From Russia without Love

So, there I am in St Petersburg having a lovely shooting day. It is raining on and off but is not too bad. I’ve seen some unreal architecture, eaten pancakes stuffed with meat (quite tasty), and most importantly, purchased – get ready for it – a Winnie the Pooh nesting doll set!!!!! Can you imagine my excitement when I found this? I think I scared the lady at the market! The first doll is Winnie and then each inside doll is a different character, ending with Roo! I love it!

Anyway – back to my story. So, we are a large group of people with an even larger group of bags, umbrellas, equipment, coats, etc. We are filming a segment on a bridge looking down the canals. The canals here are wide and clean and roam throughout the city giving it the nickname, Venice of the North. The canals are much cleaner then those in Venice and certainly smell more pleasant. Angry Russians however, are still in abundance.

Back to the bridge…..I left to buy some props for the next scene and next thing we know, my backpack is gone! That’s right, I was robbed in St Petersburg. My backpack, my camera, all my paperwork, my credit cards, id, all my money and holy crap – my PASSPORT are gone! In an instant. I am now in St Petersburg without a passport. I hope the horror of this statement is not lost on you all.

We all flip into overdrive, calling the ship, the police and anyone else who may help us. I am understandably flipping out. Here is where the real story begins. Now stay with me and remember I am in Russia at night, with no passport and consequentially, no visa!

My “fixer” (the local production person hired to secure our permits and act as a translator) comes with me and my EP to the police station as everyone else goes off in our van to get money from an ATM to pay for the boat rental we just had, for which the money was in my bag and is now gone. The 3 of us (all women) go off to the police. We walk into a room where there are 3 angry Russian men behind a window, smoking and staring at us. As my fixer explains the story the stare at me and clearly do not care at all about my situation. We are here mainly because we have been told by the ship that I need a letter from the police in order to get back on the ship. Oh yeah, did I mention I can’t get back on the ship without a passport?

So there we are in a seedy little police station with people yelling at me in Russian. They tell us we have to go to another building. They load us into – and I kid you not – a paddy wagon to transfer us to another facility. A facility that is down a dark back alley with no signage and no indication that it is actually a police facility.

On the way in the paddy wagon, which by the way has a Russian flag in the back window, the officer asks me through the fixer what I think of the Russia- Georgia war! I say that I don’t know too much about it. Then he asks who I think is right – Russia or Georgia! Now clearly this is a no win situation for me. I plead American ignorance, that I know nothing about international politics and that I have no opinion.

So now we are turning down the dark, unlit alley and we are lead into a door with no handle, he buzzes and someone lets us in from the inside. We walk into the most dismal place I have ever seen. Handcuffed prisoners are sitting on benches, 3 smoking angry Russians are behind glass, again staring at me. It was like every bad KGB movie you have ever seen. My fixer explains the situation again and they fill out some paper in Russian. The yell at each other and stare at me. My EP has her Blackberry and is trying to get in touch with the rest of our group as they don’t know that we have been transferred somewhere. They can’t find us! It is now getting a little scary to say the least. I am informed by the police that I can not get back on my ship until I get a new passport from the American Embassy which opens at 9am. It is 11 pm.

I am now freaking out as I don’t want to spend the night in St Pete’s, especially without a passport and I would have no way to pay for a hotel anyway as everything has been stolen! The rest of our team eventually arrives and they inform that they have been told the same thing by the port agent through the ship. I just begin crying, this is so insane!

Another installment to come shortly! Tune in!