Жизнь Экспатрианта

3/29 11:45, Pushkin time

Been slacking here, it seems.

In my defense, Monday disappeared almost as quickly as it came, what with the catch-up from the previous week of accompanying-the-Canadian. And Sunday I spent a good chunk of with Z out at Pokrovskaya (I am committed to photographing it as it progresses for all to see) checking up on things and chatting with М and otherwise occupying with stuff that I had to let slip a bit during the last week. And Tuesday went almost as quickly as Monday. And Wednesday -- I really have no excuse for that one; just didn't get around to it.

So.. what kind of interesting stuff has come up?

Beginning with the bureaucratic. We confirmed that we will be able to ship our passports to Finland and have them returned to us with the new visas installed, once we collect all thу necessary crap to actually apply for them. The decision has been made that I will synchronize the boys' new ones with mine -- the better to visit Finland on the weekend -- and let A's switch over in August, when she plans to visit back to the US anyway. It will also de-synchronize the cars, which hypothetically speaking will make the re-registration of them slightly less onerous. As for the temporary resident status, we'll be getting that at the soonest sometime this fall. My main hope is to have it all done before we head back for this christmas, so that we won't have to hassle with re-registering and all that crap when we come back in January It seems at least feasible. The big trick right now is that A and I both need to have “Proof of absence of previous convictions in the territory” of the USA, which we are assuming will take the form of a letter of some sort issued by the US government. It is being looked into. The big thing right now for the visas is the HIV test. I'm arranging today for the medical folks I mentioned previously to come out to our place either tomorrow or Saturday to pull blood from the kids and I for that. It's not really something we couldn't do around town, but I mainly want to start a relationship with the house-call people and gett some experience on how their operation works.

And then on the issue of the house. I met with the architect who is adding a third floor onto И В's house, to talk about the house we are aiming to build. And frankly, the discovery I made was twofold. First, that most for-hire architects around here really don't have adequate experience to be able to design a wood-frame house, and second that the companies which trade in wood-frame houses have all the business they can stand producing cookie-cutter models and aren't in the slightest bit interested in taking on an individualized project. So ultimately A and I decided, to hell with that idea; and now we're in contact with a few places that do log-cabin type houses (for an example). Apparently, this is all part of the home-building process around here -- and a big part of the reason why the cookie-cutters sell so well...

And now I've just returned from a bit of a walk through the yard, and a bit of a 'have the car washed for cheap'. But with some boring pictures of what's been occupying much of the time for which I don't generally get into details. Here you go.

3/24 14:44, Pushkin time

That's what I'll call it (sounds better than the classic "too busy).

Really, though, there's not a whole terribly large amount to catch up on. I spent the week doing translating for the guy from Canada; A picked up his wife on thursday at the airport, we all went out to dinner a couple of times, and dropped them off in the city last night.

At the same time, the first project truck is soaring towards completion, and enough other things came up during my otherwise-occupiedness that I'll most likely be running around for the first half of this coming week playing catch-up, too. But it's all for a good cause (money).

In other events, the lawyer at the dealership pretty much found out what it will take to get us our 'temporary residence' status -- most importantly, six months processing time, meaning that all of us are looking at having to get new visas and repeating the joys of temporarily exporting and re-importing ourselves at least one more time. This is not such a big deal for A, since she plans to visit the US again in August. But it seems certain that the boys and I will be making a Junetime trip to Finland. This time we'll maybe plan a bit ahead and actually do something.

As for the rest, we switch over to summer time on Sunday, so ending our brief stint at 10-hours difference from the west coast. We're nearly at the length-of-daylight that we had when A and the kids first arrived; if my calculations are correct, the equinox was two days ago. The days are noticeably longer from one to the next -- if the fall equinox is any measure, it will be this way for another week while the rate of change is still at its highest. It seems so bright all the time... And G seems to have re-learned his capacity for sleeping in the light. Which is a very good thing.

3/18 19:07, Pushkin time

Sorry for being out for so long. There was a guy come in from Africa, the conference to contend with, and then another guy (this one from Canada) flew in yesterday hours after the conference ended and I've been entertaining him.

