Torie and Erik: Day Three: Getting into the Swing of Things

On our third day we got our first taste of Russian beaurocracy. Luckily we're getting used to random rules and expectations, but we hardly expected to have to deal with such things on our vacation.

To visit Russia as a non-Russian, you have to have a visa. We had an agency take care of our visa applications, due to the fact that we didn't have enormous amounts of time to spend at the Russian embassy, and well, we don't speak Russian. We completed the two page form asking us about any weapons training that we may have had, along with our last three employers, sent if off with a hefty fee and our passports and were rewarded with visas a couple of weeks later.

Turns out that once you arrive in Russia, you also have to declare your presence to the post office or immigration office. So, off we went to the post office to see what had to be done. The post office provided us with the forms, and told us that we actually had to hand them directly to the immigration office. The forms were double sided, in Russian, to be completed in Russian. So, Julia had some homework! After calling to make sure the immigration office was open on Saturday (two different people confirmed that yes, it was) we headed out there the next day to hand in our forms. Unfortunately the person we needed to deal with didn't work on the weekends, and wouldn't be there until Monday afternoon.

By Monday afternoon, this was all beginning to seem like a joke. We were only there for one week, yet were expected to spend the better part of that week filling out forms in Russian and photocopying all our important documents. Oh, and there was a fee, of course. You'll never guess how much. 6 rubles each, which in total for three people was about 30 centimes. We couldn't believe it. And the kicker was that we only needed this form in case we happened to get stopped by the police. Fun.

So, where was I?

Julia in front of her elementary school

This happy looking storefront was the post office on the right, and a bank on the left. We got a kick out of the fact that the postal agent who helped explain the immigration forms to us was wearing short shorts and weight lifting gloves.

Paperwork taken care of, we headed downtown to see some sights. First up was the church of the Spilled Blood.

This was my favorite of the whole trip. Not only did it look like a colourful cupcake from the outside, the entire inside was covered with intricate mosaics. I loved it. There was so much to look at, I could have stayed for much longer. But we had a busy day ahead of us!

On our way to lunch we decided to check out this church.

This turned out to be a great surprise. It's a German church, that was converted into a swimming pool in the 30s, then back into a church later on.

The basement under the old pool has been converted into a gallery space, and was covered with murals.

And the actual pool space (I think this was the deep end) was used for temporary exhibitions. Pretty cool.

Lunch was a great authentic Russian place that specialized in pilminy, a kind of meat filled ravioli. Covered in butter, and eaten with sour cream, they are delicious.