All foreigners must be registered with the local police, and this includes the address of your accommodations. When you are in Belarus on a tourist visa, your hotel does this for you. But as I’m here to work for 10 months, things were not so simple. After I met my landlord and agreed to take the flat, I wanted to move in right away. My registration at the hotel was set to expire at 8pm Friday, September 7. We hurried to the police station to transfer my paperwork to the apartment, but we ran into some problems. It seems as though we were missing a form or signature, I’m not really sure as the whole 30-minute debate was in Russian. After several phone calls and finally speaking to a supervisor, they gave me a temporary registration letter that allowed me to stay in the flat over the weekend, as long as we agreed to bring the missing information first thing on Monday. Talk about a cultural experience!
