Moving Day and a Painful Parcel July 25, 2006
Today we move to St. Petersburg on a 4:30PM train. With no tours planned we have a few hours to kill which will include mailing a package to the US. We had the Hong Kong travel agent send a box containing fresh clothes, travel books and consumables to the hotel here in Moscow. After six weeks on the road we needed a change of clothing and to restock some essentials that we were not sure we would be able to get in Russia. (We were still under the impression that Russians wait in queues for hours just to pay exorbitant prices for a roll of toilet paper.) The box we wanted to mail to the states contains clothes that we no longer will use on this trip.
Nikita, the manager from the travel agent here in Moscow, picked us up at 12:45PM, 45 minutes late, from the hotel. The itinerary was mail the box, have lunch and catch the train. Holly had told Nikita the day before we would need to mail a box. Once in the car we found out that he had no idea where to go to send a package. After calling his office he was told that UPS could do it but it would cost about US$300. We asked him to take us to the Post Office which, he had never been to. After spending 20 minutes to find a parking place we walked into the main Moscow Post Office just to be told that they only handle letters here and that parcels were processed in another location. Another 20 minutes and we were walking through an alley to get to the parcel office. Poorly lit with wood framed service windows the office could have been a movie set from the 1930s. Holly immediately took charge of the task at hand.
By the time Gary finds his glasses and an ink pen and asks me all the questions, I find it entirely more expedient just to fill the forms myself, (I believe this is Gary’s evil plan) which I did with the help of Nikita. The forms (3 of them) were bilingual – Russian/French – of which I read neither.
I follow Nikita to one of the crowded counter windows and discover that the lady behind the counter wants everything in the box itemized. I had listed “Clothes” “10 pieces”. This was not sufficient. Everything got taken out of the box and listed as “Trousers” “2 pieces” and so on until the entire contents were accounted for.
Step 2: the lady then instructed us to go to the last counter and see another lady. Obligingly, Nikita and I took the box and handed it over to another lady. She picked up some thin linen-like material, measured it against the box and before my eyes and to my amazement, ripped off a section, went to a pedal-type sewing machine and made a custom-fitting pouch for the box. When the pouch was sewn and the box snuggly fitted inside, she used a thick stick and dipped some brown goop from a pot sitting on a warming element and plopped it in about 6 spots on the top of the material.
After stamping the brown goop with a seal of some kind, (and requesting a fee of 75 rubles) she returned the box to Nikita with instructions to write the address on the material. Have you ever tried to write on material with an ink pen? If so, then you can understand that this took several minutes.
Step 3: back to lady #1 who now shockingly had a white tissue rolled up and stuck up one of her nostrils. In this place – you dare not laugh at the risk of being dismissed along with your un-mailed parcel. I couldn’t make this stuff up… She took the package and the forms and made a 2nd career out of processing this box. Finally she finished and handed me a scribbled piece of paper that said 1,321.09. In total, the shipped of this 10 lb parcel costs us about 1,400 rubles or about US$35. If it ever arrives, it will be a miracle and I no longer care.
After a quick, and by some miracle cheap, lunch Nikita drove us to the train station where we boarded the express headed for St. Petersburg. I used the first couple of hours on the train to catch up on the blog and then read a little or watched the scenery go by. By this time we were a little antsy and starting to get a little hungry so we decided to look for the dining car.
If you’ve ever ridden a train long distance you know how it is to go from car to car; not an impossible task but also not just a walk across the room. Each car we entered was another world. Our car was filled with what seemed to be local people with little luggage and overall it was quite with people remaining in their seats, all but one of the cars that we went through were day cars with seats only. One car we walked through was filled with mixed groups of tourist that were animated and noisy. The next was Italians that were holding a religious meeting. The next was another group of Italians that were singing, laughing and half were standing in the aisle. The diner car was the sixth car we came to. Quite a haul for bad overpriced food.
