How I almost missed my flight or a narrow escape from Russia

nameless-berk (60)in #travel • 6 years ago (edited)

29/10/17

I'm from Siberia, a large region in Russia, and my trip started here.

On 27th October I arrived to the airport of Novosibirsk in order to catch a plane to Almaty and nearly failed this simple task because of the airport security which I love so much.
The woman behind the passport control desk took her time staring at the visas in my passport like she never seen such a thing before, then she started asking typical for russian border officials bullshit questions that obviously are none of their business. Why am I leaving the country second time through the same airport and in the same time of year? What am I gonna do outside? What did I do the last time I left? Etc, etc...
As they say, you can take a person out of USSR, but you can't take USSR out of the person. Or something along these lines.
Finally she refused to let me through - keeping the passport - and sent me to the hall to wait. In 5 minutes there appeared a big oaf of a security guard looking for me and we went into a small office to talk.
A long sequence of questions ensued, including the same they already asked and adding some new ones like what am I doing for living, why taking a flight there, what did I do in Vietnam (!), why am I having a beard (!!), what are my religious beliefs and such... When there was like 10 minutes left before the departure, they had to admit that I'm no terrorist and let me go peacefully.
The peace didn't last long, however. There was another security check of carry-on and they started bitching about a multitool in my backpack, telling me how I'm not supposed to bring any tools in the cabin, especially ones having a tiny knife in it. They failed to impress me, somehow, and seeing that I'm not gonna repent my sins they had to let me through.
Here we go, they are already calling my name in the loudspeakers...
Only when the plane immersed itself in the ashen smog above Almaty and the undercarriage rumbled on the runway, I finally felt that I got away from those dogs.
On the Kasakh side nobody even looked at me twice, as it supposed to be in this case. And the luggage wasn't plundered which is also nice. You see, I had this Nepalese Kukri knife which is clearly a weapon, but is packed according to the rules, with the receipt and such.

Took this picture while polishing the knife after Nepalese jungles