Russian Rubles
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What facilitates trade? Let's start with the money. Officially, currency of Russian Federation is Russian Ruble. The exchange rate at the time of my visit was about 29 RUR for 1 USD. Some of the bills you can see on the right. The larges one I encountered was 500 RUR bill which is not shown.

Russian ruble is so unstable that it is very hard for companies to post ruble prices - they would be forced to change price tags almost every day. Companies whould rather use dollars but law prohibits any currecy except national. This situation introduces the unofficial currency of the country which is called "artificial unit". All prices are actually posted in these units and conversion rate is changed every day.

This mysterious unit is USD, what a surprise. However, this is not entirely true. Let's take the monitor purchase as an example. The posted price for that monitor was 261 AU. People keep money in USD bills while stores forced to accept only rubles by law. I took my 300 USD and went to exchange office. The fair exchange rate I found was 28.0 RUR/USD which gave me 8400 RUR. Exchange rate for AU of that store was 30.5 RUR/AU so the price happened to be 7960 RUR. I paid the amount which left me with 500 RUR. This is about 16 USD. So, I lost 23 USD. What did I buy for this? Only delays and inconvenience.

Another law enforces stores to give customer a receipt for every purchase and this is implemented. Stores won't buy many machines so they have one or two at most. What do you expect. You come to a salesperson give her money and get your merchandise. Or, you select your merchandise and then pay on the exit. No. First you select your merchandise but salesperson won't give it to you - no one can be trusted. Then, you somehow memorise the amount of every item and go to the machine where you pay money and takes the receipt. Then you go back to salesperson and gives her the receipt. Receipt is torn, and you get it back along with the merchandise.

More and more sotres abandon this classical inconvinient scheme. However, medum-sized stores this is still very typical. The recipts are quite interesting to look at. Istead of classical ones with only numbers and 'Thank you' printed recent ones get some usefull information. See the insert for a few examples.

Receipts

Beta-Comp - 17" computer monitor. One ugly torn receipt from a large company. Even though the company is located in the center of the city and reciept is for the amount of $275, this is probably the most ugly and uninformative receipt here. Computer World (Komputernii mir) - Computer cable. Big company with many stores but receipt is just like the first one - torn and not informative. Better condition, though. Big Guest House (Bolshoi Gostinnii dvor) - Dougnuts and juice. This recipt is from the greatest superstore in St.-Petersburg - The Guest house. Even though this is from the fast food located in the store it has the same proud name on it "BGD". The receipt is torn, however. Big Guest House (Bolshoi Gostinnii dvor) - Wall switch. This is from the same store but from on of the departments. Short but clear and very informative. And not torn. Oriental Sweets (Vostochnie Sladosti) - Russian chocolates and other sweets. House Of Books (Dom knigi) - A book on TOEFL. Kolobok fast food (Kolobok) - Blintz with fillings and drinks. Probably the best one here, even in multiple colors. Kolobok fast food (Kolobok) - Drinks. May be the first one had to have titles in red also... Anyway, no perfection - styles of two do not match. Nord (Sever) - Sweets. The fomous sotre with best cakes. Go there and buy some "OT01". Subway This is the receipt from Petersburg Subway System. They sell telephone cards and this was a 25 minute card. The receipt has even First, middle and last name of a sales person. Title 50 - minute telephone card from Subway System. Everything is there, even Salse person name but Ooops... The title reads 'Title'. Sohin Even a small selling points have their own names and registration numbers printed. Vorobiev Those points are mostly called by last names of their owners. That's what Sohin and Vorobiev stand for.

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Here goes more blah-blah-blah...

Here goes more blah-blah-blah...