Registration Woes

Registration. Nobody knows what it's for, and most Russians don't bother to abide by the law, but it has seriously frustrated our lives these past few months. As you know, we already have one administrative offense for not being registered properly, so we feel like we have a target on our backs and therefore are trying really hard to be law-abiding.

When we returned from Kazakhstan our landlord (Sergei) again insisted that he could not register our tourist visas at a private residence! Nevermind that we we successfully did so at our previous apartment (for a short time, anyway)! And so, he kindly provided registration for us at a hotel near the airport. Apparently the hotel would only register us for one month at a time, so he said he would stop by every month with our new papers. We weren't happy with the solution, but it was better than nothing and moving certainly wasn't desirable either, so we did our best to forget about it and just enjoy our time here. Well, on Monday Sergei dropped off our papers, right on schedule, and then dropped the bombshell that he wouldn't be able to keep arranging our registration. We would have to find someone else to do it for us; which, by the way, is also illegal. We didn't feel

comfortable asking any of our close friends to break the law and register us, so we had no choice but to start yet another apartment search.

We found a broker that was familiar with registering foreigners and he was able to find only two apartments whose landlords said they would be willing to register us. One was in a terrible location for accessing public transportation, so we went to look at the other. On the way, I had a good cry thinking about leaving all of the familiar faces, Finn's school, friends and our lovely square. It has taken a long time to get to know everyone in our neighborhood and not just be the weird Americans, and I couldn't bear the thought of having to start over! The new apartment was also completely surrounded by city (albeit quieter streets) with a fenced in play yard as the only space we would be able to safely enjoy the outdoors. In our current location we have access to dozens of different play yards and some days I have to twist the boys' arms to get them excited about going outside. How quickly they would tire of just one play yard!

Anyway, I wiped away my tears and we had a look at the apartment. It was pretty nice, and certainly suitable, and we didn't really have any choice in the matter; we needed to live somewhere we could be registered. We tried to focus on some positives about the new apartment as we headed home to call Sergei and give our notice. The conversation with Sergei was terse, but in the end, he agreed to continue arranging our registration at the hotel! So here we are, still enjoying our lovely home with yet more gray hairs, or in Matt's case, fewer hairs. We still aren't happy about the not-quite-legal solution, but we plan to stay put as long as we don't encounter any problems and keep getting our papers. I'm relieved, but also really frustrated that this continues to be a source of stress for us. Martin has reassured us that this is just how life goes over here, so that's nice.