Red October

Was looking at other Russian related content and blogs and thought I’d share some the interesting and witty web sites I saw. Enjoy!

http://likethevodka.com/

http://www.russianlife.com/blog/

http://russiamania.blogspot.com/

http://www.imarriedanalien.com/

http://www.jeremynicholl.com/blog/

http://bearsandvodka.com/

http://readrussia.com/blog/

Just Looked at a bunch of excellent photos of the Kremlin over at English Russia. I’d recommend that you check out the post.

The Kremlin

My wife and I were recently talking about taking a trip to Saint Petersburg, Russia. So she has been researching the flight, hotel, etc. She decided to look at her Russian passport only to find it expires at the end of the month. Hmmm. Well now the fun begins.

So she heads over to the Russian Consulate web site to see how to renew it. Hmmm.

1)      Since she is a USA citizen, she needed to provide two color copies of the first page.

2)      Six passport pictures (which of course are a different size and specifically the face has to be a certain size…). We took her pictures here at home and went to this site to make the pictures the correct size. This beats paying $20 – 30 at Walgreen’s or somewhere to take passport photos only to have them not quite right for a Russian passport. Then we went to Kinko’s and paid $.39 in their Sony photo machine and got a single 4×6 photo and cut them apart. Well worth it.

3)      Three different money orders for different amounts (Walmart is the cheapest).

4)      The application – even this had to be printed correctly with both front and back needing to be printed.

5)      A trip to FedEx so it could be shipped overnight to the San Francisco Consulate. I would advise you not to skimp on this and use something else to ship. FedEx is the best and it always gets there on time.

Russian Passport

This took an entire day to put together and run around to get everything done. And if anything is wrong, they just sit on it and send you an e-mail to call them. Yes, we’ve done this before and somehow we screwed it up. I think it took an extra 2 weeks to process last time. So, the moral of the story is that you need to quadrupally check everything to make sure it is correct and in the envelope.

Have not written anything on here for a while.  Nothing new going on in the world of Russian Wives.

Yesterday (May 9^th) was Victory Day. Thousands of soldiers marched in on Red Square on Monday in Russia’s annual Victory Day . They displayed their weapons in true Soviet style as President Dmitry Medvedev spoke of Russia’s committment to peace and global stability.

The parade marks the surrender of Nazi Germany in World War II and commemorates the Soviet Union’s sacrifices in the war while asserting the strength of its modern military.

Victory Day

Victory Day Again

I recently was contacted by a Ukranian entrepreneur who calls himself Maksym. He has a couple web sites offering services and advice finding Ukranian and Russian ladies who are looking for marriage.

Russian Brides Guide – is a website about smart ways to find a Russian wife. He helps you find ways to do it without help of dating agency/website.

World Best Brides – is basically a dating agency web site. Readers can see ladies profiles and order almost any service needed.

He offers readers to take part in online speed dating as well as advice and help in finding your Russian bride. Check out the post on An alternative to dating websites. It is a tutorial how to find a Russian wife using Russian social networks for free and without any dating agencies.

He also offers personal help and has his contact info available on the web sites.