Do not be complacent about your health when visiting Russia. Be prepared for an emergency. Have numbers of English-speaking medical clinics (no matter how good your Russian) with ambulances and carry them with you at all times.
After two and a half years of living in St. Petersburg, never having called an ambulance in my life, I came home one day to find that my girlfriend had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.
I called the emergency services (03) and the first time they hung up on me because I couldn't remember the name of the tablets and couldn't find what I'd done with the bottle.
No matter how good your Russian is, don't even think about relying on this service. They don't care if someone lives or dies - if they have any trouble understanding even just one word, they might put the phone down and you'll have to start again. Or you might be told to call another number, but they won't wait to check that you heard it correctly.
The 'ambulance' arrived. The 'paramedics' (two draft dodgers) came in. They asked where the patient was, then what her name was. They asked for a piece of paper to make notes on. They scribbled my girlfriend's name (surname and half of her first name) but not the name of the sleeping tablets.
The next question they asked was who I was, what our relationship was, and whether she was 'dear' to me. At this point I was already fed up with questions and wanted to get on the road, but the next question floored me. It was a variant on the last, but this time more like 'how much is she worth to you' or 'how much are you willing to pay to make sure she gets to the hospital in time?'
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on Mar 10, 2005
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