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.