For a visa for Russia
one should start the procedure by a request for a Letter of
Invitation (LoI). This takes normally 2 weeks and the organisation whom you are dealing with will send the LoI with a courier. This takes
another 4-5 days. Making an appointment with the embassy and the time to prepare the visa will take then another 10 days. Say: one month for the whole procedure. So we started the procedure in the second half of March, to be able to leave early May.
Half April, our LoI's reached Brussels and that was it. The next step: deliver the envelope to the receiver, never happened. UPS lost the envelope. Lost in a big pile of parcels and that was it. 700 € and one month down the drain.
As a receiver you have no rights. The sender has to start a search procedure and according to UPS this takes 10 working days. After 6 working days, the search procedure for our envelope was terminated...??? UPS could not be bothered any longer and on the phone we got always the same standard answers. UPS confirmed that the envelope never left their premises in Brussels... What a bunch of incompetent arrogant motdfgrs's.
Half April, our LoI's reached Brussels and that was it. The next step: deliver the envelope to the receiver, never happened. UPS lost the envelope. Lost in a big pile of parcels and that was it. 700 € and one month down the drain.
As a receiver you have no rights. The sender has to start a search procedure and according to UPS this takes 10 working days. After 6 working days, the search procedure for our envelope was terminated...??? UPS could not be bothered any longer and on the phone we got always the same standard answers. UPS confirmed that the envelope never left their premises in Brussels... What a bunch of incompetent arrogant motdfgrs's.
End of April we started the
procedure again. Due to holidays early May in Russia and some
problems with the computers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
another month passed. Finally we received the LoI's and a 10 days later
we had our Russian visa in the pocket.
We finalised the
travel/repatriation insurance, the additional third party car
insurance for Russia, the Mongolian visa, the Carnet de Passage and
loaded the car.
 |
| Itinerary with daily positions from the first 4 days. |
Fast Forward through Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland and the Baltic states. Planned visits to Krakow, Auschwitz, Warsaw and the major cities in the Baltic states cancelled in an attempt to recover some of the lost time. Time we will need to catch the ferry from Russia to Japan (the last ferry is in October according Lonely Planet) and time we will need to travel in temperatures above zero in Siberia.
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