Red Tape

No pun intended. Something I haven't written a lot about is one of the stereotypes we may have about Russia, and that is the beauracracy. It ounds terrible, I know, but sometimes stereotypes start for a reason. Add to the
Russian system that I'm dealing with a university, and you can imagine the extent of the entanglements. For example having to go to three offices to deal with what to me seems like one transaction. Usually one of your visits will be to someone who does nothing else but put an official stamp on paperwork someone else has completed. I've been working on extending my visa through to the end of the academic year, and since I had the bright idea to move during this, it has gotten more complicated. Every foreigner has to register with the local police in Russia. I had a registration for my last place, and now I have to have my new landlady sign a form that I must give to my university, who will then extend my visa and run the paperwork by the police. I guess my landlady has never rented to foreigners before, because she is very confused about this, and understandibly uneasy about putting her name on a form that will go to the police. We're meeting this weekend; I will show her my previous registration and hopefully this will help her understand.

Then there is trying to get the student-price subway/bus ticket. I had been
purchasing my bus/tram tickets through the department where I had Russian language lessons, and this was very easy. However, now that I'm not a student in their department any more, they naturally don't want to sell me a subsidized ticket. So I asked my new department about this, they said I had to go to a particular metro station to apply. The metro station told me I had to get documents from the university first, and then go to a different metro station (even though I have a friend that told me the first metro station is where he got his student ticket). Ask a question five times and you get five different answers.

When I first arrived in Moscow, my friend Kirill helped me buy a metro card
(subway) and told me the three month price is the best deal, which he was exactly right about. However, this is a price for the general public and the student price is even cheaper, so I want to obtain one if I can. Even this great card, which you just pass over a detecter at the turnstyle to get into the subway, has its drawbacks. Sometimes it will refuse to work, so it is necessary to carry with you a receipt that shows how long the card is valid, so you can show it to the attendant and they will open a gate for you. The card is designed so that it can't be passed between friends all getting on the subway at the same time, so once you use it, it doesn't work again for 7 minutes. Logical, yes, but sometimes for no reason it won't work, even though you haven't used it for hours. If this happens, you get an entirely
different kind of beep at the turnstyle, so showing your receipt will not get you in. Sometimes you get a nice lady monitoring the turnstyle who will let you pass, when she sees that you weren't trying to use it twice. Other times the lady will make you wait there for the full seven minutes and try again. Alas, all part of daily life in Moscow.