Banking day

Shoot me now! I figured I’d better transfer a portion of my bank account here back to the States now so I wouldn’t incur any penalties for sending too much at one time. So, thinking I can handle this without a translator, I marched off to the bank after work yesterday. And I was actually able to handle it without a translator because they do have a banker in the back who speaks good English. Hooray. He assures me that transferring money to another country is a piece of cake and I can do it directly from the website. I tell him that ,when I opened my account, I was told I had to do money transfers at the bank. He thinks I’m wrong, so we try to go on to the website to do it. When you log into the website, it sends you a secret password to your phone so you can enter it in the log in. Of course my phone is not responding and yes, I did pay my phone bill this month. So by this time, it is too late to make a money transfer anyway and I should please come back tomorrow during the day. So I made an appointment with him for 1 today, when I knew the kids would be asleep. I try to get a taxi on my phone but still no response. So my TA calls one for me. I get to the bank with plenty of time to spare and figure I should check my phone account to see what’s going on. The only thing I can understand is “second reminder”. Oh crap. So when the guy called me In to his office, I first asked him to check my phone to make sure I hadn’t paid into someone else’s account. I don’t know what he did, but finally I got the message that I was paid up with plenty to spare. I need for it to work in Two weeks when I fly to Moscow again for the winter cycling confernce and I have to call a taxi at 4 a.m. Ok. So the banker and I get on the website and he starts explaining all the Russian commands to me. And actually, he was doing a lot more talking than just about the bank account. I think he was so happy to be able to use his English that he talked about everything under the sun: his family, the school he went to, English books he’s read. Ok. It turns out that, since my bank in the States doesn’t have a SWIFT number, I can’t do it online. We checked my US bank’s website and found the instructions about using an intermediate bank. But in the meantime, he is calling all over the place to get instructions. While he’s doing that, I’m emailing my stateside bsnker to ask him To suggest a solution. finally the Russian banker says we’re going to do it the old-fashioned way and he has me fill out forms, which he is going to send to a higher up office. Ok. I keep asking him about what we saw on the website about an intermediiaey bank with a SWIFT code but he doesn’ t want to go that route. And he’s still discussing everything under the sun with me other than banking. But I figured I’d better not rile him up if I wanted to see my money on the other side of the ocean. He is actually a very pleasant guy and I enjoyed talking to hIm. It’s just that I had to get Back to school and what could have been done in one hour took and hour and a half. Oh, and he said it make take a long time for the transfer to happen. Wonderful. Bureaucracy in any country is always a pain in the butt, but when you’re trying to deal with it in a language you’re not very familiar with, it’s the pits.