Sevastopol, Ukraine

There are traffic cops everywhere in Ukraine — along some highways every two to three miles. It was only a matter of time before I was going to get pulled over. According to my GPS, I was to take the second exit off the turnaround. Oops, there it was a red shield with an X through it. I was going up a wrong way — not the first time my GPS had given me the wrong directions. Two police officers in a patrol car were waiting and signaled me to pull over. The officer who approached me didn’t speak English, but let me know: driver’s license, passport, and car registration. He talked to me in Russian, but I didn’t understand a word of it except that I was going the wrong way on a one way street. With a smile bordering on a grin, he motioned me to get out of my car and into the police car with the other officer whose English was non-existent and who appeared to be writing up a ticket. From the two, their gestures and conversation told me they wanted to take me to the police station, but were afraid of leaving my car behind. “Strafe,” the officer in the car next to me said, a word I recognized from German as meaning “fine,” but I pretended not to understand. The officer wrote on a sheet of paper $50. I looked at his note and feigned dismay, shaking my head, and pointing at my driver’s license. “Send the bill to my address here,” I said, something that Taras had told me to say in situations like this. However, the officer persisted, pointing to the amount on the ticket. I smiled and told him again, “Send the ticket to my home address.” This went on for a while. Finally, he returned the smile and said something to the officer outside, who promptly opened the door and motioned me to leave. And, that was it! For the first time in my life, I had just talked my way out of a traffic ticket. “Nice guys,” I thought.

An hour later, as I was passing a slow moving tractor-trailer, I ran into another traffic control point. “Now what could I possibly have done wrong?” This officer didn’t speak English either. Motioning me to produce my driver’s license and passport, he pointed to the faded center white line on the road, indicating that I had driven over it. Due to the rutted and frequently patched road conditions, I hadn’t noticed the white line, sometimes solid and other times broken. Certainly the other traffic seemed impervious to its purpose. The officer motioned for me to get out of my car and come with him to his car. The routine I had experienced an hour earlier repeated itself. Again he used the word “strafe,” but in a hushed up way, clearly suggesting this was a bribe and that he would write up a ticket if I didn’t give him $50. It’s amazing how well people can communicate when they don’t speak the same language. Again, I pleaded ignorance, telling him, “Send the bill to my home address.” However, the officer outside didn’t seem too pleased with the situation. “Maybe, I had pushed the limits with these guys?” I fumbled through my wallet and pulled out a hundred-grivna bill (about $12.50). The officer snatched it from my hand, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and motioned to me to quickly leave. “Shit,” I thought, “I should have held out a little longer. They’re clearly in a hurry to make their quota.”