The Russians are coming!

If like me, you are the daughter of a rabidly anticommunist soviet emigre, and you dislike black leather overcoats, you will receive news that Russian buyers are disembarking in Punta del Este with at least a bit of apprehension. And if you have read books on the recent history of Russia, or follow Putin's comings and goings, or worse, the global spread of the country's new staple export (mafia, rather than communism), aprehension will turn into flat out alarm.

Thus, my reaction at the Madrid airport lounge when waiting to board my flight to Montevideo. "Look!" I whispered to my husband, "KGB!" OK, my dad was a bit on the obsessed side, but in the end he was always right, no matter how much fun we made of his paranoid behaviour. The object of my comments were two slavic-looking gentlemen in their late 30s or early 40s, impeccably dressed in only slightly cheesy but very expensive looking clothes, with that stiff posture that only a couple of years of law enforcement or military training can impart, and displaying an evident master and servant relationship. "I mean, Russian mafia!", I corrected and updated myself. My heart sank as my husband confirmed he had heard them speaking in Russian. "Why are they going to Uruguay?!?!"

Until recently, in my mind the Russian mafia had seemed very distant, something for Eastern Europe or Brighton Beach to worry about, but since finding out they virtually took control of the Spanish coast, becoming heavily involved in real estate, and that they had penetrated our neighbour, Brazil, they became a much less remote threat in my mind. And now they were in my plane!

On cue, at the first dinner party at my Mom's since our arrival, I hear Kiki (not her real name), a star realtor in Punta del Este, boasting of her recent sale of million-dollar homes to two different Russians. "It's because in a past life I was Russian" she explains. "I was hanging with Tolstoy, doing the dacha and the samovar thing, and they can feel that connection so they gravitate to me." Well, do Boris and Sasha not know each other, I wonder out loud. "Yes! Can you believe it? They actually turned out to know each other! It's that connection I have with the dacha and Tolstoy and the samovar, they can feel it," she insisted.

The dacha and the samovar running joke was still warm when last night I notice it's pretty late and my Mom is not back home. She calls a while later, explaining "The Russian and the French guys just left." Oh, I ask, "Was it Boris or Sasha?" No, my mom says, "This one was Alexei, and he was very straight to the point, he knew exactly what he wanted and wasted no time."

"Of course" I responded, "they have no time to waste. And what (real estate) have they bought?" They each got a penthouse in a new development on the Mansa beach side, whose prices range between $750k and $1.3 million.