How (not) to Get Russian Visa

If you're planning to stay 3 months or less studying in Russia, you have two options: you can pay 250 euros to travel agency and they get you a multivisa in few weeks without any fuss or difficulties. Or you can get a "free" student visa in one week. If you choose the latter option, this is what may happen.

Your exchange University promise to deliver invitation for the visa one month in advance before you start your studies. You trust them to be on time and plan another trip for the last week before your studies. On that another trip you also need your passport. But if the visa comes on time, you can get it and your passport back well before your trip.

But: the invitation is late so you have to apply for a second passport (50 euros) because your first passport is at the Russian consulate still when you want to go to your another trip. Plus you have to pay the express delivery fee (70 euros) in order to start your studies in time. Finally you get your visa, probably one day before your departure, and it's one-time-visa, which doesn't allow you to go back to Russia if you leave the country.

But no worries, Russians promise to change one-time-visa into multivisa in two weeks. But because you no that Russian bureaucracy isn't the fastest one, you plan to leave the country only six weeks after your arrival just to make sure that the multivisa is ready by that.

Next six weeks you ask almost every day the visa offisers "Are you sure, I'll get the multivisa on time? I have leave the country soon". Visa person may keep your passport and other documents in a plastic bag on a floor (see more: one of the previous bloggings) and still convinse "Visa will be on time". Even the same morning when your flight is departuring they call you and say "wait a half an hour more". They do it three times so you almost miss your flight. But eventually you leave country without visa, without knowing when, how and from where you can get back to your studies in Russia.

The second your plane takes off at Pulkovo you start to miss Russia. The whole emotional rollercoaster they make go through gets you addicted to the country. On your holiday you're all the time a bit worrying how to get a new visa. You may forget the problem for moments while you're skiing in the sunshine at the Swiss Alps with your good friend, spending time with your wonderful boyfriend, playing Scrabble, eating cheese fondy, getting first degree sunburnes on your face at the Alps, drinking after-ski beers and minttuvodka-redbulls. But still, when you least expect it, the visa problem hits you again.

You try to get the visa from the Russian embassy for Switzerland. You fail because you're not registrated in Switzerland. Instead of using your Swiss air return flight to St. Petersburg with free drinks and food and leather seats, you book new flights without any drinks or food to Finland (200 euros). You go back to Helsinki, because the exchange University sweared that they have send you a new invitation to the Russian consulate for Finland, you just have to apply for it.

So once again, you order insurance sertificate from your insurance company, get new passport photos (20 euros) and fill out the visa application. You go to consulate and bring your documents there. Everything should be okey, they have the invitation, you have all the right documents and even an extra HIV-sertificate they don't even need.

But everything is not okey. Russian embassy sweares that they don't have your invitation while Finnish post office is swearing that they have delivered it already week before. And even if you would have the invitation, it's a wrong kind. It doesn't allow you to get a multivisa, only one time visa which you can not even hurry by paying 70 euros like you did with the first visa. So you're in danger to miss so many classes that they will kick you out from the courses.

You feel crushed: What to do now? Should I now get the tourist visa through an agency or trust that the university will sort things out? Again, you choose the latter option: you contact the University and they promise to send a new invitation by DHL delivery system. The new invitation should arrive in two days.

The next two days you cannot do anything. One good way to spend your forced spare time in Finland is to drive to Tampere to meet friends, pack rest of your stuff at your old apartment and avoid your thesis superviser so you wouldn't have to explain, what are you doing in Finland when you should be in Russia studying.

After two days you drive back to Helsinki car full of boxes and filled with hope. You call DHL and they say that the invitation will be at the embassy by 12 am. You go there with your documents. They say, that the mail hasn't arrived yet so you wait patiently 1,5 hours the delivery guy to bring your invitation. When the ambassy is closing, guy still hasn't arrived. You start to feel desperate, but then: embassy founds your invitation somewhere so you have waited for nothing. But the invitation doesn't help, again it's a wrong kind: "You can only get one time visa, but this time you can hurry it".

