Question of the week #49

[treonb]

At the end of the season finale, Stan saw Nina taken away, to be returned to the USSR. What do you think will be his next step?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first two seasons in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

Comments

[apolla_savre]

When I went in 2010, they didn't inspect anything when we got off the plane. We were all prepared to have a long wait and the guys just looked at us and were like, "Have anything to declare?" We said no, and they waved us on through.

They inspected our baggage when we flew out, though, but that was for security. You're not supposed to take rubles out of the country, but I left with about $50 of rubles. Those were a pain to exchange back to dollars, but I didn't even think about finding an exchange in Russia because we left at about 5 in the morning.

But there's no way Stan could get in as a tourist. There's just no way. The procedure would take too long and he'd have to submit info about his job with his application and they'd see "FBI" and go, "Oh, hell no." And who knows where they'd take Nina? She might go to Moscow for trial, but her guilt's already established. She confessed. Stan would have to have an itinerary clearly established and there's no way he could break that to go running around Siberia (which is huge, he'd never find her on his own.) Plus, his Russian is terrible. He'd be recognized as a foreigner immediately and the locals would either avoid him like the plague or turn him in.

[quantumreality]

Am actually surprised Russia enforces exchange controls even now, but I imagine they could be concerned about offshore rubles screwing up the exchange rate (Malaysia did something like this in 1998; when they slammed down controls over capital flows, they effectively demonetized all offshore ringgit, which meant that the fixed exchange rate to the US dollar became easier to defend).