Почта
The Post Office
A2 · Elementary · fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story
An elementary story about the machinery of an ordinary errand, built on the vocabulary of counters, forms and queues. A grey slip in the letterbox sends Artyom to a post office he has never used, and the building has rules of its own: a lunch break from one to two, one window open out of three, and no parcel at all without a passport. What comes from Voronezh is jam, socks and four sentences in his grandmother's handwriting — and the rest of the story is him working out how to answer them, box by box and line by line, and what you write about when you have no news.
Characters
- Artyom (Артём) — Student, 19
- Galina Petrovna (Галина Петровна) — Counter clerk
- Grandmother Nina (Бабушка Нина) — In Voronezh
- Sonya (Соня) — Flatmate
Vocabulary from this story
- почта — post office
- посылка — parcel
- извещение — notification slip
- почтовый ящик — letterbox
- окно — counter window
- очередь — queue
- расписание — opening times
- перерыв — lunch break
- паспорт — passport
- бланк — form
- адрес — address
- индекс — postcode