You're feel devastated, you burst into tears, slowly crying gets hysterical and the consulate worker shouts: "Calm down, women". But you can't, you just keep crying like an animal which awakes unwanted attention (remember to bring sun classes to hide your red eyes). Between your tears you manage to fight with the man: "Why you Russians apply the visa contract in a different way than EU? All the Russian tourist get multivisa without any problems, why can't I?!", "Why do you want to destroy my studies and life?" etc. Finally you leave the application for the man and run out.

You go home in a hysteric state of mind. What happens now to your studies in St. Petersburg, your exchange stipend and to your Planeta Fitness membership? I haven't even tried strip aerobic yet! Where are you going to live if you cannot go back to Russia?
Then your father comes home. "Calm down! I'll make some phone calls". After five minutes he comes to you and say: "We have a meeting with the Commercal Consul of Russia tomorrow morning. We'll get the visa for you."

Next morning you wear neat clothes, like your father who also wears a watch he got from the Russian presidental administration. You walk into the Commercal representative office, where nice Russian secretaries ask if you want coffee or tea. While waiting for the meeting, you have time to admire pure 60s style interior of the lobby with brown leather couches, brown walls, bronze sculptures and so on.
After a while the Commercal Consul enteres the room and escorts you to the conference. You sit on the other side of the table than the Consul, sip your tea, wonder should you take a Russian or a Finnish chocolate (eventually you take neither) and listen the conversation between your father and the Consul. Father: "Mister Consul, you know that we have known each other many years, that I have worked for Russian and Finnish business relations already 27 years, and that we have always had a really good relationship. That's why I dare to ask for your help to get a visa for my daughter". Consul: "It's nice to meet you again, and indeed the relationship has been good al this years and maybe I can help you some how".
Then the Consul grabs his (Nokia) phone and calls to the head of the visa department. After 5 minutes. "Everything should be okey, the head of Visa department is expecting you in 15 minutes". We run to the next door building where friendly words and shaking hands starts again. You explain your problem (in extreme situations like this your Russian is almost fluent). Then he disappears and comes back with the same junior officer who made you cry a day before. Same show starts again: "We cannot make you a multivisa with this invitation and we can make it only by Monday", the junior officer claims. Then the boss just calmly orders: "Make her a two-time-visa and now". Junior officer leaves the room with clearly disappointed face. You get the visa in 20 minutes, which you spend watching Russian TV at the office of the head of the visa department. You never meet the junior officer again. You won the fight and you walk to the train station to by tickets (60 euros) for the next day.

So eventually the "free" student visa may cost you 400 euros with new flights, new passport, new photos, express delivery fee and finally the train ticket to Russia. Not to mention the emotional trauma you get.

At the very end: when you have to go to Russia, get the tourist visa through an agency. You'll save lot of money and trouble.

Praise to Russian food

When you first come to Russia you usually loose some weight: shopping is pure agony, vegetables at the shops are more or less suspicious and big supermarkets are either expencive, far away or at suburbans. The university food is bar of Snickers or cold salad while in Finland I got used to super good, state-subsidized meals.

But then after a month or two when you uncover the secrets of Diksi (local chain of corner shops), where you have to 

queue (they teach queuing at Russian class in some universities), pay, shop and behave in a specific way (which includes babushkas passing you in line and shop assistants yelling at you); when you discover the stuff it's worth paying; and when - this is the best - you discover the restaurants St. Petersburg has to offer, you get the lost pounds back, unfortunately with interests usually.

The worst thing you can do in Russia, is to try to eat the same food you eat home. Don't even try that, you'll fail, loose your money and became angry because of the shit

ty food. Of course you can find pasta, pizza and other all universal dishes from local shops here but the best dishes are the ones you can only find in Russia.

