The Hotel Sever Incident
In 1993 I went to Russia for the very first time. I had booked a two month homestay with a Russian family through a dodgy company called Kremlin 2000 I had found advertised in the back of a British satirical magazine called Private Eye. When I arrived in the big city of Moscow as a naive 18 year old, on my first night I discovered that the host family I was meant to be staying with had not been informed of my arrival date by the company and hence were out of town at their dacha for the weekend.
I knocked on their neighbours apartment door and an old man eventually answered. Hearing my story and obviously not wanting to have the responsibility of looking after me until my hosts returned, he agreed to lead me to a cheap hotel. This is the story of my night in that hotel. The infamous ‘Hotel Sever.' Or in English, the 'Hotel North.'
THE MOSCOW I FLEW INTO AS AN 18 YEAR OLD IN 1993
We set off from the apartment building opposite Rizhskaya metro station, crossing the impossibly long Prospekt Peace. This was the first time I saw the famous small metal kiosks that were placed on pretty much every street corner across the entire country from the Baltic to the Sea of Akhotsk. I say famous because the Western press was full of stories at the time about how these little kiosks were the first real signs of capitalism taking hold in the new country called the Russian Federation.
WHERE I FIRST BOUGHT BABUSHKA'S SECRETS
With the start of the free market people rented these kiosks from local mafia gangs who named themselves after the cities or regions or factories they were from; the Tambov gang, Ural Mash gang, Chechenski etc. The kiosks sold various assortments of products through the small grilled windows to anyone who had a few spare rubles in their pockets; American chocolate, German porno magazines, Serbian guns, Latvian sex slaves etc. I soon learnt that you could in fact get anything from these kiosks if you searched long enough.
RUSSIAN 90s MAFIA. LOVEABLE RASCALS
Myself and the old man walked past grey buildings which were still topped by hammers and sickles and slogans glorifying the Party. The empire may have fallen 2 years previously but the old Leninist rhetoric remained rusting away above the citizens. However nobody paid attention to these faded relics anymore. The people of Russia had new advertising-slogans to believe in: BMW. TOUR AGENCY. NIGHTCLUB. MONEY CHANGER. PYRAMID SCHEME.
THE MASTERMIND BEHIND RUSSIA'S BIGGEST 90s PYRAMID SCHEME
Eventually we came to an open courtyard of broken paving slabs that was overlooked by a squat nondescript building of five stories with large dusty barred-windows on the ground floor behind which hung faded lace curtains which had no doubt once been white but were now more the colour of old newspaper.
THE COSMOS. CHEAP IN 1993 BUT NOT CHEAP ENOUGH
The old neighbour led me through the heavy wooden doors of the hotel and into an empty lobby that was just a wide expanse of green walls and a iron-grilled reception area behind which erupted a jungle of potted plants on various stages of health. It was like no hotel lobby I had been in before, nothing welcoming, no chairs on which to relax, no literature offering excursions. In fact nothing about the place indicated it was a hotel at all. It was more like the lobby of a police station or a provincial government office.
SOVIET HOTELS HAVEN'T IMPROVED SINCE THE FALL OF THE USSR
Behind the barred-counter sat a pretty woman of about 35 knitting a scarf. The old man explained that I needed a room for the night and that should have been that, except the receptionist wasn’t at all keen on the idea of me staying. At first she said foreigners were prohibited from staying in the hotel, then when we protested that this was the new Russia and the old Soviet rules no longer applied, she said that there were no rooms available. Finally when it was explained that I had nowhere else to go she changed tack and tried persuading me that the place really just wasn’t up to international-guest standards. I didn’t care about that I told her, I just needed a bed for one night, promising her I’d leave early in the morning.
'I won't be any trouble at all!' I promised her through broken Russian.
IF YOU'RE ENJOYING THIS STORY READ MORE IN MY BOOK!
Eventually the old man who no doubt wanted to wash his hands of me and to get home before darkness fell and the Adidas clad thugs appeared from the shadows, realised I was too naive to know how to overcome the gatekeeper behind the counter. He hinted I would have to offer a ‘present’ to be allowed in for the night. I pulled out a crisp $5 note and lay it on the counter top. The receptionist sighed in resignation, pocketed the money, asked for another $6 for the room and only then reluctantly agreed to let me stay the night. Satisfied he had done his duty, we shook hands and I watched the old man through the dusty windows as he exited the heavy doors, crossed the broken courtyard and headed back out onto the road of kiosks and shadows.
MOSCOW 1993 VIBES. LOVELY
Now I need to remind you that my Russian at that time was not very good at all, but after almost a year of evening classes with Anna it was good enough to understand basic conversations. And so it was with growing bewilderment that I listened to the receptionist as she reiterated once again that it really wasn’t wise for me to stay the night in the hotel. But none the less after locking the cage door that guarded the reception desk behind her, she led me to my room.
THEY PUT CAGES EVERYWHERE IN RUSSIA
We climbed the narrow staircase to the second floor and walked along a threadbare carpeted corridor which creaked with every step. Except for the creaks however, the hotel was silent and I presumed I was the only guest in the place. Half way down the corridor we came to a wooden door which was thickly painted with a yellowing paint the colour of nicotine stained fingers. The pretty receptionist unlocked it and I entered into a room that had the bare essentials and a not a single thing more; a single bed, a sink and a window which looked out onto a backyard some distance below. Nothing else.