To catch up:

Thursday was more preparation, and meeting with the guy from Africa. I took a different route on the way in to work, swinging by to pick up Ю and give her a ride in. Of course, this took me along a totally new route to the train crossing I customarily use. And getting across the crossing, I was pulled over by the cops that sit on the downhill side most mornings. "Good morning," he says to me; "Hi," I say back. Taking my passport, "Been here a while?" Me - "few months". Cop - "you know our traffic laws?". Me (suppressing the initial response of, 'what traffic laws?') - "Pretty much". Cop - "so then you just decided to ignore the no left turns sign back there...?". Me - "Umm... what sign is that?". Cop (pointing) - "the one right over there" [sign is fifteen feet off the side of the road, but otherwise clear]. Me, "Oops. Heh heh. Why don't we get right to talking about that fine then..."
So that cost me 200 rubles. Noted on the tally.

Then Friday I got to go through my presentation and also do a fair bit of translating. The presentation came off good; I even got to explain why I avoid writing out and/or memorizing such things, preferring instead to simply learn the subject well enough to talk on it freely and then go up supplemented by a handful of note-words. It's not laziness -- don't think that. As for the translating, which I did on both days, it was a bit comic. On the first day, the guy from Africa ended his piece of a talk with a business-word-laden sentence about hopes for the future and respect for the capabilities of the blah blah blah. His sentence was run-on enough that my version of it was super-compound-complex-run-on. After wrapping it up, И asked the room, "anyone understand that last one?" The laughter was answer enough. Then on Saturday I found out that while I may be expanding my vocabulary into medical and financial lingo and a more and more effective obscenity-capacity, I have almost no polite words other than the most basic please and thank you. So for carrying across the flowery, diplomatic closing comment that was made, I mumbled a bit (in Russian) into the microphone before finally setting on, "to sum up, thanks a lot. It was fun". But for the dinner between days and for doing my own stuff I seriously kicked ass.

And then after the conference ended I blazed straight to the airport to pick up the Canadian guy who will be running a training course this week. S K has never been to Russia before (his wife is coming out to meet him at the end of the week and they are extending the trip into a vacation over the following week), but has all sorts of good things to say about it so far. It was late enough that I was able to get away with just setting him up at his hotel -- which, due to a bookkeeping error on the part of our secretary (I am assuming), took a bit of negotiation and nice-talk on my part -- and then headed home with a promise to pick him up this morning for some sightseeing. 11AM is still technically morning.

But it wasn't sleeping in that occupied my time this morning. I headed out reasonably early to meet with М to both check out the progress of the work on our lot and to meet with a local building contractor with whom we will possibly be arranging to have our house actually built. The big stuff is almost all cleared from the land, leaving small wet grit-rubble that is being removed by shovel and wheelbarrow. It is possible that we will also have the outfit that lays in the septic tank take their backhoe to some of the remaining ground-level chunks to get them busted up and moved out easier. And it turns out we have a lot of singed bricks. The architect was adequately knowledgeable -- I've seen his work around the Kommunar area already, and the quality is what we are looking for -- and even had some legal-related advice to give on the locations of doors and setbacks. We've committed to get back together once we have the drawings redone into project form to have him get us a bid on the work.
And then after that I picked up S K and Z and we headed down to Velikiy Novgorod -- now a classic standby for touristing. The weather was good; more importantly, Z was well-behaved; and the trip was entertaining to my guest. He even got the cultural experience of having me get pulled over and making a funds-transfer to a traffic cop. I was passing a series of trucks, when my passing lane ended. In the local fashion, I continued in the center (now 'oncoming-traffic')lane for the twenty feet that it took me to clear the last truck, then got back into the correct lane, just in time to get snagged. This one cost me 500 rubles. Also noted on the tally. I suppose I've been due for this.

