Russian Visa at last!

You could say the process of getting a Russian visa is complicated and that would be the biggest understatement EVER!

First you need an official invitation document and a tourist voucher which I guess is probably simple enough if you are going with a holiday company or even staying in a hotel but as we are staying in someone’s home this was our first problem.  We eventually decided to buy the voucher separately from Real Russia – an internet travel company who will email you the documents you need for £15.  They are actually really helpful and you don’t need to book anything else with them in order to get the visa support documents.  So first hurdle overcome! - apart from the four of use then had different vouchers as some of us put down the point of arrival -Krasnodar as a place we were visiting and others put it down as in transit but Real Russia assured us this didn’t matter.

You then need to fill in the form on the consulate website and print it out, which it has to be said would have been simplier if our printer had broken at the vital point and I hadn’t failed to put in my maiden name in the right section.  Then you need a postal order for £45 each which apparently you need cash for therefore needing to queue in the postoffice twice and the cash point once!  You also need recent passport photos and the margins of the page you’ve printed are supposed to be a certain width.  Put all this together with two special delivery envelopes weighed to the price of the things going and the things coming back and the job is done.

Then came a week and a half of worrying that I would have to apply again as I didn’t see the margins width specification until after Paul pointed it out to me when I had already sent my form with it’s incriminatingly large margins and the English name of the tourist voucher company rather than the Russian one.  It does say they will charge you if you have made any mistakes and then you are left to apply again but hurrah my margins slipped through and our visas arrived last week! Yay! One step nearer…

This was definately much much more complicated and expensive than getting both Vietnam and Indian visas and even one for China.  Thank goodness I didn’t have to pay again and probably make a trip to London and the intenseness of the Russian consulate!

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