I will spare you the details of my ill-fated attempt to pay for my archive copies, but needless to say, a bank account number for the account that you wish to deposit the money into IS required. For some reason, I was incorrectly instructed to just go to the bank with my copy order in hand and explain to the teller that I wished to deposit funds into the archive's account for my copies. I questioned this procedure but was assured that it was correct. The teller and I actually had a good laugh about it. So it was back to the archives today to clear things up. The archivist apologized for the misinformation and gave me the correct forms and promised that my copies would be ready on Monday. He was really very kind about it and it was just a simple mistake, although one that cost me nearly an entire day of doing anything productive! Form in hand I made my way to the bank, asked "who is last" when I entered (another situation where there was no apparent line) and successfully paid for my copies. It really is the little things in life that can make a person truly happy or truly miserable.
I have also been running into walls at the State Library, but today I feel that I have finally made some progress. After being sent back and forth between different sections while fruitlessly searching for musicological journals from the 1950s and 1960s I decided to contact the director of the music section. I sent her an email explaining my predicament and frustration, but politely. I have an appointment with her tomorrow and she is going to show me the journals and other materials that she thinks I will find useful. Thank you Alla Alekseevna! This is especially helpful as the archive where most of the materials that I am looking at is experiencing a brief shut down because of an international conference and will soon stop pulling files so they can prepare for their closure in August. Such are the joys of doing research in Eastern Europe in the summer.
It has rained for the past few days and I have spent a large part of my time going back and forth between the archives and the library, so I do not have any new or interesting photos to post. However, I hope to remedy this tomorrow after I leave the library. Hearing nothing but Russian is starting to get to me too. I realized that I was so desperate to hear English the other day that I was actually inching closer to two American businessmen on the Metro just so I could hear them speak. I know, pretty pathetic and their conversation was certainly less than exciting. Who knew I would ever eagerly listen to businessmen talk about investments and imports?!
Tomorrow will be, with any luck, a very successful and useful day in the library. And over the weekend I hope to hit the large flea market and stock up on souvenirs! Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment