Travelling and more: The Tsar's castle and Russian Bureaucrac(z)y

I spent a "wonderful" first night here in my new room. In this dormitory (some may say that Tsars lived in this building... or Not) I share a room with two others from Pakistan and Tunisia. They were very friendly and open and I hope that it will continue in a good way (since cultural clashes could happen). In the other room there are also three people, one of them is my colleague from my home university in Steyr. We all share a bathroom and a kitchen. Luckily, my colleague from Austria already cleaned this old bathroom very well, however the kitchen is still hell on earth, so I bought some cleaning stuff to get rid of most of these notorious stains. I already had a discussion with my roommates to clean this mess, as it is really health threatening I believe. I am not picky at all, but some things go too far...

What the hell

Why is so hard to clean this... wtf is wrong here

After a nice breakfast in the students' cantine (which is super clean and looks very welcoming) we had to meet our buddy Aleksi who is keen helping us with all paperwork that needs to be done.
I call this paperwork "bureaucratic craziness" since we need to go to several offices which are separated and which we would not find without the great help of Aleksi. Things we have to do concern our Visa (and Visa prolongation as well as multi Visa), the translation of our notarized documents into Russian language, paying for the dorm (sounds easy, but they make it complicated and make you go to three offices) and registration for the studies. For the translation of documents into Russian we had to go to translation agency and pay for that extra.
To sum up, a lot of paperwork is only there to provide people with a lot of office jobs. I would say that Austria is bureaucratic too, but this here is just too much for my Austrian mind.

Good morning St. Petersburg!

Part of the huge campus of my university here

Close to the dorm

Buildings of the university in the background and the dorm

Elevator to the Metro

My most visited place so far: Translation office

In the evening we went shopping quite close to the next Metro station "Академическая". Since I miss a lot of stuff such as a pot, plates, or a pan. I was very surprised by the low prices (I mean really cheeeeap stuff) so I also made a picture of my purchases :)