A trip to the post office (guest post)

One of the worst experiences in terms of public services in Russia is the Post office.

Yesterday, I tried to send the above parcel full of books, magazines and various papers back to France (I can't afford the 22 euros per extra kilo of Czech Airlines). So, what did I do? I went to the department of the Post office specialized in sending parcels. There, they told me I had to open the whole box (very well taped, of course) because they had to check what I was sending. I told them it was only books and it turned out I had to go to an other department to send books (??). So I went to that other office, waited in line for half an hour (short line), filled in three different customs forms and the lady told me that I had to weigh the parcel and then buy stamps and then come back to the counter. Ok. So I went to the scales but the maximum weigh was 2 kg (4 lb) which meant I had to go back to the first office to weigh my parcel (10 kg/22 lb by the way).
THEN, I came back to the second office (the one that is supposed to send books, are you still following?), waited in line for an other half hour only to hear this: "for books, you can't send more than 5 kg (11 lb) at a time, and it has to be only books, and they can't be in a box" (????). At that point, I really wanted to cry. I gave up and took the box back to my apartment in the hope of finding an other way to get it home (which I did).

So what's the moral of this story? Never ever travel with a lot of books.