3/14 16:34, Pushkin time

So I was up until 4:30 Saturday morning working on the presentation. The sky even started to get a bit bright before I wrapped it up. But it's good (I got full-out laughs right where I wanted them, going over it in draft just now). So that's okay.

Saturday evening we went out to dinner with Е and his wife. They took us to a shashlik place a good hour's drive away, on the Bay of Finland out past Kronstadt (not quite to Beloostrov). Right on the bay; I even took advantage of the still-frozen condition at the coast to take a walk with the boys on the Atlantic Ocean -- technically speaking, since the bay is part of the Baltic Sea, which is itself part of the Atlantic... Z was adequately impressed, if G was more interested in the snowmobile tracks on the ice. And dinner was good, too; the shashlik was adequate, but the mors was awesome, and for the location, I'd have been wiling to put up with quite a bit. The restaurant is in the middle of a resort-town-type location. To me, the comparison was Hood River (probably all the snow in the crannies and around the trees); for A it was Sun River. But still, an area very different from what we've been seeing every day for the past several months. Almost certainly, it is getting added to our list of places to take people who come to visit.
As for A and the boys and the whole language thing, I am pleaseв to say that the boys handled themselves as well as I am started to become accustomed to; but more importantly, A was all over things, asking, answering, telling stories. It was very encouraging to see her really getting into talking, even having still a pretty small vocabulary and grammar skill set. A lot of it, to be sure, had to do with the comfort level of people we've already hung out with a bit, but even Е commented when we saw each other at work later that she has obviously made good progress since the last time we all got together. Yay A!

Then Monday A had her appointment, and we picked Z up to go get his medical stuff (required for school) started. Once we found the children's clinic --no small feat, considering how Russians give directions in town: 'where do we get the stuff done?'; 'at the clinic'; 'what clinic?'; 'the children's clinic'; 'where is it?'; 'down that way' [points in a generally town-ward direction]; 'how do I find it?'; 'go down that road, it will be the three-story clinic-looking building'; and so forth... With reagrds to the last answer, I might point out that the building actually looks on the front somewhat like a train station. And of course, when I tell people, 'the clinic that looks like a train station', they all know exactly which one I'm talking about. But give me that information to find it in the first place? Apparently not...
So anyway, we found the place and got in line to get Z's blood drawn -- the only of the several tasks that we could get done more-or-less right away. Of course, 'right away' means waiting in line for an hour in some situations. So Z got his first lesson in patience. And actually it wasn't such a big thing, since Russians are pretty considerate of kids' need to do something while waiting. So the waiting area was full of kids wandering this way and that, chatting with each other and otherwise keeping somewhat entertained, under the general supervision of the mass of collected parents-and-grandparents. And then when Z got in and got his fingertip punched with the spring-loaded plastic needle-cartridge, he handled it pretty well.

Yesterday, A and I spent the full day at the Customs office; first to have issued to us our tickets for letting our temporary imports lapse (fines were levied; you can see the effect on the tally in the sidebar), then to have to applications processed for our renewal of the temporary import, then for the actual issue of the import certificates. One day we'll never get back; though at least we had the forethought to bring books this time -- both of which were finished before we got our final papers.

And today I got to take Z in to the clinic again for his cardiogram (again, as required by the schools around here for admission). The procedure was a bit longer, and Z got to do a bit of talking with the doctor; also the line was a lot longer and he got to spend a good two hours meeting kids, too. But really, set up and knocked down and then back for him to his preschool and me back to work. As far as I can tell, he is done with the pre-school medical inspection. Now we have only to get the certificate (or whatever) from the doctor at his preschool and to get things finalized with the director of his school and he can start. Moving right along...

3/10 13:33, Pushkin time

Of course, the 8th was a holiday; we spent it mainly just relaxing (A and Z still being a bit under-the-weather). On that day, the melt started in in force. The ground is saturated, creeks are all overtopping their banks, and I can easily understand why every Russian house is equipped with an entryway room for changing from shoes to slippers and back. But spring is definitely on the way. G even noticed the birds singing on Friday morning -- and he's not really one for noticing in general...