Naturally there are world-famous blini's with all sort of original, exotic or weird fillings (meat, caviar, smetana, jam, chocolate, roe, vegetables etc.) but the best blinis are the most simple ones: with potato, cabbage or/and mushroom. It's amazing what Russian's can do with the simple and cheap ingredients! (well, they had some difficult moments in the

ir history when they had to learn to eat only potatoes, cabbage and onions) Same the-simpler-the-better-principle goes with other Russian national dishes as well: pelmenis, varenikis and pirozhkis are best when they're filled simply with potatoes or mushrooms.

Russian food is not only delicious, but also cheap, fast and easy to prepare (at least the half-ready-made ones). Blini's you can buy from the kiosk which tempt you in ev

ery corner of the city, pirozhkis are sold in bakeries and cafes, pelmeni's on the other ha

nd are best to prepare home: just boil water and throw frozen pelmeni's in for couple of minutes, and a vot, dinner is ready.

If you are against fast food (even the delicious, non-mass-produced Russian one) and want to start the cooking from the scratch, begin by going to market place (rynok). If you want to find good veggies or something else than vacuum-packed meat, you have to skip soviet-style produktis and make the effort to shop at rynok. (The best one is near Vladimirskaya metro station, where you can also buy part of your purchase from the babushkas who

 have their shadow-market next to the official market hall). At the rynok you can buy all the (boring) normal stuff but also Russian delicates like tvorog (something between milk and cheese), marinated tomatoes and cucumbers, cheese (especially the smoked cheese is worth testing), roots of garlic, home-made chili-paste, pickles, Russian chocolate, tens of different kind of honeys and many variations of sauerkraut.

I love all the items mentions above, but sauerkraut has became my favorite. During the past weeks I have eaten it cold, hot, medium, fried, in a soup, with pasta-sauce and blended with noodles. Sauerkraut costs almost nothing, you can buy it in every shop a

nd it's super-super 

healthy and above all, it's really good! In addition to sauerkraut I have also sneaked smetana into my daily diet. In Finland I consume smetana about twice a year (laskiainen ja joulu) but hear it somehow belongs to everything I eat. In Finland I consider smetana to be unhealthy, but here I feel that it makes me good, so maybe you just need more energy in Russian life than in the life in Nordic welfare state. Or maybe I just loose control here.

You can keep your stomach and mind relatively happy with the fast food and home-cooking, but the restaurants here in St.

Petersburg blow your mind. The goods ones are not on the main streets or near Hermitage, so here are some self-discovered rules you have to obey in your food-searching-process in Russia.

Rule number one; never go to a restaurant, which claims to be a restaurant (pectopah); instead go to cafe, bar, tavern or even club. The best food is always there which doesn't scream restaurants! Rule number two: the shabbier place, the better food. If it shines, don't fall for it. Rule number three: try ethnic restaurants in Russia, even if the Russian restaurants are goodm the ethnic ones are something special!

The top of exotic experiences is Georgian food that has overwhelmed each of my friends who has had the opportunity to taste piece of khatsapuri or lobio. You cannot really find Georgian restaurants in the Western world so in Russia you definitely have try them at least once. I'm like a khatsapuri-missionary here because I always drag my friends (and friends of 

friends) to try the Georgian food at Lagidze (our favorite, located close to circus, at Fontanka) where the waitresses already know me there and greed me by laughter because I'm like a tourist guide every time I go there "you have to try this, let's order this, don't read the menu, I'll decide etc.". Maybe I go there too often, but the food is just fantastic. Especially before hard night out you need the amount of energy khatsapuri, few beers and 50g of vodka gives you; after that set you can stay up all night (and for example meet nice Swiss boys).

