Moscow, the Kremlin, and the FSB (AKA KGB)

Moscow isn't new to me. I spent time there in April 1993 as an impressionable young teenager when on an exchange program at school. I stayed 10 minutes away from Red Square and the Kremlin. Its probably the only part of Moscow that I recognise on subsequent visits. The rest has changed so much in the last 15 years.

My first night was a bit of a blur. My body shut down whilst I was watching the Champions league in the hotel bar and i remember waking the next morning at 6am and catching up with Andrew. I needed to share with him the delights of Gulmarg and woke him up to watch Castel: India * Kashmir!



I hadn't been in Red square more than 10 minutes when I was approached by an official from the FSB. Initially doubting his authenticity since he was not in uniform (until he was joined by two companions in uniform), I was not particularly cooperative. He felt that I was taking too many pictures, that my telephoto lens was too powerful, and had decided that I was a professional photographer and I needed to obtain special permission.

On the back of my travel marathon, after dealing with constant harrassment in India and recently having to pay a fortune in bakshish in Delhi to sort out my flight to Moscow via Kiev, I was in a particularly disagreeable mood. Furthermore I suspected that the FSB official was only interested in extracting a bribe from me, which I wholly intended not to do. At first I played my hardest at not understanding what he was saying, despite his rather good English. I then argued that there was nothing special about my camera, and after he requested my passport, I clearly pointed out to him that I had registered my arrival in Moscow within 72 hours (apparently a common reason that tourist are fined about USD 500). I was reaching for my phone and telling him that I was going to phone my embassy so that he could explain to them what the problem was when he backed off and decided to let me continue. Not 20 minutes later I was approached again by another FSB official. He was dispatched with even greater ease. It could become a sport.