From Russia with Love

Subbota (Saturday)

The phone woke me up this morning. Luckily Tatiana answered it because my Russian is HORRIBLE in the morning and talking on the phone is intimidating in general. It was a bookseller. In Moscow, there are people to work for the publishing houses themselves and set up appointments with passersby to buy their books. Tatiana ran into this particular bookseller over a month ago and he finally called back to set up an appointment. She gave him our number in the first place because she thought I would be interested in buying a book called "Cities of Russia" with a lot of history and illustrations, all for a very reasonable price. We met not far form our house and I was pleased enough with the merchandise to buy the book. Tatiana also bought a book by the same publisher about the holidays of the Russian Orthodox Church.
After our purchases, Tatiana took me on a tour around our neighborhood while she was running errands (I think she brought me along to help carry groceries, but I was grateful for the tour in general). The first stop was at the bank where Tatiana needed to take out money. She asked me to come inside and wait with her since there were 'questionable characters' outside using the ATM (that is, they were a group of young, loud men). I sat, quietly reading the history of Irkutsk in my new book, and after Tatiana got through two lines, we exited the building. I still needed to use the ATM, which was by that time free. After inserting my card, I strained to read the screen, where it said the ATM was out of order and my transaction couldn't be completed. Of course, it didn't give me my card back, so Tatiana went back inside to solve the problem. After waiting another ten minutes in the cold for the machine to return my VISA, we went back inside and asked them to get the card out of the back of the machine. This was easy enough, but the resulting process of getting the card back from the teller occupied our time for the next hour and a half.
Russia is famous for its beurocracy and needless redtape. To get my own bankcard back, that THEIR machine ate in the first place, I was required to write a formal letter requesting the card's return. Luckily, Tatiana offered to write it for me, and we returned to the counter for the mandatory stamps of approval. The teller then asked us to write the card's number and expiration date on the back of said letter. Tatiana accidentally wrote 119 instead of 19, the last two numbers on the card and started to look worried for some reason. She turned the second 1 into a 9 and skribbled the last digit out. After this, she showed her mistake to the teller and asked if it was OK. Our teller consulted her supervisor and returned to tell us that we had to rewrite the whole letter because of that one skribble! We returned to the small desk, and Tatiana began copy the letter. I offered to copy it myself, but she refused the help since my handwriting could cause even more mistakes on the form. We returned to the counter, signed on the many dotted lines and finally left the cursed bank.
It was frustrating, but for the most part, I was laughing the whole time at Russia's emphasis on the unimportant. After all, why couldn't they just give me the damned card back after checking the name on my passport? I was somewhat sleep deprived and didn't expect so much trouble just trying to take some money out. Well, now I know, and in the end, it's an entertaining enough story.

posted by Misha Molodoi @ 2:45 PM