The other good ethnics here are sushi-places (with happy hour between midnight and 5am, oh mama) and Chinese restaurants (Tan Zhen) which is my other hangout after Lagidze. Chinese food is somehow more Chinese here than in Finnish Chinese restaurants where food has been compromised to adapt the Finnish taste (read: no taste or spice, everything is just covered with sweet and sour sauce). And the best thing in Georgian, Chinese and sushi restaurants here is the tradition to order food together. Portions are planned to be shared so instead of eating whole plate of one dish you can try many different things and still get satisfied. I think you even eat less when you share the food because nobody wants to look too greed over a shared dinner. Hah, another tradition I want to take back to Finland!

So altogether, don't believe those suckers who speak shit about Russian cuisine; they have only been eating at McDonald's and PizzaHut at Nevski Prospekt (unfortunately many Finnish exchange students do that).

Instead go to the shabbiest cafe on a semi-shabby street and you will get the best food of your life!

Stalin's samovars

Our Russian teacher entertained us again last week by telling real life curiosities from Soviet way of life. Discussion started as a civilized conversation about history but ended to crazy laughter. We were discussing about Valaam monastery (Valamon luostari) which used to belong to Finland before WWII. Stalin's Soviet Union got the monastery i

sland together with lake Ladoga in the peace treaty and Stalin decided to kick the monks out and bring the wounded war veterans in to the monastery. In Stalin's Russia invalids and handicapped peopl

e weren't allowed to live in the cities because they didn't represent ideal Soviet worker. Solution was to hide them in to far-away islands and the ones who had lost both their legs and arms in the front were send to Valaam. Those poor armless and legless people were called samovars because "you could put them onto shelfs like teapots". Our teacher was telling this story with a poker face but none of students could avoid laughing to this awful, awful story. Every day life was so dark during the Soviet times so the jokes about had to be even darker. As awful as the jokes are, I still love them! One of the best characters of Russian people is their sense of humor, it's black and tragicomic but it always reveals the real thoughts of the Russians.

Even if the humor is coal-black the city is getting brighter. The first symptoms of spring are already visible: my favorite street dog moved back to close-by park where it spends summers and ice is falling down from the roofs. Even the sun has shined the past three days. But the most visible sign of spring is the up-coming Women's day which is one of the biggest holidays in Russia. Here (and in Ukraine and in Azerbaijan) Women's day is an official holiday while the rest of the world hardly notice the

 holiday. This year 8th of March happens to be on Sunday so the the official celebrations started already today: on TV president Medvedev is hosting a dinner for women (probably the only day of the year when women are invited to Kremlin) and men are flowering 

their colleagues at work. Family members and the loved ones receive their flowers, chocolate and gifts only on Sunday.  Women's day was originally created by some German communist feminists but today the holiday is everything else than celebration of women's emancipation, it's more praise for traditional gender roles in which women are women and men are men. But like my teacher said: "Everything eventually turns upside-down in Russian". She also said that I should celebrate the day as a day for "wonderful women, which we all are". Monday is naturally public holiday because here all the weekend holidays are compensated during the next week after holiday. I'd like to have same system in Finland too!

I have been celebrating my womanhood by shopping at local beauty mecca for Russian women Rive Gauche (рив гош, whose plastic bags every self-respecting Russian women use for carrying her most valuable things) and visiting local hairdresser where I got first-class service. Some people say that Russians can be sloppy and do their work ineffectively, but when it comes to beauty the quality is excellent! I have never got as accurate haircut in my life (except the previous one I got in Russia), the girl was cutting each hair one by one and the result was more than satisfying. You can see the same trend in aerobics: you have to always do your best or the instructors will come and kick motivation in you. All things are not that effective here (read: I still haven't got my visa and the argument with the administration has been going on already 4 weeks) but at least I can be happy about my new hair style and growing muscles.

