unusually and perhaps inappropriately close. Further inspection revealed that they were looking at the photos she'd taken in Berlin on her digital camera. I joined them, and we watched the photos slide past the screen in noticeable silence, only occasionally broken when some photos of her at the zoo came up on screen and The Marmott took up his cue to point and say things like, "Ahh, ein flamingo.." or "Ahh, ein baer.."

After what seemed like an eternity, the photo show was finally over, and we got down to the task at hand. For various reasons I can't disclose what we were writing, but let's just say we got a first-draft finished which I'm very happy with, and we had a lot of fun doing it. To be even more cryptic, I'll say that you might hear more about this secret project later on in this blog when The Marmott and I find ourselves heading to Kyoto in mid-April. But that's irrelevant right now, so let's get back on track..

Job done, I headed back to my cabin, running into Giant Kind-Eyes (one of our train porters) on the way. He stopped me in my tracks. "Liverpool?", he asked. "No..", I responded, unsure where this was going. "Manchester?", he pressed. "Ahh, no..", I replied, then with a smile and an up-thrust fist I said, "Arsenal!". "Aston Villa?", he queried, perhaps mis-hearing what I'd said. "Nein, nein.. Arsenal!", I told him again. "Ahh, Arsenal, good..", then with one finger firmly pointing towards himself, he told me, "Me.. Bolton!". I smiled, unsure what response would be appropriate. I was none the wiser two somewhat awkward seconds later, so I shook his hand, saying, "Yes, Bolton!", and the exchange was over. We parted ways, and I had my first Russian friend.

We were in high-spirits back in the cabin, and were confident about the journey remaining. Moments later, my first Russian friend was back in action, and he'd brought with him a Russian girl for us to meet. She was a fellow passenger on the train, a St. Petersberg resident returning home from six months of foreign study in Berlin as part of her university course. She spoke Russian and English perfectly, and she offered to help us fill in our Entry Forms, and I was faced with the tough task of breaking the news to her that we'd already been helped by The Marmott's Russo-German ladyfriend. Not wanting to turn her away disheartened though, I chatted to her for a while and before I knew it, I had my second Russian friend..

I guess things finally started getting iffy at around 4AM the following morning. The lights flickered into action in our cabin and we were startled awake by the shouts of a Belarusian border guard. Incomprehensible, aggressive, and with an uncomfortably large gun and baton strapped to his side, it was not the ideal way to wake up. The following morning would be worse, of course, but one thing at a time.

The guard snatched our passports and Entry Forms away from us, furiously checking and stamping and muttering under his breath. "Out of cabin!", he ordered us. Despite the fact that it was well into negative degrees of temperature outside the train, I was sleeping in nothing but my ill-fitting boxer-shorts. "Out! Out! Out!", he was almost chanting now. The pressure was on. I scrambled around for my trousers, and must have looked positively Chaplin-esque as I struggled to get the right leg into the right trouser. Mission eventually completed, I stumbled out of the cabin and the guard stormed in. Baton unsheathed, he smacked the curtains and bed sheets and everything else in our humble domicile, checking for contraband or illegal immigrants I suppose. Finally he was satisfied that we were on the level and off the hook. He handed us a wad of additional forms, all in Cyrillic again, and garbled some more Russian at us as we looked on, dumbfounded. It was 4AM, and we were forced to consider that maybe Haps had been right. But if we thought that experience was difficult, we had no idea. Things were only going to get worse..

The next few hours were a mess. We were cranky from what little sleep we'd been able to snatch on the tiny train cabin bunk-beds, and any time we were close to getting back to the land of nod, the lights would flicker back on and another guard would be "all up in our faces", checking tickets or passports or visas or forms or re-stamping stamps or re-forming forms. When we finally pulled into the train station at Orscha at around midday, we breathed a collective sigh of relief that part one of our epic journey to St. Petersberg was out of the way. But our comfort was short-lived..

