Visa registration blues

If you've never been to Russia, you've never experienced the amazing thing that is the Russian visa system. Before you arrive, you have to get an invitation from the ministry of foreign relations, which must be requested by a contact in Russia (or a website you pay to take care of this step). After you arrive, your host is required to register your presence with the Federal Migration Service within three business days of your arrival. Failure to register can cause you trouble when you try to leave the country, and can make you subject to fines and/or bribes from policemen on the streets. So, it's good to get your visa registered.

That said, here's how to register your visa in Russia:
Option 1: stay in a hotel and have them do it for you.
Option 2: What I did (read on, but be aware the following is extremely long, full of bureaucracy, and absurd)

-- I arrived in Moscow July 1st. The day I got there, my host, Geoff, asked me what I was doing about getting registered. He wasn't sure about how it worked if you were staying in a private apartment. I said I'd check and see what the procedure was.
-- After reading up on registration online, I learned that 'my landlord' was supposed to take my passport to the nearest police station to get it registered. This was a change from recent times, when a traveler would have to take care of registration on their own. It is supposed to be easier.
-- I wasn't sure where to find Geoff's landlord and, in case my 'landlord' was Geoff himself, I really didn't want to make him bother going to the police station to register me.
-- Online forums suggested a workaround for registration issues. Go buy a night's stay in the cheapest hostel you can find, and get them to register you there. Unfortunately, Moscow being the most expensive city in the world, the cheapest hostel I could find was over $20 a night, and at that price they wanted another $30 to handle visa registration. I didn't think it was worth it.
-- I went downstairs and asked the attendant on duty in Geoff's apartment building how to get registered. She said if I was only staying until Saturday, I didn't have to. According to the law, she was wrong. I arrived on Tuesday and, even under the most generous of interpretations, my 3-day grace period would expire on Friday. However, she told me what I wanted to hear, and I decided to just dodge the police for my last day in Moscow. I stayed away from Red Square, Staryy Arbat and other places police congregate in numbers to shake down tourists.

-- I made it onto my train unscathed (I had one close call, as the guy in front of me at the train station got pulled aside by the police and asked to show his documents). Four days later, July 9th, I arrived in Kyzyl. A fresh 3-day registration deadline started.
-- Friday, two days into my stay in Kyzyl, my host Sean and I went down to the FMS office to get me registered. The people there told us he couldn't register me, since only Russian citizens can serve as 'prinimayushaya storona' ('the receiving side'). They suggested Sean's wife Sveta come down to the office and register me. Sean explained that Sveta was 8 1/2 months pregnant and asked about submitting the required documents by mail. This is, in fact, allowed-- any post office can receive registration forms and stamp your passport for you. They gave us 3 blank forms (two copies are required, and they thought we might screw one up) and explained what documents to photocopy and submit. They also told us that, since only working days count towards the 3-day deadline, I had until Monday to complete my registration.
-- That afternoon, I went and photocopied my passport, visa, migration card, and Sveta's passport. Sean suggested getting more extra forms, since he'd found them very easy to screw up. The 2-page form must be completed in pen, and you can't make any corrections. I went back to the FMS office and got six more blank forms.
-- Friday evening, I sat with Sean and filled out the forms. Over the course of an hour and a half, I messed up four of them before producing two acceptable copies. Sveta signed them (two times each).
-- Saturday, I headed to the central post office in downtown Kyzyl to submit the forms. A lady at the post office explained that I couldn't submit the forms myself, as that was the job of my 'prinimayushaya storona'. My explanation that my 'prinimayushaya storona' was a very pregnant woman fell on deaf ears. The postal employee asked when I arrived in Kyzyl, and told me I had to be registered by 6PM that day or face being fined. I told her that was impossible.
-- Sunday, Sveta and I got on a marshrutka (yellow vans that operate as buses in Russian cities) and went back to the central post office. She knew they were only open limited hours on Sundays, so we hurried to get there in plenty of time. There were lots of workers in the post office, but when we tried to go in, they told us to go away. As it happens, it was 'Dyen Pochty' (Post Office Day), and all the post offices were throwing their employees parties in celebration. We went home frustrated.
-- Monday, Sveta and I walked about twenty minutes to another post office. Here, someone finally took my documents and started processing them. However, she decided we'd done everything wrong. We'd filled in Sveta's place of registration instead of her place of birth. We'd only submitted one set of photocopied documents instead of two sets. Sveta couldn't be my 'prinimayushaya storona' anyhow because she was registered in her hometown out in the country and not in her home here in Kyzyl. And, to top it off, we'd used a black gel pen, which was apparently forbidden. She demanded new forms in ballpoint pen.
-- Sveta and I bought two blue ballpoint pens. She decided we should go directly to the FMS office where we could change her place of registration if they said we had to. We got on another marshrutka and headed into the city.
-- We got to the FMS office to find a sign explaining that the office was closed on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of each month. Foiled again, we decided to walk over to the central post office and try our luck there.
-- At the central post office, another postal employee explained to us that this office was not accepting registration forms. She suggested we go to the Vostok post office (the first one we'd visited).
-- Sveta decided to walk to a third post office on the other side of the city. On the way, she stopped by her OB/GYN office to update them on her pregnancy (she'd had false contractions two days before).
-- We got to the third post office a little before 1PM. They explained they had a lunch break from 1-2PM and were out of blank forms anyhow. I thought I had left our 3 remaining forms at home and Sveta suggested I take a marshrutka back to get them. First, we stopped at a cafe and had lunch.
-- Arriving back home, I discovered that the blank forms were actually in the envelope with the completed forms. Chagrined, I took a marshrutka back to the post office. We made copies of all the documents again, and started filling out the forms. Since we now had very little room for error, we decided to ask this post office which address we needed to fill out for Sveta. The lady at the desk said that, since Sveta was a private citizen and not an organization, no address was required. We filled out the rest of the form (I spoiled our last extra copy along the way).
-- We brought all our documents back to the post office desk and the lady started looking them over. She stopped when she reached the section for Sveta's address and asked why it wasn't there. We explained that we thought it wasn't required (as we had been told not five minutes earlier). She said we had to fill it out with Sveta's place of registration. Puzzled, we did so.
-- Sean had finished work and come to join us by this time (around 3PM). The post office lady was finally satisfied with my documents, though she said we'd photocopied more than we had too and didn't like the was Sveta wrote her 'i's. She had Sveta fill out a packing slip (twice) and address an envelope. Finally, she let me pay around $8 to mail everything off.-- Sean noticed she hadn't actually put a stamp on my migration card yet, and asked if she could. She said it wasn't required, though Sean and I both thought this was wrong-- it's exactly this stamp that the border guards look for when you leave. She decided she'd humor us and finally, at long last, stamped my passport.

So...in Kyzyl alone, it took five trips to the post office, three trips to the FMS office, two rounds of photocopying, and two new ballpoint pens to actually complete my registration. Welcome to Russia!

(PS-- the day after I finally got registered, a car I was in got stopped on the road to Chadaana by police wanting to see everyone's documents. Luckily, I was in the clear, barely)