Passless-Daddy

Well, if things keep happening as often as they have up until now, seems I’ll have no choice but to make a daily blog. (Actually, I won’t. Despite the fact that I’m writing this on my second day in Russia, the poor internet connection in this room means it may not be published for a long time unless I fancy my luck with an unprotected wi-fi server for the next 4 months.)

So today was a sort of initiation day. Robin and I set off and tried to find where our test was going to be, going solely on the information “3^rd floor”, which is not especially helpful when there are several different buildings, each with at least 3 storeys. I really feel that we’ve been left quite distinctly in the dark, but the main part of that comes at the end of this post…

In trying to find our way, we vaguely embarrassed ourselves in front of a group of Russian students who asked us what lecture we were attending, to which we replied a mumbled sort of “we’re from Britain and we don’t know what we’re doing”. Eventually, having been passed to around 4 different people, we were registered and eventually found our way to the correct testing room (apparently just one floor up or down in the same building from just about everyone else we know, so lucky them…) The test itself was alright, some difficult parts but overall reasonable, and we were then introduced to some of the people who will be tutoring us over this coming semester, though I’m not sure I managed to follow it particularly expertly.}

After this we were taken to buy new Russian SIM cards, which is a far more complicated process than we first thought, requiring our passports and at least around 2 hours. However, they almost all seem to have worked (last I checked Jordan was having trouble with his, but it may have resolved itself by this point) and we moved on with our vague tour of Tver’, including a trip to Атак, which is pronounced precisely as you non-Cyrillicists think, a fairly cheap supermarket in the vicinity.

Time passed and we were invited for a few drinks around at Angus’ place, an invitation which we didn’t turn down. We got some drinks with Han, Stefka and Anna from the nearby 24/7 supermarket and had a grand old time.

Right up until around 12:30. The socialising was fun, and couldn’t have been better, but when Robin and I decided it was time to retire for the night things got…Tricky.

So, turns out there’s an 11pm curfew of sorts at the University (about which we were told nothing) which means that any students hoping to enter after said time must present a пропуск (meaning pass) which we had not been given. We think this is because we were only technically registered earlier that morning, so processing time left us high and dry пропуск-wise. It took us a fair amount of persuasion to convince the woman at the desk of who we were and what room we were in (especially tricky for me because the number card for my room had broken off my keys around 6pm, so there was no real proof that I inhabited this room. By the way, сломался is the way to go if something breaks beyond your control. She gave me a new one which I pray will last longer) and she asked us what we had been told by…Well, anybody, to which we could respond with nothing much beyond “ничего”, meaning “nothing”. As I say, I think due to our very late arrival, at least Robin and I have been left with irritatingly little information about the procedures. We weren’t told about the curfew, we were told about the пропуск earlier today during the introductory lecturer meetings but didn’t receive anything, and the whole experience was a bit nerve-wracking. Worst case scenario, I think we could have maybe snuck our way back in to our friends’ accommodation.

In any case, tomorrow we’re going and getting whatever the hell it is we need so that we don’t have to be back by 11pm for the rest of the semester (though I might consider doing so just for the rest of this week, I have no problem just staying in my room). However, all things considered, I am very proud of how Robin and I performed during the negotiation. Our Russian was at least sufficient that there was no point at which the woman at the desk couldn’t understand what we were saying, and there were very few times at which Robin and I looked at one another blankly and asked the woman to repeat herself or explain what she was talking about, and assuming nothing goes unbelievably wrong tomorrow with пропуск-acquisition, we should be able to avoid this situation in future.

Indeed, we were all set to head upstairs with our head held…Well, not high, exactly, but at least around middle range, the quality of our Russian virtually outweighing the awkwardness of the situation, riiiiight up until Robin bumped a nearby billboard and knocked it off the wall…

Ну, всё в порядке.

So, let’s see what happens tomorrow then, eh?

G’night!

Joe

[Written after the bulk of this post] I have a пропуск!