Registering

After you get your Latvian residency permit you have to register your place of residence with the government. There are only five places in the whole country where you can register your place of residence and luckily the closest place to me was only a 15 minute walk from my house. I found the whole process of registering very weird. It is another remnant from Soviet times where citizens had to register their place of residence (even though in theory the place you lived was not really yours but property of the state anyway). I just find it quite scary to have the government know exactly where you live. On the other hand the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire alumni association has been able to find me no matter where I live.....so it must not be that hard to locate people in US either, even without the registration process. It just kind of makes me wonder if the registration process is just an exercise in futility.....but then again I guess one could say that same thing about the Soviet Union.