Siberian bus crash
Negotiating Russian cities is difficult in a right-hand-drive, clapped-out, nineteen-year-old VW Polo with no brakes. We had battled our way through rather deep flash floods to get into the city, we had got ourselves lost on traintracks on three occasions, we'd driven off the edge of the map and we couldn't find half of our very small convoy. No hotels would take us. We didn't speak Russian. We just wanted out of the place to a comfortable field, preferably one with slightly less Siberian mosquitoes than all the rest.

At teatime we gave up trying to find somewhere to sleep and decided to regroup with the rest of the convoy. My co-driver pulled out at the junction with no markings and no signs, trying to turn left past a traffic accident across one lane. As he gunned it across the road, broken exhaust roaring, I turned to look out of the passenger-side window.

Oh fuck. Bus. Oh fuck, oh fuck.

I yelled, he braked, we stopped, I braced, and there was a hideous and horrible BANG and a graunch of metal as our car slid sideways several metres along the middle of the junction. I remember him saying "that's our rally over, then", and then, silence.

Now, I say bus: it wasn't a a big bus, but it was a bus nonetheless, of a common type in Russia. It was bigger than our car and it held a lot of people. It might not have been a double-decker routemaster but it was not the most reassuring thing in the world to see hurtling towards your door.

We sat there. The bus doors opened and a steady stream of very pissed off passengers clambered out and began banging on my window (indeed, I would have been the driver had our car been left-hand-drive) and shouting angrily in Russian, though everything sounds angry in Russian, so I can't be sure if they were just asking if we were okay.

We waited. I wanted to laugh but thought it might look bad, so I concentrated on looking contrite instead. I remember having great difficult getting the cigarette lighter into the socket because my hands were shaking so much.

We got out to have a look. The wing was badly dented, the wheel arch was caved in, and there was a lot of oil and coolant on the road. The bus looked worse.

The bus driver wouldn't talk to us, not even in Russian. One of our convoy friends had a Russian girlfriend, and he phoned her in the UK and got her to contact the Russian police.

And so we waited for the police. For four frickin' hours, maybe more, while the mosquitoes circled. The accident beside us, the one we had driven past in order to turn, had been waiting for the police since midday.

The police arrived, took all our paperwork, looked at our car, pissed themselves laughing, told us to pay the driver the roubles equivalent of £65 and told us to feck off. We pulled out the dent over the wheelarch and drove away. The bus, it transpired, was completely bollixed. The coolant and oil came from it, not from us. We'd written off a bus for £65. It had to be towed off the road and as we turned away from the junction we saw the driver futily kicking the bodywork and reaching for the vodka.

We didn't make the escape we hoped though - we ended up dossing in a military barracks for $4 per person, with passed-out squaddies on the sofas, group sex with hookers going on next door, a dorm with beetles crawling up the walls and a grubby cold shower, but we were very, very pleased we weren't in jail for writing off a bus.

Here, have a picture. (That's me in the headscarf pretending to look concerned.)


My friend recently came home from Russia with a diecast model of the same type of bus. It has pride of place on my mantlepiece. If anyone can get a model of a Mk2 Polo, let me know and I'll build a re-enactment of the crash in my living room.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:28, 11 replies)

"nineteen-year-old VW Polo with no brakes"
They're all like that, even when new. The Mk 2 Polo wasn't manufactured with a brake servo in RHD form so emergency stops usually consist of slamming your foot on the brake, shouting "fuck!" while making a silent prayer to the deity of your choice.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 30 May 2008, 10:37, closed)

^
That sounds about right!

Master cylinder went 400K before Prague (well done mad bloke who drove that distance with only the handbrake). By the time I joined that car there were only brakes on two wheels and they were binding. A little further and we lost the handbrake because we left it on while being towed through a deep river by a hay truck, duh.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:42, closed)

Firstly
congratulations on not being squashed, but secondly, that clearly isn't you in the photo. The person in the photo is not wearing thermal underwear, or a long flappy coat and they definitely aren't eating an apple. So stop telling porkies and put up a real photo.

Oh and *click*
(Bazongaloid, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:43, closed)

the thermal underwear
is probably under the combats and long-sleeved top.
Actually, no, it was about 40 degrees at that stage so I was probably going commando.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:49, closed)

so
if you were going commando (why is it called that?) where did you keep your apple?
(Bazongaloid, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:51, closed)

^
in my glovebox.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:53, closed)

Did it
get bruised?
(Bazongaloid, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:53, closed)

yes
the going was a bit rough.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 30 May 2008, 10:55, closed)

yeah
I can imagine it's hard to find the time to shave and pluck properly when you're rallying to mongolia.
(Bazongaloid, Fri 30 May 2008, 11:11, closed)

Well done.
The bus in that photo looks like a Matroshka - one of those annoying privately run minibuses that tends to flood the cities of just about every ex-Soviet republic (especially Ukraine). They're way too small, have ambiguous stopping-locations and are awkward to get in and out of if wearing a big rucksack. The more of them that get written off, the better.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Fri 30 May 2008, 12:00, closed)

^hooray
I did a Good Thing!
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 30 May 2008, 12:29, closed)