So, today I spent 2.5 hours at various offices of the Russian postal service. And I am still in the posession of the parcel I was attempting to ship. Yes - after standing in lines, sealing and unsealing pacakges, filling out forms, and asking questions in broken Russian, all while wearing my heavy overcoat indoors, for TWO HOURS, I still couldn't mail the package.
Why? Because for some reason known only to the Russians, all printed materials must be mailed separately from everything else. The girl at the post office made me cut through all my taping and labelling and remove the three books packed in carefully with everything else and told me I had to take them somewhere else. As I was sawing through the taping with my house keys, the man next to me in line kept instructing the girl to give me a knife. She didn't - maybe she could tell I was beginning to consider using it on her... Then she told me that I had to fill in the weights for each object in the box. Since the point of the exercise was to clear out space in my suitcase, not rack up obscene shipping charges, I just replaced everything in the box and left, the very picture of a cool and collected young lady.
Ok, I actually sorta stuffed it all back in, as best I could, and then went outside to cool off and cry. One of the ladies who'd been in the office, too, came and found me and explained how I needed to take the books to one office, but that I could do everything else there, and that it was okay if I needed to ask them to repeat, and that I didn't need to cry. I'm repacking the box, so I couldn't go back, but I really did appreciate that kindness.
It probably wouldn't have been that traumatic, except the post office was packed, so everything was a bunch of hurry up and wait. See, it takes a week for mail to get from Voronezh to Moscow and vice versa, so anything conducted by mail has to be done well in advance. Thus, their Christmas/New Year rush has already begun. I think they may insist on wrapping my package in brown paper and string (hear that, Mom? String - your favorite!) before they'll mail it - we'll see. My personal favorite was the lady who appeared to be sewing a shroud around her box. I have absolutely no idea why, but she wiggled it into a tight white bag, and then she was sewing - needle and thread and all - the ends up like you wrap a present. Weird.
Anyways, don't mail stuff in Russia. Just don't do it.
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4 comments:
Hi Sarah! It's Robin (McCown). Glad to hear your enjoying yourself in Russia. Don't freeze to death! Speaking of which, it's rather chilly here. Like, almost freezing, lol.
I'm sorry Russian post offices are traumatic. I would have probably turned the keys into a weapon :-)
I'm very excited that it's almost Christmas and therefore time for sleeping and time to see Sara and stuff like that.
I miss you!
That's sounds so frustrating! I'm glad the guy told didn't tell the lady to hand you a gun or something. I happen to know by experience, your feet are weapon enough. :-)
H and I had an argument when we talked about your last blog. I said it was about fish, she said it was about buses. I said the one before that had been about buses. Were you aware that you are writing highly controversial stuff here, ma'am?
I hope you get your papers and strings and printed things worked out.
Where's a lacrosse stick when you need one? :-P
We learned how to say 'love' in Russian today (even though I already knew how. Yay!). Um.. I had more to say, but I can't remember it. I hope that your future mailing experiences are better!!!
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