WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Right, let's go to Russia.

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Let's go to Russia!

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Russia.

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If you're a British tourist, Russia isn't
easy to get into.

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You have to book your travel,

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then request a formal invitation from the
hotel you're staying at,

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and then apply for a visa weeks or months
in advance.

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You can't just arrive on a plane and ask them
to let you in.

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And you certainly can't ever, ever just drive
across the border.

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That pole is where they're spying from.

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Oh, you're right! They must-- yes!

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'Cos that is lumpy at the top.

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Cell towers normally go right at the top...

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There is going to be someone who job is

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counting the cars in and counting the cars
out.

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And if they see anyone walking towards here...

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Yeah, of course. That's where the cameras
are. Good spot.

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I'd get my zoom lens out, but I'm not doing
that on a Russian border.

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The area behind me is the Saatse Boot,

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and it's about one square kilometre of Russia
that juts out into Estonia.

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When Estonia was part of the Soviet Union,
that wasn't a problem:

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but when the country became independent in
1991,

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a couple of villages on this side of the Boot,

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including Saatse here, were cut off. Until
recently,

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the road over there was the only way to reach
them:

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there is another way round now,

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but that's still the quickest route by far.

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So, for convenience, Russia allows people
to use that road...

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as long as they don't stop.

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That's the no stopping sign.

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Yeah. No stopping for... 1km?

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Right, you see that post, the red and green
post?

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-- I do. -- That's it. That's Russia.

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If you're on foot, you're entering Russia,
and you can be arrested.

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If you're in a car, you've got to keep moving:

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if you stop or if you break down,

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you're entering Russia, and you can be arrested.

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Estonia... Estonia...

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-- Russia! -- We're in Russia.

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And I know, immediately, people are going
to ask, how far can you push this?

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What happens if you're on a bicycle?

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What if you drive 1mph but don't technically
stop?

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What happens if you stand half in and half
out,

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or stop just on the Estonian side of the border
and take loads of photos?

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What happens if you break the law on promoting
homosexuality in Russia

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by playing the Village People out of your
car's speakers at full blast?

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The answer to all of those is: I don't know.

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It depends on if any border guards see it,
and how they feel that day.

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They might just escort you back to Estonia...

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they might arrest you and lock you up for
the night.

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Either way, we are not bloody finding out,

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because it is a really, really bad idea to
mess with Russia at all,

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let alone on their territory, while you're
filming it.

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Now, at some point, like many of the complicated
borders in the world,

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the Boot is going to be fixed.

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Officially, it was fixed and handed over to
Estonia

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in a treaty back in 2005, and then again by
another treaty in 2014.

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Russia agreed to give up that bit of land

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in exchange for getting a couple of bits of
Estonia somewhere else.

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And... Estonia!

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-- That's it! -- Yeah!

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But diplomacy is slow, and so is government
bureaucracy, and right now,

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it is still possible to drive through a little
bit of Russia without a visa.

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Just very very carefully.

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We just drove through Russia without a visa!

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Wow.

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It's actually a bit of an anticlimax.

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Hello! Tourist. Tourist. Yes.

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