In addition to Women's day celebration I have been efficiently breaking my Lent promises whole week. Unlike I promised, I have done only few things for my thesis and instead of studying I have concentrated on partying. On Wednesday we (three Finnish girls) went to a house party which was in tsarist-style decorated super cool apartment. It was a hard core -student party but only new friend we managed to make was yet another Finnish girl. For some reason I

only meet nice Finnish girls here instead of making Russian mates. Well I got one new Russian friend (the boy whom I met in bar which is apparently the only place to meat new people) and we met once on a walk which started a bit confusingly: this Russian maladoi tselovek (=young person, which is what they call young men here) fell down on a slippery street which was a bit funny because he got so embarrassed. After he survived from his shame (it took quite a long time) it was nice to speak some Russian but with my language skills I can keep up a conversation max. 2 hours. If I meet him again, I don't have any new things to tell him, at least not in Russian.

Another slipping from my Lent happened yesterday when we went to see Stereo Total at A2-club. This German-French crazy electro-duo was best entertainment I have experienced for a long time! The artists as well as (Russian part of) audience were dancing like maniacs and the whole atmosphere was refreshingly sincere (compared to rock-police and -snobs which you meet time to time at Finnish clubs). Of course after gig like that we had to continue party to another bar (to the Other Side to be exact). We were trying to get a typical black cab (illegal taxis which you can hail and stop any where any time to get a cheap ride; usually they are Ladas driven by Caucasian men) but this time we got a ride from a stereotype of a novyi Russkiy business-man with his fancy big car. Car was bought from the Vladivostok so the wheel was on the wrong side and our driver was a bit lost. But extra sightseeing tour didn't mind while sitting in a comfy car with fur seats and East-oriented techno on the back ground! Life in Russia can be quite nice time to time even if Lent promises fall in parts.

In pictures: Typical view from my home street: man drinking beer and reading wall-newspaper and girl with bunch of flowers; glimpse to my University and Medveved with the ladies

Mafia-style blini-week

I have been decent Russian during the past week: while it has been a Maslenitsa (which means more or less Butterweek) I have been eating at least 10 blinis, cakes, Georgian cheesy khatsapuri and drinking enough beers. I have buttered myself (literally) up for the future suffering because like all good thing, also crazy-eating-holiday has to come to an end.

Tomorrow, on Monday, we who live under Orthodox calendar and rules will start a Lent. That means no meat (well, I don't eat it any way), milk products or eggs  (I think I'll break this rule), dancing, partying or listening other than godly music for 40 days. Like all the believers (for most young Russians, it's only a good way to get into bikini shape, not so much obeying religious rules), I'll make my own version of Lent. Suvi-Lent means no meat (easy), lot of thesis writing (harder), only few beers now and then (fundamentalist absolutism is never good) and lot of sports (which will complicate the rule #2). And because everything is faster now than back in the days when Lent was invented, I will cut back Lent from 40 into 14 days. I should be able to do that, especially now when my favorite excuse not to study flew back to Bern. And he will be reason to brake the Lent again in 14 days.

Beside copying the Butter-eating-feast I have had some other all-Russian experiences like mafia-style car-crashing and friendly babushkas giving me advice I want to hear and advice I don't need to hear. The mafia-show happened when I was buying yet another blini at nearby blini-kiosk. I was ordering some fish-egg (roe) and chocolate-banana blinis from a lovely blini-devushka when I heard huge noise behind my back. I turned around and saw super-fancy Lexus-car being smashed against the traffic signs and obstacles which were meant to keep the cars away from the pavement. Car was speeding (although reversing) to the sidewalk and hitting everything that got on its way (luckily no children or street dogs). Finally the car stopped and young man climbed out of the car, without any fuss and called somebody which turned out to be the cars owner. After half a minute the car owner run to the accident scene and started to shout like hell. Both men were well-dressed and looked a bit like mafiosos (at least in my imagination where fancy cars and shouting rich-looking men are always a bit scary). I sneaked little by little behind the blini-kiosk because I was sure that one of them will pull out a gun and start to shoot around. My heart was bouncing but only until I saw how people around me were behaving. Woman baking blinis juts kept on doing her work, two old gentlemen sipping beer next to me kept speaking like nothing happened and overall nobody juts reacted in any way! Like I was the only one who saw something strange happening!

