Almaty 3 (great name eh?)

So today we got up early because we needed to go register ourselves. Well as we are eating breakfast guess what is on TV? The Winnipeg Blue Bombers Montreal Aloutets football game live and in english, what a shock. So we watched the rest of the game and left only 15 minutes late on our way. We made it to the registration office at 10:30, and got directly into the shortest line, not because it was the right line but so we could be told what the right line was. We needed to go to line 3, or rather free for all 3. We eventually fought our way through the crowd and all we got is a form completely in Russian. We made our way out of the crowd and looked dumbfounded for a while. A guy asked to borrow our pen, and after he filled in his form he was kind enough to fill in our forms for us. We also ran into a German guy who had just finished the process so instead of fighting through to window #3 again we headed to photocopy our passport at a guy with a photocopier located just outside the building and then stood in the pay your money line. There was a lot of saving spots in line, but we eventually paid with little hassel other than the 30 minutes wasted. Standing side by side we are a wider object so less people tried to push past us and we went up to window 3 again. We got there, but hadn't photocopied the original form we had filled in, so back to the photocopy man again. Sara decided not to fight back to window #3 again, so I powered up on water while Sara hummed the Super Mario brother song, and then I went into the scrum. I was able to drop off the last form, and was told to return at 6pm this even to pick everything up. Total time 2 hours, total stops: 7. The only thing that made me feel better about the whole thing was that even the locals were having as much difficultly as we were, well except for filling out the form, unless they didn't bring a pen. I kinda enjoyed the whole thing in a sick twisted sort of way. Because how often do you get to raise elbows with Babushkas and wirery Russian men while completing paperwork in the paperwork system from the cold war, or so it seemed to me, but however do not that this system would have been set up after 1991 when Kazakhstan was formed.

After that we tried to go to the Museum of Repression, but it had some time since the lonely planet was written had become repressed itself and now the building housed a bank. Next we went to see what was described as amazing Soviet era buildings at the Science Center, but the Science Center was under reconstruction. We won't be needed to buy any more toilet paper for a while as we've started to use the LP. So we decided after a bit of ice cream to search for the Canadian Embassy, to ask them if we need to register every time we're in a city for more than 72 hours or not. Well we searched and searched, and searched some more. Finally as we were about to give up we stumbled upon it. Set on a tiny street, with so many trees around it you can't see the building almost, let alone the flag there it was. We rang the bell on the wall, and a Kazak guard came out to greet us (Sara says he wasn't a guard, just some Kazak guy who wears jeans and works at the embassy). Anyways we were informed that if we had a question through his broken english (Sara didn't feel like he acted in a Canadian manner) that we would have to return during the consulate hours, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9am till noon. We decided this probably wouldn't happen and that we'd just ask a tour company or just plan our days outside Almaty so that we spend less than 72 hours per city.

So shortly we will go and get our passports back, hopefully without any problems, and then go for dinner at PVC. Oh and by the way it is raining outside right now, and Sara isn't really happy because we don't have our rain coats, and also we are both really hungry since we've been walking constantly all day. Tomorrow we're not leaving the north east corner of the city, for nothing!!

Tyson and Sara