There are certain things you take for granted in America. The ability to mail a package at a post office is one of them.

Marina bought a shower bench for her eldarly grandfather, who we unfortantely can't visit this trip and lives WAY out in Siberia. She bought the bench in America, and figured it would be much easier and less expensive for her to send it from within Russia than from across the ocean. Little did we know.

I would have pictures of this shower bench, but our camera seems to have gotten stolen after we visited the Hermatage, so no photos for you. (Bought another one today. Fucking sucked to have to do, but it's actually a better camera, and it was cheaper, too.) Suffice it to say that the disassembled bench came in an oblong box that came up to about my waist and could be easily carried. Not particularly large or heavy.

First we went to the local post office. After waiting in line there for quite a while, the clerk came around from her desk, looked at the box, clucked her tongue and told us that they only handled very small boxes, and we should go to the post office down the road. A kindly babushka hears the conversation and offers to take us most of the way there, which she does and it's around a few corners and down a few blocks.

At the next post office we again wait in line for a while, to be told that they only mail packages next door. So we go next door, wait in line, and the clerk brings out a medium size box and tells us that it has to fit in that box to be mailed. We desperately try to stuff the parts of the bench into the box, which is not nearly long enough. The clerk clucks her tongue and tells us that the box must retain it's exact shape and not be bent in any way. The bench won't fit. We must go to the main post office in the center of the city. Once again a kindly babushka hears our plight, and using the hand truck with which she wheeled her own package there takes the bench with us almost half a mile to the nearest bus stop. If everyone were as kind as Russian babushkas, communism might not have failed.

We take the bus across town. We get out and wander around asking directions until we find the main post office.

Keep in mind that I speak no Russian. Very few people in Russia speak English. If Marina wasn't there I wouldn't have gotten to step one in this process, and I'm kind of following her around being filled in as we go and becoming more and more bewildered. The "we" I use here is purely figurative.

In the main post office there are many tellers, each with it's own specific purpose. We find the teller that mails packages. We wait on line. We show her the bench. She shows us a medium size box, and tells us that it must fit in the box, which must retain its shape and not be bent in any way. You can't mail larger packages? We ask. Sorry, "the machine is broken." (Whatever that means.) Isn't there any way they could mail our bench? (The package of which is now frankly falling apart from being lugged all over and having its contents repeatedly taken out and shoved back in.) Yes, she says. Take it home. Put it in a potato sack and sew it up. Then we can mail it.

We leave the shower bench in the post office. We'll mail him one from America.

I've since read that Russians have an excellent way of getting packages from one place to another. They bring it to the train station, bribe the conductor, and have the recipient pick it up at another train station. As for the national mail service? Well, good luck.