“Stop” in the name of the law

After my Russian lessons, I always walk to the bus stop across the street. It is about 20yds from the corner and so I usually cross the street and then walk along the curb to the bus stop. The side walk is back a ways and it is easier to walk along the edge of the road, plus, you are able to flag down your marshruka if it happens to be driving by. Well, one day I noticed a police car parked just before the bus stop platform, and I thought to myself, maybe I should walk on the sidewalk today, but I saw that there was plenty of room to walk by the car and they hadn’t waved anyone over to the side of the road. I figured it’d be ok, well, I figured wrong. There were three guys- two in uniforms and one guy in plain clothes. The two guys in uniforms were on the side of the car towards the road, and the other guy, as I got closer, stood in the pathway between the car and the platform and stretched out his arms so there was no walking around him. I knew then I should have listened to my first instinct. The guy then started to talk to me and of course I didn’t really understand anything because he talked rather fast, and then one of the other guys in uniforms came by and said something too. I just gave a look, like I was trying to understand but really had no clue what they were saying. Finally, the one guy asked where I was a student, where do I study? I said in Russian, that I wasn’t a student but here with an organization, and I was just walking to the bus stop. At that, the uniformed officer left and went back to watching the road. But the other guy continued to talk. I was hoping that the ‘naive foreigner who doesn’t understand’ act would get him to give up in frustration and let me continue on the five feet to the bus stop, but alas, it did not work. So I had to walk all the way back to the corner, to get to the sidewalk, once I was there, I figured that I did not want to walk all the way back up to that bus stop, so I continued walking down the street to the next stop. The lessons learned- 1. The naïve foreigner card does not always work, 2. As always avoid the police and going to close to them if possible. At least I didn’t have to pay them for my lack of judgment.