Friday A and I hooked up with О К (you maybe remember him from the first time we had to play the customs game) and spent the morning over at the inspection office in the city first being informed that we really should have come in and opened up an application before our first imports had expired (that was the plan, but the whole leaving the country thing kind of got in the way), and that in addition to the fifty bucks that renewing our regs was going to run, we were also going to get hit with fifty more dollars of fines. Crap. But it's the price of a lesson; apparently even bureaucrats here are reasonable enough to hold your place in line while you get your crap together and don't hold it against you if it takes longer to do the crap-arranging than you had expected. So for future reference, while we may need certain pieces of paper to get certain things done, if we go in without the pieces of paper, but on time, we get credit for that and can come back with the missing pieces of paper once we get them -- even far past the due date for whatever it is we're trying to do -- and thing will move along just fine. Does it work that way with the DMV? I can't remember...
Anyway, by the time that was all settled, the guy who does the actual physical inspections had bailed out for the weekend. So we have to go back tuesday (monday is already occupied).
-sigh-
But at least we know what's going on a lot better and have accumulated some important information that will be a big help to us in dealing with the bureaucracies here in general.

Monday A had already been scheduled to see her doctor in the morning. Z's teacher when I came to pick him up indicated that not only were the various blood, pee, etc tests on Z necessary for registering him for school next year, but the doctor at his preschool really needed to have them by the end of next week, too. So monday, once A is done, we get to pick Z up and give him the cultural experience of a Russian medical clinic. An interesting option for the longer term, however, has presented itself...

И's son developed what turned out to be appendicitis a week and a half ago, so while К was with him at the hospital, over lunches, the topic of conversation was medical-related. Which is fine; there are a bunch of questions about practical things (what to do if G falls and breaks his arm? you know, the kind of stuff we just know is going to come up...) that I got answered. The nearest full-on hospital to here is in Kolpino, maybe five-ten minutes' drive at a leisurely pace from here (and happily just about the same from Pokrovskaya). Here you dial 03 from any phone and get hooked up with your local ambulance service; there are private companies that contract with the hospitals. The ambulances are driven and staffed with MDs -- the Soviet Union way over-educated in a lot of fields -- and they carry enough gear to be able to do a lot more than just basic first-aid on the spot; in fact a significant minority of the time, they are able to get whatever the problem is taken care of and no trip to the hospital is necessary. Otherwise they do what they can and then pack whoever it is off to where the equipment and specialists are. There are also clinics all around -- I can think of eight in Pushkin off the top of my head -- that range from private to semi-private to state in terms of ownership. Basically all of them provide the same level of care; the private ones are nicer and have much less in the way of waiting time (that's what you pay for). The doctor A goes to is at a semi-private one, where every doctor spends certain days treating for free and certain days doing fee-for-service. If you can get yourself to a clinic in an emergency, they can give you a bit of help while the ambulance is on the way.
It's interesting to note that all of this is 'pay' -- even ambulances. But the question of money arises only once the emergency is past. I suspect the private outfits simply have to account for some degree of 'breakage' financially speaking and probably things are priced to account for the fact that some people are going to get fixed who aren't going to be able to pay (of course, people who can't pay don't get to stay very long in the nicer private spots once they're no longer at immediate risk). Certainly no one gets turned aside who needs it.

But the most intriguing part of the picture came on Wednesday when И's daughter came down with the gnarly flu that is hitting this season (fevers of 39-40 [102-104F] are part of it). He was talking about how he swung by home just as the doctor was arriving to check up on her. Now I understand that the owner of a company of the scope of ours has got money. But the casualness of which that part came up struck me and I asked if it was normal for doctors to come to people's houses. It depends, as it turns out. There are about a dozen private medical companies that offer home visits -- up to and including taking samples at home for analysis at their laboratories. One of them is located in Petersburg. И says the first couple times you have them out, visits run around 2000 rubles (call it 60-80 bucks), but that after a few times they start giving like member discounts and right now he pays something more like forty dollars per house visit -- even if they're coming to see several members of his family. Once you have two kids, he said, it's well worth the extra twenty bucks' cost difference to avoid waiting in lines for hours. We'll be a bit further out, but he's already paying for some distance from the city center and we're only a little bit further in Pokrovskaya than he is in Aleksandrovskaya, so the pricing is pretty comparable. And A is excited about the prospect of a house-call doctor for once our next one is born.

