I have a sweet tooth. In fact, I think I am something like a sabre-toothed tiger when it comes to sweet stuff:

Вареники (vareniky) stuffed with cottage cheese – so awesome!

I rode the bus today and there was something special about it:

At first I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but then I knew: I really enjoyed the little curtains! I think those things add a very nice touch to the vehicle:

Maybe we should get them for our public buses in Germany as well?

…

The reason I had to take the bus was because I must get myself registered with the authorities. Standard procedure for all foreigners I guess.

You have to go to the central post office for your registration, and it’s supposed to be a bit of a hassle:

The post office itself looked pretty nice – someone had decorated the place as if they had known I was coming:

The thing about the registration is this: it’s really no hassle at all!

You just need all this:

First you prepare yourself with some Russian complimentary phrases. Then you go to the post office, draw a waiting number, and they tell you to go to the bank. You go to the bank, hand them some cash, get some papers, and then you go back to the post office and fill out a form, draw a waiting number and show the form to the ladies at the counter. They are most likely very happy to point out where you have might have misspelled one or two words, then you fill out the form again (without the misspellings), you xerox it one or two times (maybe three), then draw another waiting number and hand a little bit of cash over to another lady at another counter. There are some more copies of passports and documents involved at this point. The lady will then give you some more papers and a gigantic envelope. And this is where it gets tricky:

You have to fill out a couple of little papers in Russian!

When all this is done, the gigantic envelope gets sealed, weighed (36g) and send to some secret place, maybe to the Кремль (Kremlin) or to Камча́тка (Kamchatka), I really have no idea.

Oh, and when you have successfully completed your registration, you get your own set of papers to proudly show to your friends or the occasional police officer:

Awesome stuff!

Soundtrack: Public Enemy – “Yo! Bum Rush The Show”