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Residence of French Ambassador Once the home of an eccentric millionaire

We were "officially" invited to Russia by the French Embassy, courtesy of a friend of our landlord, Frederik, who worked there. So on Monday of our first week in Moscow, we went dutifully to the French Embassy as Frederik had told us to: Everybody who comes to Russia has to register their visa with the Foreign Ministry (we presume), or more exactly, have the person/organization that invited them do the registration. This process brought back to mind our early days in France when visitors were always reported to the police by every hotel they stayed in. How things have changed there. That was 35 years ago. Let's hope change takes place here much faster.

When we arrived at the embassy gates we caused a bit of a stir: who were these strange Americans and why were they here? After leaving our driver's licenses at the heavily fortified front desk, we were allowed to enter and were sent up to the first floor. There we found a Russian woman in her late thirties or early forties who was a bit non-plussed when we explained why we had come. She was one of these people who is not only busy but rather obviously busy and seeming to prove to everyone she encounters how much of a burden they are to her. All except the boss of course, for whom she is smiling and willing all the time. After recovering from her surprise she took our passports and asked us to wait until she had made photocopies for us to take away; the embassy would keep our passports a few days. She also said she would write a letter in Russian that we could show to the police if they stopped us and asked for our papers.

We happily found a French paper and sat down to read and wait. Twenty minutes later, a younger woman, French this time, came by to talk to us. She asked us how we knew Frederik and we explained how we had found his ad at Sciences Po. She then told us a bit school-marmishly that Frederik and his friend had not followed standard procedure and that his friend would be reprimanded for handing out invitations to strangers like us.

The overburdened clerk showed up with our photocopies and letter and told us we could come back on Friday for our passports. We came back as arranged and found our passports with registered visas. The next day we sent email to the French official to say thank-you but got nary an acknowledgement. That was less important to us than our hope that neither Frederik nor his friend would suffer any serious consequences for what we considered to have been an innocent and great favour.

During our first Embassy visit the French official asked us our plans. We told her that we were planning to spend two months in Moscow and then a month travelling. Her reaction was to lecture us on the impossibility of travelling in Russia like you do in the Far East. (We had mentioned that we had recently been to Vietnam. She had been there too, but unlike most travellers who want to share she was too busy or annoyed to want to talk about it.) The implication was that we would somehow be pursued by the secret police. We smiled politely and left promising to tell her our itinerary once our plans firmed up.

But we had no further dealings with the embassy after getting ourselves registered. We forgot to send them our itinerary when we left Moscow. Actually, it changed so often, we would have had to email them on a daily basis and we didn't find regular internet service until we got to St.Petersburg.

Once we did leave Moscow and started travelling we had some interesting encounters with hotel clerks and the regulations for registering and reporting foreign guests. We stayed in all kinds of places from middle-class hotels, to hostels, to bed and breakfast. The hotels all wrote something or other in the passport, some did it every day, others on arrival, and yet others on our last day. It seems that either the rules aren't clear or are enforced differently from town to town. Our last hostess, the owner of a bed and breakfast in St. Petersburg didn't write anything in our passports although we presume she, too, had to report that we stayed with her. We did wonder if there would be any scrutiny of all these stamps at the airport but if there were we didn't notice them.

Thankfully, no-one ever stopped us to ask for our passports and the clerk at the airport stamped us out of Russia with hardly a glance. Vive la France!