What else...

I talked today on the phone with the guy who will be putting in our well. Sometime in the next two weeks it will be set up and done. Septic installation is another guy, but we should have it taken care of by the middle of April as well. Things are moving.

At the dealership for the past week, in addition to the projects which are now soaring to fruition (the first dump truck, in fact, looks like it might be getting bought by a guy who is a sort of general contractor out of Vyrytsa -- a bit south of us, on the other side of Gatchina -- who does house construction; we're going to be doing a bit of chatting this coming week, too) our annual national dealer conference is happening next weekend.
oh crap; that means the guy from Canada is coming in next weekend too. got to remember that...
Since the number of dealers has more than doubled since last year, and since the business is moving in some very serious directions, this conference is going to be of unprecedented size and scope for us. And everyone wants me to be a visible part of it, so they gave me thirty minutes of presentation time. (I noticed a week ago an agenda on Е's desk. Looking it over, and feeling a cold lump of terror forming, I asked, 'there's maybe another "Justin" working here?...")
Ordinarily I've got no problems with public speaking. I recognize that I go too fast, and even when I slow down, inevitable end up finishing way before the end of my slot -- this does not make me nervous, either; I'm pretty good about ad-lib filling or making a graceful early exit. My problem is with the whole 'prepared' aspect of it. You see, since the factory isn't running yet, and since my projects are all still in their first-run phase, not much of my work is good grist for the conference. Next year; oh yeah... But for now, not so much. So they decided that they would break off a chunk of the presentation that the rep from Navistar would be giving and to have me expand on the topic, 'the history of Navistar-International'. Which, as far as topics go, is fairly interesting (fun fact, International Harvester did so much business in Russia right around the turn of the century that they actually built a factory near Moscow in 1907. Russians groan when they hear that...). But it changes my public speaking from an off-the-cuff on a subject I know all the way through, to something more... prepared.
And of course, the first thing I have to do is -- prepare it. I liken it to a fourth-year language class assignment: write and deliver a thirty-minute presentation, in Russian in front of the class. I actually did something like that in Y4 French (if I recall correctly, it was only fifteen minutes; but the topic was Degas -- that I know for sure). I don't have to do it all myself in the sense of proofreading and whatnot. But frankly, I don't have a Y4 vocabulary yet, except maybe when it comes to things mechanical and electrical. History -- maybe Y2 to be charitable. But, what the hell. Give it a go, see what happens...

3/7 09:28, Pushkin time

The last couple days have seen a significant warming; every day but yesterday has had at least several hours of heavy, wet snowfall which ends up melting off -- if it sticks at all -- within a half-day. Yesterday evening, chunks of ground started to be visible from under the receding snows. Of course, this means that all of the yards and parking lots are at least a couple of inches deep in slush or slush-covered water (a distinction whose importance makes itself known the first time you discover with your foot one of the second type). And most importantly for me: it's warm enough that hats and gloves are no longer even remotely necessary. Of course, winter is not over yet. They say that March fairly occasionally has dips back down into the minus-twenties. But we're less than three weeks from the equinox; all the kids in the schools are starting to pick up their two-day flus, and I've even seen grass in a couple places. It sure doesn't feel like winter.

As for other matters, the agency that does invitations for foreigners offered (for money, of course) to have our registrations taken care of; so that's not a worry for us anymore. And as soon as those come in -- today hopefully; Friday almost definitely (tomorrow is a holiday) -- we can have our cars taken care of. I'm also starting to strategize with the office lawyer to make sure we don't have to go through this crap again in five months or so (my visa runs out in June, so for me it is only three months).

3/4 15:39, Pushkin time

Fortune smiled on us.