Having made it to Orscha, we now faced the tough task of booking beds for the train to St. Petersberg for the coming night. We headed to one of the windows, and did our best. "Chetire billyetti St. Petersberg?", The Marmott offered up to the Belarusian ticket vendor behind the glass. She was motionless. He repeated the request. She shook her head with a grave solemnity, before unloading a storm of Russian spiel on us which did nothing to clear anything up for us. "Oh, if only Haps were with us!", I thought. Then I spotted the next best thing. My second Russian friend, the girl from the train, was at the adjacent window, also buying tickets to St. Petersberg with her friend. It was our only chance. We headed into the queue behind them, and I struggled to remember her name. "Think, damnit! Think..", I chastised myself, when her friend turned round and flashed me a smile. "We can help you buy tickets if you like?", she told us.

Halleluliah!

Now, before you get any ideas, let me clarify something for a second. These two girls, friendly as they were, were.. ohh, how shall I put this? Let's say, they were always going to remain on the "friends" side of whatever lines might possibly be crossed in situations like the ones we were finding ourselves in. The first one, who I'd met the night before on the train, was big and stocky with a face like a pancake. An ugly pancake, decorated with a healthy dose of lunar-style craters. She wielded a mess of hydra-like frizzy hair which sprouted out in all directions and often seemed to have a life of its own. Just in case anyone's still struggling to get the picture, let's call her 'Frizzy The Bear'. Or 'The Frizz Monster', if you prefer. Either way, this 'Frizzly Man' was a sight to behold, such that her epitaph might one day read, "Yeah, but she had such a nice personality.."

Who knows.

So, Frizzly and pal helped us to get our tickets. We had checked the schedules from Berlin and knew there was a train leaving to St. Petersberg an hour after we arrived in Belarus, but through our friendly translators we discovered that it was almost entirely booked up, and that unless we wanted to pay 100 euros rather than under 10, we'd have to wait until the late-train, which was scheduled to leave nine hours later. Well, we're travelers on a limited budget, and when someone says you can save 90+ euros by chilling in a train station for nine hours, you take them up on that deal. We gave them the OK, and they bought our tickets. Crisis averted! But not quite..

You see, even the train we finally got tickets for was almost completely fully-booked. They'd been able to get us beds in an 'open' carriage, which meant 52 farting, snoring Russian room-mates, and by the lottery of chance it turned out that my ticket was for a different wagon, so not only was I facing a second consecutive night of cramped train bunk sleep, I was going to be completely alone away from the others, surrounded by a veritable army of bearded Russian drunks with whom I had zero common language.

We passed the nine hours in the waiting room with relative ease, occasionally stocking up on food at one of the various eateries in the station, communicating with the locals behind the counters in the international language of cold, hard cash. We laughed at the delightfully ironic public toilets in the train station which cost 350 Belarusian rubles to use and came fully equipped with a laser-activated hand-washing system, which was painfully necessary given that, upon opening the individual toilet cubicle doors, one found oneself facing what can only be described as a "hole in the floor". Toilet paper and any kind of flushing system were also clearly seen as unnecessary extras.

Eventually the train arrived at the station, and we headed out into the cold to meet it. "You will be okay?", The Frizz Monster's blonde friend asked me as I prepared to head off to my separate carriage. "No problem!" I replied, through gritted teeth. I was shitting myself*.

* Not literally, I hasten to add.

I found the wagon, and handed my ticket to the guard at the door who took it without a glance nor a word. I took my chance, and climbed aboard. The first thing I noticed in the cabin was the unbelievable stench of rotting clothes, vodka breath, half-smoked cigarettes and general B.O. The guard outside had held on to my ticket, and I was faced with the realisation that I had zero clue what number bunk bed I was supposed to be in. I glanced around and felt all eyes on me. I pretended to know what I was doing, and kept walking along the carriage until I spotted an empty bunk. I climbed into it, visions racing through my mind of being woken up a few hours later by a drunken hulk with no patience for the little squirt he'd found sleeping in his place. I had no sheets, but I stuck my bag under my head as a pillow, and kept my coat zipped up for warmth, as I tried to get to sleep, hoping I'd wake up to either discover the whole trip was some horrible nightmare, or at least that we were pulling into St. Petersberg and I was still alive.