MY TUVA HOTEL. STILL BETTER THAN THE SEVER
She proceeded to explain something that you probably don’t get told at the Hilton. ‘Listen to me carefully,’ she said in a concerned tone I had heard in teacher Anna’s voice before my departure for Russia.
‘Do not open the door to anybody no matter what they say or who they say they are. Take this key and lock yourself in the room after me and leave the key in the lock turned on its side so that it cannot be pushed out. Do you understand me?’
DO NOT FUCK WITH RUSSIAN BABUSHKAS. OR RECEPTIONISTS
To make sure I did understand she made me close the door whilst she watched and demonstrate the process before repeating the warning with a maternal look that said ‘How the hell did you end up here? This place isn’t for you!’ However, finally satisfied that I understood the key procedure she let herself out and headed back downstairs to the safety of her cage. I immediately locked the door and turned the key to its side as instructed.
I lay down in my clothes, reassuring myself everything would be ok and that she was just fussing over a foreigner, probably the first one to ever stay in the hotel. It was nothing to worry about I assured myself.
'I'M SURE THE OTHER GUESTS ARE FINE!' MEANWHILE, THE OTHER GUESTS
I must have fallen asleep because sometime later I was woken by noises from beyond the door. A deep male voice was talking to me in the darkness.
‘Hey have you got any matches brother?’ It asked. I lay there as silently as possible, my heart beating hard. Suddenly I heard a scratching sound in the keyhole and the sound of my key jangling in the lock.
I lay there frozen.
‘Open up brother, let’s talk’, another deep voice said.
I did not move.
ME TRYING NOT TO MAKE A SOUND IN THE SEVER
Again the key in the door wobbled. Whoever was on the other side was trying to push it out as the receptionist had hinted. I prayed that it would stay in place but I did not want to get out of bed to hold it there because it would only confirm to whoever was on the other side that I was in the room although that was no doubt obvious to them by the fact the key was in the door on my side of the lock. Instead I lay there trying to control my adrenalin that was rushing through my veins. Fuck, fuck, fuck, my adrenalin said to me.
EH BRATAN! DAVAI POGOVORIM!
They continued cajoling me to open up as more male voices came to the door to attempt to push out the key. Fearing it would fall and they would enter my room I rallied myself, silently climbing out of the bed and taking my bag to the window. It opened silently onto a dark suburban backstreet. I looked down at what was a certain leg smashing height. Possibly spine too. If the door was breached however I would just take my chances with the concrete. If it had been the daytime I may have been more inclined to engage the voices in conversation and ask them what they wanted, but alone in the black of night, with my mind full of mafia horror stories from numerous news shows I had watched about Russia, I felt that flight was wiser than fight.
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE NO CHOICE
The voices became more frustrated with my lack of response and began kicking the bottom of the door, not trying to smash it open but more to knock the key out in what seemed to be a tried and tested technique. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see the key jump in the lock with each blow but by some miracle the key stayed in place.
Where was the fucking receptionist? I thought to myself, but then I remembered the metal cage that surrounded the reception. No doubt she was locked safely inside of it and wouldn’t venture out of it in the nighttime hours, especially not for some dumb tourist that she had warned not to stay in the Hotel Sever. No, I was alone against whoever was trying to get in.
THE GUY WHO I IMAGINED WAS TRYING TO GET IN
Of course if this happened today after years of experiences and confidence gained from adventurising I'd have just opened the door and said, ‘Fuck off and let me sleep you daft cunts!’ But this was another time and I was a different person. Younger. Scared. A lamb lost in a forest of Adidas wearing wolves. This wasn’t a place for an English teenager.
ENGLISH TEENAGERS IN 90s. NOT READY FOR RUSSIA
Eventually after sometime and no doubt frustrated, the blows stopped and the male voices disappeared along the corridor. I sat on the window sill, my heart still pounding. Had they given up or had they just gone to get reinforcements? I sat perfectly still on the ledge with my bag for what must have been an hour before my adrenalin slowly dissipated and instead I was overcome by a deep tiredness. I crept to my bed and soon fell asleep.
RUSSIAN SLEEP EXPERIMENT AT HOTEL SEVER
I woke early the following morning with bright sunshine flooding into the old hotel room through the thin nylon curtains. I had survived. I grabbed my bag from the window sill and as quietly as possible I turned the key in the lock, stepping out onto the corridor. I was confronted with the arresting sight of about 20 women with dark features and headscarves sitting around on the floor drinking tea and nursing children of various ages. The women all smiled at me with warmth as I walked past them back towards the staircase. It was surreal. I left the key on the counter top at the empty reception desk and left the Hotel Sever through the thick doors, never to return.
WHAT GREETED ME IN THE CORRIDOR. KIND OF
I have thought about that night many times since then but it was only years later it made some kind of sense to me. The conclusion I came to was that the hotel was no doubt being used as a hostel for a group of people who had been displaced from one of the conflicts which had sprung up in the Caucasus post-collapse. I don’t know which one exactly, but the bright headscarves and non-Slavic features of the women I saw that morning make me think that they were Ingush who had been cleansed from parts of North Ossetia in the East Prigorodny conflict a year before my arrival.
POST SOVIET CONFLICT IN NORTH OSSETIA
What would have happened had my door been breached by the deep voices? Perhaps nothing more than a gentle mugging or maybe just an invitation to drink. I’ll never know. I looked for the hotel on Google recently but it seems to have disappeared since there is no mention of it online but, Moscow is a different city today from the early 90s. I did find an old black and white photo of the hotel online once which confirmed to me that I did not imagine the whole episode but even that is impossible to find now.