I had an extremely Russian experience at the post office last Sunday. I went to get a package my parents had sent and to mail a few Christmas cards. The nice thing about the Russian post office is that it is open at 5pm on Sundays. The bad thing is that it is the Russian post office.
I went to Vladimir's main post office, which is the main post office for the entire Vladimir Oblast (basically Russia's equivalent of a state). There was almost no one there, so I assumed it would be a short trip. My first stop was the package room. In Russia, packages aren't delivered to your door; you get an notice, and you have to go pick them up at the post office. There were two very bored-looking ladies sitting in the dingy room, and the calender on the wall announced that the today was December 6 (in reality, it was the eighth). I gave them my notice, and, with a sigh and an eye roll, one of the ladies went back to the storage room and retrieved a small box. She lazily put a the box on the counter, but it was addressed to someone name Ivan, so I told her that it wasn't the right package. She let out an even louder sigh, retrieved the notice from where she had tossed it, and went back to the room, all the while complaining to her coworker. She shuffled boxes around for a few minutes and then finally threw my box out of the room. The impact of it hitting the floor shook the little room. Good thing there wasn't anything too fragile in it.
I gathered up my slightly-battered package and headed to the main room to send my cards. There was one other person in the long room, and there were two ladies sitting behind the desk. I went up to one of the ladies and said I needed to send a few cards. The lady, who has served me before and has been quite friendly (for a Russian post office worker) in the past, gave me an annoyed look and told me to have a seat and she would call me when she was ready. She went back to doing absolutely nothing.
At this point the other person in the post office, an intense-looking man in his 40s or 50s, came up to me. He said, "Young man, can you swear?" I wasn't exactly sure how to answer this question because I, of course, know a good number of Russian swear words (I need them to be able to understand what anyone says at my gym), but I don't usually use them in my speech except to add some extra emphasis every once in a while. I told him yes. He then asked me if I can swear poetically or just rudely. At this point I was trying to figure out some poetic way to tell him to go away, but I said, "rudely." He then asked if it is acceptable that guys my age swear on the bus in the presence of older people. I told him that swearing is just a part of the language, which prompted him to tell me to read real Russian language like in Dostoevsky.
All the while this was happening, he was pacing the empty post office hall, which was bathed in soft illumination from old incandescent lights and the last rays of the setting northern sun. The man began to get very philosophical, posing the rhetorical question, "what is worse--swearing or smoking?" He reasoned that, while smoking harms the body, swearing harms the soul, and, while the body is transient and curable, the soul must remain pure. When I finally told him that I was foreign (I think he was so lost in his thought that he didn't notice that all my answers were very short and not exactly Russian), he huffingly declared that things must be really bad when even foreigners are using the worst parts of the Russian language.
After some more pontification, he shuffled out of the post office, and the lady finally got doing nothing and helped me send my letters. Never a dull day here in Vladimir.
I went to Vladimir's main post office, which is the main post office for the entire Vladimir Oblast (basically Russia's equivalent of a state). There was almost no one there, so I assumed it would be a short trip. My first stop was the package room. In Russia, packages aren't delivered to your door; you get an notice, and you have to go pick them up at the post office. There were two very bored-looking ladies sitting in the dingy room, and the calender on the wall announced that the today was December 6 (in reality, it was the eighth). I gave them my notice, and, with a sigh and an eye roll, one of the ladies went back to the storage room and retrieved a small box. She lazily put a the box on the counter, but it was addressed to someone name Ivan, so I told her that it wasn't the right package. She let out an even louder sigh, retrieved the notice from where she had tossed it, and went back to the room, all the while complaining to her coworker. She shuffled boxes around for a few minutes and then finally threw my box out of the room. The impact of it hitting the floor shook the little room. Good thing there wasn't anything too fragile in it.
I gathered up my slightly-battered package and headed to the main room to send my cards. There was one other person in the long room, and there were two ladies sitting behind the desk. I went up to one of the ladies and said I needed to send a few cards. The lady, who has served me before and has been quite friendly (for a Russian post office worker) in the past, gave me an annoyed look and told me to have a seat and she would call me when she was ready. She went back to doing absolutely nothing.
At this point the other person in the post office, an intense-looking man in his 40s or 50s, came up to me. He said, "Young man, can you swear?" I wasn't exactly sure how to answer this question because I, of course, know a good number of Russian swear words (I need them to be able to understand what anyone says at my gym), but I don't usually use them in my speech except to add some extra emphasis every once in a while. I told him yes. He then asked me if I can swear poetically or just rudely. At this point I was trying to figure out some poetic way to tell him to go away, but I said, "rudely." He then asked if it is acceptable that guys my age swear on the bus in the presence of older people. I told him that swearing is just a part of the language, which prompted him to tell me to read real Russian language like in Dostoevsky.
All the while this was happening, he was pacing the empty post office hall, which was bathed in soft illumination from old incandescent lights and the last rays of the setting northern sun. The man began to get very philosophical, posing the rhetorical question, "what is worse--swearing or smoking?" He reasoned that, while smoking harms the body, swearing harms the soul, and, while the body is transient and curable, the soul must remain pure. When I finally told him that I was foreign (I think he was so lost in his thought that he didn't notice that all my answers were very short and not exactly Russian), he huffingly declared that things must be really bad when even foreigners are using the worst parts of the Russian language.
After some more pontification, he shuffled out of the post office, and the lady finally got doing nothing and helped me send my letters. Never a dull day here in Vladimir.
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