Neither outcome was immediately forthcoming however, as I caught a glimpse of Blondie, Frizzy's Friend, coming towards me in the cabin. "Are you okay?", she asked, and my heart jumped into my mouth. I'd never been so relieved to see a friendly face. I told her what had happened, and she tracked down the guard for me and found out what number bunk I was supposed to be in. She told the other people on the bunks near me who I was and that I couldn't speak Russian, then she invited me back to her wagon to hang out until it got quieter on the train as more people made their way to bed. At that point, I was in love. Not really, of course, because even though I do have to admit that she was maybe-possibly-kinda quite pretty in a hard-to-tell kind of way, at that point I was like a little kid. I felt like I owed her my life and I was just glad to have someone to talk to.

We went back to her bunk-area, where it turned out The Frizzly Bear and The Disgusting Hippo were also still awake, engaged in some kind of discussion. We joined them, and the four of us hung out chatting, as slowly the population around us subsided into a quieter state of being and my heart-rate returned to normal.

Eventually we all decided enough was enough. It had been one crazy day, and we were all ready to get to sleep. Blondie offered to walk me back to my wagon, and I happily took her up on the offer. However, when we got there we found two guys sitting on my bed. She asked them if they could move, so I could sleep, and they told her, "No, no, it's okay, we'll be getting off at the next stop, it's only 50 minutes.."

I certainly didn't want to start a fight, and strangely neither did she, so we found two seats off to the side and chatted it up until they finally left. She bid me goodnight and I got into the groove, drifting quickly off to sleep as the train rocked it's gentle rock. As the sun rose the next morning I awoke, with my bag untouched and my liver in tact. By the time we'd pulled into the central train station in St. Petersberg, we'd yet to meet a single Russian guard. We'd made it, free and easy! But murky waters lay ahead..

It started off all innocent, like. Just a few annoyances, such as The Pristine Marmott being refused entry to the metro for no apparent reason, and the wheel on my bag breaking as we climbed up the metro stairs onto the street, resulting in The Hugless Stone having to share the burden of helping me carry my ridiculously large bag to the hostel. Indeed, even when we finally spotted the sign for the hostel on the side of the street, the entrance was nowhere to be seen and we spent a frantic few minutes on the phone to the kindly owner who directed us towards him with charm and good humour. When we finally found him and dragged our bags up the stairs to the reception, he greeted us with a friendly, "Pay whenever you like! We are not going to ask for your money or your life!" He mimed a blasting machine gun and gave out a gusty laugh.

It seemed everything was okay. It even seemed fine that evening, after we'd spent the day exploring the city which was glorious in it's clear blue skies and crisp snowy exteriors. We'd seen the river, frozen over. We'd seen the Winter Palace, where years before oppressed peasants had revolted against the Tsar and been brutally slaughtered by the army. We'd eaten our first real meal for days in a snazzy top class restaurant along Nevsky Prospect, the main broadway in the city. We were just about getting our confidence back.

That night, we met some fellow travelers at the hostel. They were Americans, nearing the end of their trip. They'd been to Lapland and Estonia and other such places, and from what we gathered they'd spent most of that time drunk. Very drunk. And this evening their plans appeared to be no different. They poured us large glasses of vodka and insisted we join them in drink after drink as we shared tales of our respective travels thus far. As the liquor flowed, we learned more and more about them.