We arrived at St. Petersburg around 10PM with still about an hour of light left. We were picked up by a very quite yet helpful driver and taken to the Arbat Hotel, a small hotel near the center of town. We took a quick walk to a 24 hour market to get bottled water as we were told to NOT drink the water here. This includes brushing your teeth. Well after midnight when we went to bed it would be a long day tomorrow since we were meeting the guide at 9AM for an all day walking tour of old St. Petersburg
Nikita, the manager from the travel agent here in Moscow, picked us up at 12:45PM, 45 minutes late, from the hotel. The itinerary was mail the box, have lunch and catch the train. Holly had told Nikita the day before we would need to mail a box. Once in the car we found out that he had no idea where to go to send a package. After calling his office he was told that UPS could do it but it would cost about US$300. We asked him to take us to the Post Office which, he had never been to. After spending 20 minutes to find a parking place we walked into the main Moscow Post Office just to be told that they only handle letters here and that parcels were processed in another location. Another 20 minutes and we were walking through an alley to get to the parcel office. Poorly lit with wood framed service windows the office could have been a movie set from the 1930s. Holly immediately took charge of the task at hand.
By the time Gary finds his glasses and an ink pen and asks me all the questions, I find it entirely more expedient just to fill the forms myself, (I believe this is Gary’s evil plan) which I did with the help of Nikita. The forms (3 of them) were bilingual – Russian/French – of which I read neither.
I follow Nikita to one of the crowded counter windows and discover that the lady behind the counter wants everything in the box itemized. I had listed “Clothes” “10 pieces”. This was not sufficient. Everything got taken out of the box and listed as “Trousers” “2 pieces” and so on until the entire contents were accounted for.
Step 2: the lady then instructed us to go to the last counter and see another lady. Obligingly, Nikita and I took the box and handed it over to another lady. She picked up some thin linen-like material, measured it against the box and before my eyes and to my amazement, ripped off a section, went to a pedal-type sewing machine and made a custom-fitting pouch for the box. When the pouch was sewn and the box snuggly fitted inside, she used a thick stick and dipped some brown goop from a pot sitting on a warming element and plopped it in about 6 spots on the top of the material.
After stamping the brown goop with a seal of some kind, (and requesting a fee of 75 rubles) she returned the box to Nikita with instructions to write the address on the material. Have you ever tried to write on material with an ink pen? If so, then you can understand that this took several minutes.
Step 3: back to lady #1 who now shockingly had a white tissue rolled up and stuck up one of her nostrils. In this place – you dare not laugh at the risk of being dismissed along with your un-mailed parcel. I couldn’t make this stuff up… She took the package and the forms and made a 2nd career out of processing this box. Finally she finished and handed me a scribbled piece of paper that said 1,321.09. In total, the shipped of this 10 lb parcel costs us about 1,400 rubles or about US$35. If it ever arrives, it will be a miracle and I no longer care.
After a quick, and by some miracle cheap, lunch Nikita drove us to the train station where we boarded the express headed for St. Petersburg. I used the first couple of hours on the train to catch up on the blog and then read a little or watched the scenery go by. By this time we were a little antsy and starting to get a little hungry so we decided to look for the dining car.
If you’ve ever ridden a train long distance you know how it is to go from car to car; not an impossible task but also not just a walk across the room. Each car we entered was another world. Our car was filled with what seemed to be local people with little luggage and overall it was quite with people remaining in their seats, all but one of the cars that we went through were day cars with seats only. One car we walked through was filled with mixed groups of tourist that were animated and noisy. The next was Italians that were holding a religious meeting. The next was another group of Italians that were singing, laughing and half were standing in the aisle. The diner car was the sixth car we came to. Quite a haul for bad overpriced food.
We arrived at St. Petersburg around 10PM with still about an hour of light left. We were picked up by a very quite yet helpful driver and taken to the Arbat Hotel, a small hotel near the center of town. We took a quick walk to a 24 hour market to get bottled water as we were told to NOT drink the water here. This includes brushing your teeth. Well after midnight when we went to bed it would be a long day tomorrow since we were meeting the guide at 9AM for an all day walking tour of old St. Petersburg
posted by Gary and Holly Davis @ 6:35 AM
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