Continuing struggle for internet access

We are at the end of week 1 of the struggle to obtain reliable internet access for our apartment. Last Saturday Shawn and one of our Russian-speaking friends went to the office of a company that supplies the internet to our building. According to Shawn, it went fairly well. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” we thought.

However, we underestimated the unnecessarily complex process that is required to do pretty much anything here in Kyiv. Shawn got a call on Monday from the internet company. Luckily, his Ukrainian secretary was right there, so she fielded the call. They faxed over a form for Shawn to fill out. It was in Ukrainian, of course, so it was Shawn’s secretary to the rescue again. Then they faxed over the bill for set-up. This is where the real Ukrainian fun begins.

Here’s the process for paying bills in Ukraine:

Step 1: You get the bill.

Step 2: You take the bill to a bank. You must make sure that it is the correct bank and the correct branch or you can just go ahead and start over at step 1.

Step 3: You hand your bill to a teller. She types some stuff into the computer. You hand her the money. She prints something on the bill using an archaic dot-matrix printer. She violently stamps the bill (they violently stamp everything here). She tears the bill in half and hands you the portion that is your receipt.

Step 4: You wait and see if anything actually happens.

We’re currently holding at step 4. According to Shawn’s secretary, we should have internet access in 15 days. Why 15 days? I’m not sure, but she seemed to think it was normal, so I guess now we wait.