They were three university students from Florida, supposedly on a research assignment for their final projects (although as one of them told us, "I'm supposed to be investigating sloths in Sweden for my biology class.. there aren't any sloths in Sweden!"). That guy was called Bryson, although for the sake of ease we'll call him The Big Cheese, since he was the leader of the group. He spoke German and Russian and had traveled extensively, and had both an intelligence and a confidence that the other two lacked somewhat. Then there was Squash Face, a guy who surprisingly enough had a squashy, elongated face. He introduced himself to us with the immortal words, "Don't believe these guys if they told you I brought a hooker home, I didn't know she was a hooker!".

Thanks, Squash Face.

The final hombre of the trio we'll call Doofus, because he was a f###ing doofus. I don't know if maybe his parents hit him when he was in the womb or something, but either way this guy was not all there. He spoke in an incredibly slow Floridian drawl, dragging out every syllable of every word until you could hear the seams ripping apart. When The Disgusting Hippo disgustingly asked him if he had an account on MySpace.com, he took a full minute to unleash the words, "Nehhhhh.... FaceBook's much better.. on FaceBook, you can upload more pictuuuuressss........"

Thanks, Doofus.

But back to the matter at hand. The vodka was flowing, just as The Hippo had promised Robbie the STA Travel Agent it would all those months previously back in dreary Cambridge, England. Drink after drink was poured until every bottle was dry. The Big Cheese spotted that the hour was nearing 11PM, the crucial cut-off point when the local super-market would no longer sell vodka. So, our gang of seven headed off down Nevsky Prospect, out into the St. Petersberg night, to re-stock what needed to be re-stocked. As we walked, it quickly became apparent that The Hippo and myself were more drunk than anyone else. Significantly more drunk. Turning to The Hugless Stone with a friendly smile, The Hippo told him, "If I get any more drunk, it's up to you to escort me home!" There was a collective laugh from the group. As if he could get any more drunk.

We made it to the super-market and spent a good half an hour inside, emptying the shelves of anything that looked strong enough to knock out a camel. All that bought and paid for, we headed back outside to make our way home. It was then that things really started to go awry. The Hugless Stone noticed that The Hippo was no-where to be seen. "Has anyone seen him?", he asked. No-one had. There was a moment of consideration, only broken when Doofus chipped in, slurring, "If experience serves, that guy's found himself a clllllluuuub........"

We checked and re-checked the super-market to make sure he really, truly wasn't in there, and then headed back to the hostel hoping to find him sitting cheerily on the step outside waiting for us. But when we got back, it quickly became apparent that he wasn't there either. We went up to our room.. no sign of him there. Nothing. Nada. Zip. He was gone. "We've got to go back out there.." The Marmott said, but although I agreed with the sentiment, I'd sat myself down on the spare bed in our room and the rumbling sounds coming from my wobbly stomach told me I wasn't getting up again without coating the walls in a delightful layer of vomit. "I've got to stay here", I told them, and so The Stone and The Marmott headed back out into the bitterly cold St. Petersberg night without me, to look for our missing friend.

Alone in our room, with the responsibility-pretense of "keeping him here if he does come back", the walls started to spin, in what felt like the opposite direction to my stomach. I closed my eyes to dull the sensation, and despite the fact that I was sitting upright, I quickly found myself asleep.

When I awoke next at around 3AM, the room was dark. My head was still spinning and my legs felt shaky, but I was confident I could make it to the bed. With the caution of a fox, I stood up. One leg stepped forward, followed by the other. I was doing it! I could make it! I knew it!

I glanced up. I saw The Marmott asleep in his bed. I glanced right. I saw The Stone sleeping soundly in his. I looked around. The Hippo's bed was empty. Even in my altered state of consciousness, I put two and two together. He was still missing. My heart sank. I fell over.