Maybe I have just seen too many James Bond -movies (ooh, Daniel Graig) or maybe I have lost a bit of my sense of security in Russia compared to my last exchange here. My honeymoon with Russia is officially over because I don't see the country through rosen glasses any more. Things which were interesting before are easily just annoying now and the poor alcoholics you meet on streets are somehow more visible than before. Sure I had world pain (maailmantuska, doesn't translate well in English) also before but now it bugs me more often. For example every time I see this one blind neighbor of mine buying vodka from the produkty (corner shop) and then stumbling his way home in the middle of crazy Russian traffic, I have to fight not to cry. And when I see old ladies cleaning streets with brooms size of a toothbrush I feel so bad that I'm here only to study and party and still get crazy amount of money (from EU and Finnish government) which is more they will never earn in their shitty jobs. Time to time I try 

to ease my world pain by buying potatoes and herbs from babushkas who are selling their datsha-produced vegetables and jams on streets, but it don't really help. You cannot make money-caused anxiety go away by using more money. But maybe the babushkas will get some beneft form it and at least I get some bio-vegetables and home-made conserves. Even if I'm more reserved on the security in Russia than  before I have to say that there have been at least one huge improvement in security: they drop snow from roofs (at least from some of them)! Before you really had  to be aware when the snow was melting, because TV-size icicle falling on your head kills you faster than Lada driving 100 km/h. I also found out why they have chairs on the streets (look at the picture on previous blogging): they just mark danger zones where ice is falling with bands tied into old chairs! 

Not to give too grey impression on Russia, I have to remind that most of the stuff happening here is still relatively good. Culture never disappoints and on Friday I saw probably the best opera ever when we were watching Madame Butterfly at Mariinsky theatre. Like always at Mariinsky the set was amazing and singers world-class, but the most intriguing thing was babushka who sold programs, checked tickets and was doing all the other general stuff as well. When we bought program she insisted that we go and see exhibition about "the best ballerina ever" before the opera starts. Of course we obeyed her advice and politely looked pictures of the Soviet-era megastar. When we went to our seats and took pictures of the gold and crystall shining Mariinsky hall, babushka was there again and said that take pictures only before the show and whispered with a proud voice "they say, that this is the most elegant hall in the world". She was so charming because obviously she is totally in love with her working place. Only superlatives were words strong enough to describe the place, so proud she was.

My other favorite babushka works at my gym's cloakroom. You have to leave your jacket there and usually when you get your stuff back she's too lazy to walk to you get the numerok so you have to yell your number at her. Of course she realized that I'm not Russian from my pronunciation so now every time when I get there she tests my Russian: "Devushka, say this in Russian. Again. Good!". She's really nice

but now I have an extra pressure when I go to gym. In addition to have energy to train, I have to also be willing to practice Russian with babushka.

Beside the last day of Butterweek, today was also the local elections in Russia. In St. Petersburg they have divided city into maybe 1000 voting districts which means that people living at my street can only vote candidates living on the same street and on few street next to us. So there will be probably hundreds of members of that city parliament which actually has only little power in city business. The biggest decision maker is still the governor which is appointed by president (before Putin governors were elected). Obviously citizens know how much (or little) power those candidates have because the turnout was around  15 percent according to the local online-newspaper. Like on could unfortunately assume, the election wasn't fair: big part of the opposition parties candidates were disqualified already before the elections. Authorities said that the signature they collected in order to be a candidate were fake and even when people who had singed on the support list went to court and said that its really their signature, court decided that they were fake. Plus the militsija went through the apartments of the candidates and the ones who signed so in future nobody will sign anything ever again, because it causes such problems. Nice way to eliminate the opposition and also the ones who could support the opposition.

Happy Lent to everyone and feel free to leave comments!