I had booked into a hostel for the weekend, while I waited for my flight to Prague on the Monday. No hot water so I snuck a shower in on the second day at the original hotel, where Jolene was still staying.
We had bought so much stuff in Russia (Russian dolls especially) that we needed to post it all home. We found the post office ok, and it looked quite promising to begin with - very modern, huge, many numbered booths and even an information counter. Well. Nothing in Russia is as expected. We managed to convey that we needed to post some items by boat and were told to wait at counter number 24 (the only counter of 50 other counters with anyone apparantly doing anything). Several minutes later I had posted two parcels. She kept weighing the contents and then removing items at random - I couldn't post this doll? Too heavy? Going to cost me more to add a 3 ounce doll and to do it seperately? Something like that. Jolene was majorly grumpy and complained the whole time about her lack of faith in anything arriving. Then all of a sudden, all three assistants mysterioulsy dissappeared. We waited about 5 minutes. Eventually I asked - "are they coming back?". A lady in the queue mimed us 45 minutes lunch break. "45 minutes! All three of them at the same time? You're kidding right?" No, they weren't. Resigning ourselves to a long and pointless wait, we joined the queue of matronly women with parcels to post.
It was almost as maddening as Japanese government offices who, despite their entire customer base most likely having had to take a half day off work in order to be served by them, shut down shop for an hour in the middle of the working day even though there are 50 staff behind the counter. By all accounts an inexplicably frustrating experience, but nevertheless considered a perfectly reasonable way to behave in the 21st century.
An hour later they all came dawdling back. "Next!". Sullen looks all round. The Russian ladies were used to this - Jolene and I, both with major cases of PMT, hungry without lunch and gagging for a drink however, were not impressed. We waited again in line. Jolene decided to post her things and after much miming, had the girl somewhat roughly wrap her dolls in brown paper (no bubble wrap). When it was my turn, she told me - "Nope - wrong queue". "What?! Then I lost it. I'd been waiting three hours! I'm not queueing up again! And anyway, how come she served Jolene and not me?". She had no argument to this, and conceded to wrap the last of my things.
We finally made it out of that madhouse four hours later, having wasted the whole day and in no mood for anything other than a stiff drink. We headed straight for the nearest bar, the aptly named "Idiot Cafe". Not sure who was more of the idiots though, us or them.
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