Yesterday morning we got up in the early-dark to go to the Finland Station to catch our train out of the country. A dropped the boys and I off at the station in Petersburg at about ten to eight, stocked up with two backpacks full of coloring equipment, munchies, games, spare clothes, and anything else we could figure might come in handy to help the four hours of train and nine hours of waiting less horrible.

Not that doom wasn't already casting a bit of a cloud over us, but when the conductor took our tickets as we were getting on the train, looked them over, and started muttering about "idiocy"...

But the boys were in pretty good spirits as we settled into the seats in our compartment on the Russian train "Repin". There were several compartments to each wagon -- dining car excepted -- and in each compartment space for six people. In ours, besides the four of us were an older Finnish woman and a my-age Russian one. During the following two hours we (including the boys) got a chance to socialize a bit and I got to tell our tale of woe. The Finnish lady (who spoke serviceable, if grammatically atrocious and heavily accented, Russian) tried offering suggestions for things to do in Vainikkala, but most of the suggestions boiled down to, "holy crap, you are out of your mind" -- more or less. The Russian is married to a Finn, so she has some experience with the Russian immigration and customs stuff; she understood almost immediately why we weren't taking our own cars across and back.
All in all, good company. The high point for me coming when I was explaining to our compartment-mates how I was hoping to come to some sort of 'arrangement' with the conductor of the sister-train that would be crossing paths with ours in Vainikkala to spare us the need to answer the question: how do you keep a four-year-old entertained for nine hours in a population 400 village that speaks a language not even related to anything you know? In the wintertime...
Anyway, I had brought some rubles and some dollars in the hopes of making this arrangement with one or the other of them. But once I realized that the crew of the sister-train would be Finns I got a bit concerned that my strategy might not be workable -- a worry confirmed by both of our new acquaintances. Apparently Finland is almost totally without corruption and they were both very quick to say that I would be best not to even try to take the route I was contemplating. I, of course, was sad to hear that, since it was basically the only tool in my kit. And then the Finnish lady says that I should probably just explain our situation to the conductor; the Russian agreed that odds were he would be willing to just help us out. Just like that; out of the goodness of his heart. Apparently Finns are like that. What tickled me (and still does) is the fact that this particular tack had literally never occurred to me and that the idea that just an explanation of one's bad situation would be enough to motivate someone to just give you help was for a brief moment a complete shock to me.
It's not that a Russian wouldn't help out just to be nice; it's that for the most part they aren't even in a position where it would have to come to that. And just like turning on your car alarm whenever you leave your car -- I suspect -- Russians always go into situations where the need to get some help might arise armed with at least enough 'incentive' to possibly get the help should they need it. It's just being prepared, I suppose.

Anyway, eventually we got to the station at Vainikkala, got out of the train and rushed to the station building, where we passed right through the Finnish passport control and officially into Finland. The passport guy also took a kind of funny look at our tickets; when I explained our situation he said that they had been seeing quite a few people coming through for much the same reason in the last couple months. And then we were in Finland. The sister train was -- fortuitously -- fifteen minutes late, which gave us enough time to get ourselves oriented and make the acquaintance of a nice Finn who was dropping off some Australians who had come to visit his daughter and were readying to head over to Petersburg for a couple days. I should mention that all Finns apparently are required to study English and that all but one of the ones that we encountered still remembered enough to be basically fluent. It took a few minutes of trying, and a bit of talking (and a bit of translating help between the nice Finnish guy and the one person I met in the country who didn't speak English), but thing ended up going down almost exactly the way the lady traveling out of Petersburg with us had posited they would. A half hour after we arrived, we left the country. Simple as that. I did stop to take a picture before we got onto the return train. At the bottom. Look. Finland.

And before two in the afternoon we had met back up with A and were heading home. No big deal at all. As an aside, I would mention that the actual crossing of the border itself is almost certainly accomplished with the absolute minimum of hassle via train. As you leave the last station before the border, the conductor collects passports, and before they hit the first station after the border, the passports are returned and everything has been processed while you snacked or napped. We will definitely be using that route when we go back to Finland for vacationing.

