When I started this blog, I wrote the title in English, but so far everything else has been in Finnish.. sorry about that! So, now I´ll try writing in English as well every now and then.
Hmm, where to start? That´s always the problem. Now I have been here for little bit more than two weeks and everything seems to be so far so good :)
The bureaucracy has been amazing and slower than I thought even I kind of expected that. First, the invitations from GSOM took quite a long time, so we had to get the fast visas and pay a bit more to get here on time. Unfortunatelly some of us MITIM students didn´t get their invitations until last week, so I was one of the fastest ones anyway.
We needed all kinds of documents once we got here - HIV-test, X-rays of lungs (in case of tuberculosis), receipt for paying the visa, 8 photos, official, notarizied Russian translations of our diplomas (NOTE: I did it in Finland, but it´s not valid here! So, it is better to do in St.Petersburg). And the funniest part is that there is no way you can do these in one place or in one day..
So, an example: First we lived in Schevchenko dormitory for few nights, and then we needed to move to "Karablie" dormitory which is a bit further away from the school and is a bit more shabby than the first one. We waited in a queue for two hours to get the keys and then in the middle of the night we were finally able to move our things to Karablie.
Few days after moving, we needed to take care of rent and access key (there´s a guard downstairs, so it´s not easy to get in..). First we went to one office to get the information what to pay (by the way, it seemed that everyone had a different figure....), then to an other office to pay the amount, then to the third office where the lady looked at my papers and did something that she kindly explained to me in Russian and after that to the fourth office where they took a picture for the access key. Finally we made it to the last, fifth office, where the boss of the building took our lung X-rays (or certificates that we don´t have tuberculosis), receipt of the paid rent and then she made us sign many papers (I didn´t understand any of it, unfortunatelly). It doesn´t sound that bad, does it? Well, the worst thing was that we weren´t the only ones doing all of this, so we spent that day in queues. :D
The good part in queue is that you get to know people very well. And the younger Russian people are very nice and they help with translation. :D
Otherwise St.Petersburg has been more beautiful, clean and amazing than I expected! I like it!
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