Eight times the fare and move the spuds!
YOU worry when the driver re-arranges two sacks of potatoes to fit your suitcase in the boot, takes down the plastic ‘taxi’ sign from the roof of his car and puts it on the passenger seat.
And when the other cabbies at Ekaterinburg railway station laugh as he says ‘eight hundred’ before the very short journey to a hotel, in a battered white saloon with very agricultural odour. ‘How many roubles should that have cost?’ was the first question for staff at the hotel. ‘One hundred.’ That’s World Cup economics. YOU take your chances on the Moscow underground, too. Inside the trains, the next destinations are related in English. Before you get aboard, though, it is a case of staring at the Cyrillic signs, convincing yourself one looks like the right direction and taking a punt. It was Played 4, Lost 4 in a 36hour stay in the capital. CREDIT Aeroflot for flying the flag for the Russia team, who have been emphatically absent from any advertising sites the length and breadth of Russia. Three days before that 5-0 win over the Saudis, they issued plastic flags for the flight from Moscow to Volgograd. A bumpy landing meant the flags were forgotten. Hopefully not a metaphor for what happens when the hosts play someone decent. THE referendum talk drowns out the World Cup in Volgograd. There has been a vote to decide whether to put the clocks forward by an hour permanently. Nobody seems to want to be out of sync with Moscow, but the government evidently does. The ‘remainers’ have been told they lost but the numbers remain a state secret. The trick David Cameron missed. PREPARE to learn more about the Battle of Stalingrad tomorrow, when the BBC cameras focus on the giant statue of Mother Russia — backdrop to the stadium where England’s campaign begins in Volgograd. The real horror of war is revealed a mile away, in the bombed-out remains of a redbrick mill. It is a stunning, vivid reminder. Volgograd is twinned with Hiroshima and Coventry. AEROFLOT was not issuing flags when it told 15 people due to watch France play Australia in Kazan at 1pm local time yesterday — including your correspondent and half a dozen Aussies who had travelled halfway around the world — they would not be flying until 4pm. The connecting flight had arrived late. British, Australians, Israelis and Germans formed a coalition which argued for another flight to be scheduled. A League of Nations and evidence of why you do not bet against the Aussies until it is really all over. REPRIMAND of the week — for walking into Ekaterinburg’s Church on the Blood with hands in my pockets. Harsh but fair.
The church is built on the site where Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and children were murdered by the Bolsheviks. Images of his four daughters and a son, killed 100 years ago next month, capture the solemnity. They were so young and did not know what lay ahead.