3/2 15:47, Pushkin time

Some modifications to the story as it went last time I managed to write.

Thursday morning I got to the immigration office at 6AM (as recommended) to find that a line thirty people deep had already formed -- fortunately for passports; on the line for registrations our name was the fourth. So after dropping the kids off at the preschool, A and I met И В at the office at maybe a quarter to ten. By then, the upper half of the stairway between the first aтв second floors of the building was pretty packed. The fact that we were, in fact, at the beginning of the list allowed И В to maneuver us up to a space on the upper landing fairly near the door (which, of course, opens onto the landing). It started getting a little crushy in the couple minutes before ten. And then a security guard forced the door open from the inside and informed the people on the landing that since the main waiting area was having work done that only five people would be getting in at a time. And then the five people closest to the door (none of whom, it would seem, were among the first five on the lists) squeezed in and the door was closed. And then the crush got rock-concerty. And for somewhere in the neighborhood of a half hour we were being squished against the doors and walls and pushing back and people yelling and swearing -- one guy right behind И В and I was making threats when we wouldn't let him try to squeeze past (to nowhere; the door wasn't opening). I am happy to say that И В proved to have a very good cursing-vocabulary, and that between the two of keepingpeople back, A didn't have too hard a time of it. Physically, that is; I was able to follow all but the most chaotic minute or so of shouting and swearing. For her it must have really sucked to be surrounded by angry people being loud in an almost totally incomprehensible (she can handle calm and slow speech; this was neither) language. But she troopered through, and we were able to make it in with the third five. A was fifth, and the on-the-verge-of-overwhelmed guard was in no mood to hear my one voice trying to say that I was "with her" (a classic ploy). But reason -- and her saying much the same thing into his other ear -- prevailed and we finally made it in. In the waiting lobby, A asked И В and me how, exactly, we were supposed to get out once we were done. A chuckle was the perfect answer.
SO. Thу traumatic part finished, we managed to make it in to talk to the immigration clerk. You may recall, we were told that our six-month registration, once it ran out, could be renewed to the end of the validity period of our visas. Which may have been the case earlier -- and may still be the case now; clerks in Russia are sort of renowned for not always being on top of the actual laws to which they are purportedly clerking -- but then and there we were informed that we cannot simply renew, but must leave and re-enter the country. So sorry, good-bye. Oh, by the way, since A had already done that in February, and had failed to register within the mandated three-day period, there was going to be a fine for her of some sort; assessable and payable once we came back with a big, new stack of filled-out-and-stamped paperwork. И В and I asked about the land we own and whether that can somehow be leveraged to make our lives easier, and the clerk said that there is a visa-free regime whereby we would apply for and be granted 'temporary resident' status -- which has a potential term of three years. But of course, such a status can only be applied for in another office in another part of town; and they say it can take a couple months to go through. But I wholly agree with A that, if it keeps us from having to do this crap again, we're all for it. И joked later that getting citizenship would alleviate the difficulty of ever having to do the registration-gig. Ha ha -- no.
So I'll be spending some time with one of the company lawyers next wee to figure out exactly what our options are under the new immigration rules, and how to take the easiest and most guaranteed route along the optimal path.

But in the interim, the kids and I will be less-than-legal starting Monday; and we still won't have our cars resolved. So last night I started researching, and two hours ago selected and paid for tickets for the three of us. Tomorrow morning at 8AM we get on a train; at 10AM we get off the train in Vainikkala, Finland. We hang around there until about 6PM, when we get back on the train and ride home. What's to do for eight hours in Vainikkala with a six and a four-year-old? Where the heck is it, even? I checked with my good pal the Internet and am feeling a sense of creeping doom. It starts when you see that, aside from a standard 'worldwide weather' site, a google search for the town brings up exactly zero pages in anything other than Finnish. I eventually managed to find a finnish site that had an english-language page; the results are not heartening.
Where is it?
What to do there?

Oh boy....

We'll take pictures; that's for sure...