From Russia with Vodka

Kremlin walls
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Dodgy Dodgy Russia.

We spent the afternoon in bleaky Novgorod. It's a small city of a couple hundred thousand people with a rich history. The city features the oldest churches in Russia - as far back as the 10th century. The rest of the city is rather grey and drab featuring old communist style housing. I guess you get a feel for a place when a local spits on your coach as you enter town. We spent some time walking through the Kremlin there and quickly retired to the hotel, and met the rest of the tour in the bar.

It became apparent that he'd been drugged.

The eternal flame for war victims
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That's when the adventure began. Some of the locals joined our group and they proved to be rather unsavory characters. Graeme ended up drinking some vodka and beer with them at the bar, and that's about the last thing he remembers. I was in the meantime chatting to some of the people on our tour, and I saw one of the Russian's carrying Graeme away from the bar. So I went up and said that he was my roommate, and I would take care of him, as at the time I assumed that he had sipped one vodka too many. He was reluctant, and I knew something was wrong, since why would the guy be carrying him out in the first place? Fortunately another guy on our tour, Justin, came over and helped out, and we safely got Graeme back to our room. It became apparent that he'd been drugged as he was acting rather differently then just drunk... drowsy and the like. Had we not stepped in he would have been stripped bare and robbed.

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Fortunately it all turned out okay... and we're much much more wary now.

Onto Moscow...