I struggled into bed at last and tried to get back to sleep. If only I could think straight, I was sure we could get this all sorted out. But as I lay there, even the slightest movement sent me spinning and I knew there was only one thing to do. Gripping the walls like a teenage mother of three clings to her child support benefits, I walked slowly to the bathroom. I opened the door, and flicked on the light. I stepped inside. I opened the toilet seat. I leaned forward, and started the motions. "Come on, sonny..", I thought to myself, "you can do this." I was right. I could do it. I hurled. I spewed. I vommed. I bogged it. I up-chucked and I chucked-up. Again and again I did it until I was sure every last measure of that foul alcohol was out of my body and safely heading into the Russian sewage system. I flushed the toilet and headed back to the room.

The next few hours were progressively worse. Now in a clearer state of mind, although not fully recovered, I started thinking about the situation we were in and what it meant. It was past 3AM, which meant The Hippo had been missing for over four hours. Earlier that day, I'd discussed the cold with him as we walked through the city. "What do you think happens if you're homeless in St. Petersberg?", I'd asked him. "I think you die..", he replied with mock solemnity. I thought about that, and my whole body physically shook with fear. And still my mind wandered..

I thought of a conversation the four of us had had in Berlin a week earlier. "If one of us died on this trip, would you keep going or go home?", The Marmott asked the group at large. We'd all decided we'd pack it in and go home. Now it was a week later and one of us was missing in St. Petersberg, the crime capital of Russia where the temperature at night was at best -9 degrees. And so I started thinking of home, in many ways really thinking about home in a way I hadn't done this entire trip. And it got to me. Right then, I'd have given everything I own in this world to have been able to hug my family, just for a minute. As much as I hate to say it, and truly it makes my skin crawl to admit that such thoughts ran through my mind, but right then I was thinking of the bright side. All the things I'd missed these past few weeks which would suddenly be back in my life. The people. The places. Home. And I drifted back to sleep..

The next thing I knew, it was 5AM. I was awake again, and the sickly feeling had returned. The Marmott and The Stone were suiting back up, preparing to brave the bitter cold once again to go in search of our fallen friend. I wished I could join them, but I daren't. A wise choice, I shortly discovered, as mere moments after they'd left the room I followed suit, heading directly to the toilet for another game of "What's in my Stomach?"

Eventually they returned once again as I struggled to get back to sleep, plagued by guilt and racked with fear. Yet again, they'd failed to make good on their search, and The Disgusting Hippo remained missing, presumed dead. It was a solemn moment.

Then, as the hour neared 8AM and we lay in our beds, stewing in a malaise of uncertainty and sorrow, we heard the front door bell ring. The night-porter wasn't answering it, and there was no-one at the hostel reception, so The Marmott headed downstairs, careful not to raise his hopes and yet secretly praying for one final miraculous happy ending. He reached the door, and opened it.

There, staring back at him, was our prodigal pal. Bloody, battered, but alive. We rushed to him, and at that moment all hangovers were forgotten, all back story irrelevant. He was okay, and that moment of relief saw our collective hearts lifted from the sewers to the heavens. It was almost magical. Nervous and in shock, he told us what had happened..

He didn't remember much, the drink had taken care of that. But from what he'd been able to piece together, in his drunken stupor he'd inexplicably decided his luck was up when he lost us, and gone to ground. He was woken up from his resting place at around 3AM by the man who's house he was sleeping in front of. The kindly gent had invited him inside, and offered him a bed for the night, which he'd gladly accepted. At dawn, the man had woken The Hippo. His grandmother who also lived in the house would be up soon, and he didn't want her to know they'd opened their house to a stranger from a stranger land for the night. He'd given him breakfast and 10 rubles for the metro, then sent him away with a wave and a smile. In short, he'd been nothing less than a saviour.

I'm not a religious man, but something happened that night. Call it luck, call it fate, call it the good of humanity. The Disgusting Hippo was back in our lives. Once he'd cleaned off the blood from his face (we don't know where it came from), he looked almost good as new. And as we lay back in our respective beds, trying to catch a few last winks before the new day began, there was only one thing running through my mind.. our Russian adventure was on, and there was no turning back now.

See you next time, folks.