News From Russia: March 6th (just), 2024

What Tucker Carlson did not tell you

Mar 06, 2024

A story of a Slav Squat

I couldn't help myself.... Anyway Riley has some competition for a bit as I'm currently in Moscow. I arrived here after a short hop, skip and jump of some 38 hours or more via Christchurch, Melbourne and Abu Dhabi.

At the monent if you are to travel to Russia there are not a lot of choices as basically it's only the Chinese, the Arabs, the Turks and the Israelis who still fly into Moscow. I chose Etihad as they were the cheapest. To get to the departure airport, Christchurch which is 5 hours away, I "hired" a one way relocation from transfercar.co.nz which was a 30+ year old Mitsubuishi that had been fitted for the disabled. That was fine as even if it's normally a 5 year old car that you relocate this one drove fine. The relocation contract said that I had 3 days to get it to them and that they would pay me $100 in petrol and $30 in snack expenses which is a little unusual for such transfers where you normally pay your own expenses including petrol. I told them that I'd have it up there the next morning. That wasn't to be though.... as at about 4:40pm of the day before the flight I received an email to tell me that my flight from Christchurch to Sydney (originally my ticket went through Sydney rather than Melbourne) had been cancelled. It was an Air New Zealand cancellation but I had purchased my ticket with Etihad and so I spent the next 8 hours or so on the online contact to them (yes until 2am in the morning) having let the car relocation contacts know that I wasn't going to be dropping it off at 4am as originally arranged. I instead told them that it was likely going to be the next day as the most likely flight out was a 4pm one to Melbourne. Eithad proved unable to help me, constantly telling me to get back to them in an hour, and eventually they told me to contact Alr New Zealand directly. Unknownst to me Air NZ had already booked me out on an earlier fllight to Australia and being 5 hours away from Christchurch Airport when I found out about this about 2.5 hours before my flight there was no possible way that I was going to be catching that flight. Anyway eventually it was all worked out by Air New Zealand rather than Etihad and I was booked from Christchurch on the Thursday instead of the Wednesday as being up until 3am did not make me feel like making a 5 hour drive at 8am. So I had to contact the disabled guys who were in Auckland about getting the car up to them even a little later. This time the person looking after it was a little antsy and I had to remind her that the contract stipulated 3 days but she still gave me a lecture on it, of course. My flight was the 4pm one to Melbourne.

I left Dunedin at about 8:45am and maybe I should have given myself another hour but the maps app was saying 4 hours and 20 minutes so it didn't seem to be an issue. But of course it was. There was a whole bunch of roadworks up to Christchurch I'd probably estimate about 20 of them. And 4 or 5 of them required stopping at a light and waiting. The result was that I drove straight to the airport and booked in for the 4pm flight at 2:50pm. The nice gals at disabled car Inc wern't about to help me though, and let me leave the car at the airport for them, and this meant that I had to drive the car about 15 minutes from the Airport and to get a Taxi back. There was of course a fairly good chance of missing my flight and if it had been a big airport I probably would have. The taxi arranged by my wife (as the Gals from Auckland disabled Car Inc wern't about to help out) was there right on time and I managed, amazingly really, to catch my flight. I had 3.5 hours at Melbourne 2.5 of which were spent in International without a boarding pass but nobody seemed concerned about that (they did not check at International Transfers and had no transfer desk) and then a 14 or so hours flight to Abu Dhabi sitting one seat away from a young Australian woman on her way to a backpacking trip to Europe first stop being London. The seat between us was empty for some reason so this made the journey quite comfortable (she was very pleasant so this is no slight on her) for both of us. At Abu Dhabi after wandering around the airport for a while I took some Euros from my bank account at the Travelex, the only option there, as no Western cards work in Russia basically so if you land there without cash or a Russian bank card you're in strife. I didn't have a Russian bank card. But my advice, if you're going to do this, is to get the Euros or the USD out (the only two currencies worth bothering with in travel to Russia) from your home country or from somewhere where the Euro or the USD is local. As my 1,000 euros cost me $1984 Australian dollars (AUD) when the rate should have meant that it cost me about $1670 AUD. Ripped off. After about 11 hours in Abu Dhabi my Etihad flight landed in Moscow at about 19:30 last Saturday night and finally I had arrived at my destination.

I was able to change my Euros at the airport (not a great rate once again 1 euro for 85 rubles when the rate in town is more like about 1 euro to 99 rubles). I also organised for a Yoo card (yoomoney.ru) at the Airport which uses the MIR system in Russia, an alternative or maybe more a replacement for Mastercard or Visa etc etc. I then got a taxi to my hotel.

Just as an aside I am not sure if you can transfer money from the West on to the yoo card although I guess you can using Crypto as a middleman but I have yet to test it. But you can do it to a Sber Bank MIR card, instantaneously more or less using a 3rd party, which I now have done a few times. Basically the reason for this is that the West is trying to cut Russia off completely and lets be honest here, thieve its assets.

How is Moscow? Not that much different than it was 10 years ago. One difference is that like Melbourne there is the occasional mad Asian food delivery driver on a more or less silent electric motorbike hooning along the footpaths at 20kmh or faster. There's a lot of closed shops. There are literally no American or European tourists because it's hard to fly here from those places. The Hotel is forcing staff to wear the stupid surgical masks but no hotel guests are bothering with them nor are they (we) being hassled about it. There's a woke style advertisement on the media around the hotel imploring you to wear a mask and this is a very recent push as not many staff were wearing them when I arrived, but now they all are. Prices in Moscow are generally lower than Australia or New Zealand anything from 10% to 100% of the prices at home and generally probably around 40%. The coffee is normally more expensive and as for value for money it doesn't pass the sniff test anywhere yet, not even close. So far all it has been is brown coloured water. Otherwise the food is pretty good and there's a lot of focus on natural products here which are generally excellent. i've been mostly hanging out in the Arbat area of town as I have some business there and there's some nice restaurants that will cost you about 500 to 1500rb for a main course. Wine is more expensive normally, maybe 700rb + for a glass. For Americans & Europeans the exchange is easy, 100rb to the dollar and a similar amount to the Euro.

I walked to Red Square yesterday from the Arbat area and I took some photographs so they're to follow. But first a warning, for those Americans who think that Russia is some sort of antidote to the Woke Democrats who have made your country a steaming pile of piss over the last decade (as their bretheren have to mine) I have some bad news. Russia too is very woke as you may have already guessed from my bit about masks being pushed above. Anyway here starts the photo essay part of this essay, some things that Tucker did not tell you (was he sponsored, Vlad?)

I’ve literally no idea what the relevance of Anilike is here, and my Russian is pretty bad as well, but look at those nice rainbow colours. This is in GUM the department store next to Red Square which is empty of both retailers and customers currently.

A rainbow painted chair in Gum with the word анильэйк (Anilike)

They’re pushing nice pretty but also useless bikes in GUM rather hard. There’s no interest at all in them so the return on capital invested is a negative number.

You do see more military around Moscow than you did in 2014 when I was last here and there is a bit of a theme of this around, but it’s not in your face.

Our profession here’s the number to join up

As everywhere in the West advertisements featuring people with European features are often strictly verboten! There were about 20 of these large posters up, all of the models were Asian. About 90% of those around you in Moscow are European.

As in the West the authorities seem to be making a big deal about how friendly they are to other ethnic groups especially those ones who have felt the pointy end of their stick previously.