Jack and I went to the wonderful Russian Embassy today to see my most hated person in the world - the notary woman. As Timmy and I will be flying to Novosibirsk in August, Jack needed to make a power of attorney that says he lets me take our child on this trip without him. Easy enough. I called about two months ago to make an appointment and over the phone asked how much this document will cost - 7.50 EUR I was told. So far so good. I called again this Monday as I had to double check the required documents and also asked about the price... it has gone up by 50 cents - 8.00 EUR. This morning when we were actually at the notary counter she gave us a receipt that we had to pay at the payment office - Kasse (super efficient Russian queuing system where if you haven't queued at least four times at an official building they don't feel that they have done their job properly)... anyway the receipt already said - 10 EUR (so it's gone up 2 euros in five days - I think it's her private "retirement fund" fee). Finally as we were queuing at the Kasse the price gone up again another euro, because they don't take cash (unless it's below 15 EUR and only for pension inquiries), so you have to pay by credit card or EFTPOS and you don't have a choice but pay one euro on all transactions! So all in all - 11 EUR!
NB: Actually after writing this post I went onto the website of the embassy and discovered that the reason for this increase is that there are different prices depending on the person's nationality. Germans have to pay in some cases double what the Russians have to pay for the same services. So if I had to do the power of attorney I'd pay only 7.50, but because Jack had to do it, he had to pay 10 EUR! I guess it's only fair (????????)
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